Page 119 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

The freneticism of Old Canton can only be imagined. It was not just confined to the
overcrowding of the Pearl River with all sizes of ships and boats chaotically trying to load
and unload and it wasn’t just confined to the maze of streets and alleys that pressed upon
the backs of the foreign enclaves; a maze that grew more dense, narrow and chaotic the
further away they were in that hierarchy of streets. The freneticism was palpable in the air
with each Hong merchant and each foreign agent plotting and scheming evermore ways to
engender profit and mitigate taxes, if not avoid them altogether. Canton and the China
Trade was the ultimate cash cow; it was a constant battle of wits - wits that lay in two very
different cultures.

There is a misconception that trade, apart from the burgeoning opium trade, was very
much a one-way affair. There was a trade from China to Britain that was known as the
“Drug Trade” that began as early as 1800. The term “drugs” surprisingly collectively meant
the following: cassia, camphor and rhubarb. The trade was so substantial that a “Drug
Concern” was established in London - a partnership that handled and controlled the
operation in London. In return, certain goods, despite a general belief the Chinese wanted
nothing from the West, were sent to China that included: lead, tin, Prussian blue and
cochineal. In addition there was a rather strange commodity that wealthy Chinese had an
addiction for. It became known by the Chinese as “singsongs”; a pidgin word, for
extravagant and somewhat eccentric automatons, musical clocks and musical boxes! The
Chinese couldn’t get enough of them and would pay anything to own British versions
which held as being superior. In the region of £100,000 worth were dispatched to Canton
each year for the first decade of the 19th century. This had a “street value” of around £1
million in China; a relatively small but highly lucrative trade. The Drug Trade and the
singsong trade were all handled by private traders and the East India Company hated this
trading so much it tried every way possible to make life hard for all concerned in it.

But things became even more bizarre; the Drug Trade and the singsong trade was so
significant that forward trading bills were issued in London and traded as a commodity until
the bottom fell out of the market - many fingers were burned in the demise.

The British merchants had forgotten that rule number one in trading a commodity with
China is not to trade in anything the Chinese can learn to copy and make themselves!
While owning a British clock had once been aspirational, once the Chinese had mastered
the art of clock-making in the British style this created a dilemma with the Chinese elite
since it also goes against the grain of the Chinese psyche to pay an outrageous price for
something that can be bought in China at a fraction of the cost. The clockwork makers of
Clerkenwell in London and Birmingham suffered as a result

Singsongs were not the only trade taken to China. Nankeen was a sturdy cotton cloth that
was used for making Chinese trousers among other things. It was not uncommon for the
cotton harvest to be poor for the making of Nankeen. At the Manchester cotton mills a
similar fabric was made from cotton brought in from the British colony of India and this was
made in the same yellowish buff colour that Nankeen was produced in and exported to
China where it was readily bought. Nankeen was also used to make summer weight
trousers for the well-dressed Regency gentleman. The reason why dusting cloths are
yellow today is because in the late Georgian and Victorian periods, old Nankeen garments
were cut up and used as polishing cloths! Nankeen was sent to China in huge quantities;
one House of Lords journal for the year 1813 relates to 800,000 bales being dispatched.