At the end of the 19th century, in the land of China, which was still under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, the people were full of various famines and diseases, and the general public basically did not work, but gathered several people every day to go to the opium house to smoke opium.
This led to a sharp decline in the quality and average life expectancy of our people at that time, the proliferation of opium caused by hunger everywhere, the quality of life was very worrying, and a large amount of money was diverted by foreign merchants through opium.
There may be many people with a doubt, since it is a drug and is forbidden to sell abroad, then the price of opium with scarce production is naturally expensive, why in the Qing Dynasty the poor can afford to buy, everyone can smoke?
The reason for this phenomenon is actually very simple, mainly because cixi came up with a bad idea that year.
The cause of the opium epidemic
Opium itself is not a strange product, as early as 139 BC, Zhang Qian had already brought back opium when he left the Western Regions, but this kind of thing has been circulating in the upper class and even the royal family to use.
After the Tang Dynasty in 667 AD, there was a clear record of opium imports. Later, in the Book of Kaibao Materia Medica in the Northern Song Dynasty, this plant was officially named poppy, and it was not until the Ming and Qing dynasties that the Dutch introduced a large amount of opium and pipes to China through Taiwan.
Although the Qing Government at that time strictly prohibited the use of opium and even the sale of opium, the Qing government, which was already faint, and the Western merchants who were desperate for profits made opium prohibited endlessly.
Coupled with the large-scale dumping of many Western countries, many Chinese people have purchased opium in private, and there has been a situation that cannot be prohibited and restricted, and opium has been widely spread and known to more people.
Opium in the early years has always been the exclusive use of the royal family or from the upper class to afford, but unfortunately in the case of large-scale cultivation and joint dumping in many Western countries, when many opium from all over the world flowed into the country.
Coupled with the profit-seeking nature of merchants in different countries, they constantly competed for the price of opium, resulting in a crazy decline in the price of opium, and in the later stage, there was a situation in which civilians could also go to the opium house to experience one or two.
But as an addictive drug, as long as you take it once, you will be completely fascinated by them, and eventually countless civilians will spend all their money in exchange for a devastated body and the end of the family wall.
Confusion in policy at the top
In the face of opium, which had begun to flood the whole country, the Qing government was naturally very panicked, after all, the loss of money and wealth caused by these things had seriously affected the collection of taxes by the imperial court.
However, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, ordinary people and even the poor could afford to smoke opium, which was not only a large dumping of many foreign merchants, but also related to a policy of the Qing government at that time. At that time, the Qing government, which still controlled the entire country, in the face of opium, Cixi went from its earlier forbidden attitude to the later discovery that there were huge interests to follow, and finally changed to tacit permission.
So she issued an order and decided to tax opium, which was originally banned, and many people only dared to smoke it privately, while foreign traders could only take the risk of smuggling.
But with the advent of this order, it naturally represents the government's recognition of the act of smoking opium and even selling opium, so opium that has become a legal object naturally began to promote the major traders and even the Chinese people themselves to begin to buy and grow opium in large quantities, so in such a flooded situation, the price of opium fell again, falling to the point that even those poor people who have been farming all their lives can bite their teeth and buy.
Later, there were even many Chinese people who thought that importing opium was too expensive, and they planted their own smoke, and because the price of planting was too low, they were dumped and sold to Western countries by many domestic businessmen in turn. However, Western countries are obviously aware of the harm of drugs, so in the face of the dumping of opium by the Qing government, it is also directly prohibited, and the Qing government is not allowed to sell opium and other drugs to the West.
Although the Qing government saw huge interests in this industry, they obviously did not realize the huge impact of long-term opium consumption on the quality of the people and even the country's economic development. It was the reason why many Chinese people smoked opium at that time, which led to the quality of the people in the next few generations.
In 1936, our country was basically freed from the influence of the Qing government, but in this year more than 140 delegations participated in the Berlin Olympic Games. Except for the pole vault event, which entered the rematch with good results, all other events were eliminated in the qualifiers, which also made many Western countries mercilessly mock China's Olympic results, so that on the way back to China, the Singapore media published a cartoon.
Posted in the comic, under the flag of the Olympic Rings, a group of "Chinese sportsmen" with long pigtails and thin bodies wearing horse coats carried a large duck egg on a stretcher and wrote the east Asian sick man.
After their release, these four words were widely recognized by the Western world and became pejorative nicknames that accompanied China for years or even decades. It can be said that without the fainting policy of the Qing government at that time and the proliferation of opium, it is possible that in this Olympic Games, China may have achieved good results, and even won one or two gold medals.
Fortunately, after unremitting efforts, China has comprehensively improved or even caught up with any previous era in terms of national quality, and has also made China one of the most competitive countries in the world at the Olympic Games, and all kinds of gold medals have also been soft.