5 - Taste-making and trendsetting

Summary

This chapter is devoted to opium's urbanisation and initial popularisation, in other words, to the birth of the opium-smoking consumer trend, in the 1820s and early 1830s. Scholars and officials had embedded opium consumption into mainstream sex recreation in Qianlong's time; they spread the gospel of opium in Jiaqing's time; they would urbanise it in Daoguang's reign (1820–50). Fuelled by the popularity of yanghuo and aided by the rise of smuggling, opium smoking spread quickly. The arrival of a consumer trend depended on the participation of the larger urban population and more importantly on the availability of opium. More individual English-men rushed to what Jacques Downs called the ‘golden ghetto’ of Canton after 1813, when Indian commerce opened up. They also found a better depot – Lintin. Soon a dynamic duo, William Jardine and James Matheson, would challenge the Honourable Company and see the ‘termination of its exclusive right of trading with the dominions of the emperor of China’ in 1834. The consequences of free trade can be seen in the statistics. Opium imports stood at 4,244 chests in 1820, thereafter increasing yearly so that by 1839 the number had jumped to 40,200. Opium was galvanising urban consumer society.

YANGHUO AND THE ‘LEISURE CLASS’

Daoguang's first decade (1820–30) barely resembled Qianlong's heyday, yet for many, the good life went on. Not only did many smoke opium, many more also became increasingly fascinated with everything foreign.