After the Opium Wars, China not only lost territory and dignity. It also began to lose itself.
By 1880, it is estimated that there were over 40 million opium addicts. Perhaps more. No one counted them all. In cities like Shanghai or Canton, half of the men smoked. Men, women… everyone, lying on wooden platforms, with vacant looks and the smoking pipe between their fingers. They sold their belongings. Some, to their own children.
In places like Fuzhou, the opium dens were silent caverns of wood and smoke. A sweet, rancid smell that clung to clothes for days. It was the scent of a nation in slumber.
British ships arrived loaded with chests of opium, grown in colonial India. The trade was lucrative, sheltered by unequal treaties signed after China's defeat. Foreign gunboats patrolled the ports, and local officials were easily bribed.
What could China do?
It had lost the wars. It had signed its surrender with ink and humiliation.
While the world moved forward, China dreamed among the ruins.
It was only with the arrival of Mao Zedong, after 1949, that opium began to disappear. The new communist regime showed no mercy: traffickers were executed at dawn, shot against walls still damp from the night. Addicts were forced to detox… or died in the attempt.
And so, with fire and fear, China began to awaken from one of the most destructive dreams in its history. An imported, lucrative, and poisoned dream… that almost consumed it completely.
