The photo shows two Qing Dynasty people smoking opium. From modern history, we can know that the demise of the Qing Dynasty and the humiliation of modern times are inseparable from opium. During the qing dynasty's closed country, european capitalist countries rose rapidly. But in foreign trade, China has always been in a trade surplus. In order to reverse the trade deficit with China, Britain began to smuggle drugs and opium into China and reap huge profits from it.
In the picture is a Qing Dynasty man smoking opium, from the picture we can see a man lying on the bed smoking opium, and the man on his second left may be overexcited because of opium smoking. Opium, commonly known as large smoke, originates from the poppy plant capsule fruit, and the main alkaloid contained in it is morphine. The poppy is native to southern Europe and Asia Minor, around the fifth century BC, the Greeks found that the poppy has the effect of calming the spirit, sleeping, analgesia, diarrhea, cough, and forgetfulness, so the Greeks squeezed the juice of the poppy flowers or fruits into medicine and called it "A bian".
In the photo is a woman in the Qinglou who is smoking opium. In the early sixth century AD, the Arabs spread the poppy to Persia, and in the seventh and eighth centuries AD, the poppy was introduced to China as a medicinal herb from India and other places. By the time Zhang Qian sent an envoy to the Western Regions in 139 BC, opium had already spread to China. The famous doctor Hua Tuo of the Three Kingdoms used marijuana and opium as anesthetics; in 667 AD, there were records of opium imports, during the Tang Dynasty, Arabic opium was called "Aphrodisiac", and in the "Kaibao Materia Medica" printed in the Northern Song Dynasty, opium was also named poppy poppy.
During the Ming Dynasty, opium was listed as a "tribute" to the clan as a medicine, and opium was transmitted to the people in the early Qing Dynasty. In 1729, the Yongzheng Emperor ordered a ban on opium, and since then many emperors have always emphasized the prohibition of smoking, but in the end it was not banned. In the nineteenth century, British merchants smuggled opium from India to China to make up for the Sino-British trade deficit, which eventually led to the Opium War. Drug dealers came like flies, and in addition to Britain, the United States also imported opium from Turkey to China, and Russia imported opium from Central Asia to northern China. The picture shows an opium-smoking Manchu nobleman.
As a result of the sharp increase in opium imports, a large outflow of silver was caused. According to statistics, between 1820 and 1840, the outflow of silver from China was about 100 million taels. In 1839, Lin Zexu ordered the public destruction of opium at Humen Beach, which lasted for 23 days until June 25, destroying 19,187 boxes and 2,119 bags of opium, with a total weight of 2376254 kilograms. The sale of cigarettes in Humen curbed the spread of opium in China to a certain extent, and because the anti-smoking campaign directly harmed the interests of the British bourgeoisie, it also accelerated the British aggression against China. The picture shows a woman lying dazed in bed after smoking opium.
The high price of opium, the huge profits, coupled with the fact that it is difficult to quit smoking, the demand is gradually increasing. The British side also continued to expand the number of dumping on China, and by the eve of 1840, it had reached more than 40,000 boxes a year. This caused a sad situation of inflation, countless families were broken, and even wives and daughters were sold in order to survive, which also made the Qing Dynasty government at that time exhausted its financial resources, the national treasury was empty, and it became more shaky. The picture shows Qing Dynasty people living on the streets because they smoked opium, and these addicts are still smoking opium even after their families are destroyed.
In 1840, the British government decided to send an expeditionary force to invade China under the pretext of Lin Zexu's Humen tobacco sales. In June 1840, 47 British ships and 4,000 army personnel, led by Rear Admiral George Yilu and Yi Lu, the commercial supervisor in China, arrived outside the mouth of the Pearl River in Guangdong province, blockaded Haikou, and the Opium War began. The Opium War ended with China's defeat and the cession of land at reparations, and China and Britain signed the Treaty of Nanking, the first unequal treaty in Chinese history.
The photo shows three Qing Dynasty people collecting poppy juice in a poppy field in Sichuan. With the popularity of opium, the price of imported opium was too high, so many profit-seeking merchants began to grow poppies. They would make opium from the poppy juice they collected to suck or sell. For a time, the increase in the number of opium also reduced the price of opium, and more "tobacco houses" appeared on the streets.
The picture shows the Qing Dynasty people who smoked opium in the Qinglou. At that time, opium not only appeared in the green building of the tobacco house, but also appeared in many theater gardens, so that those "distinguished guests" could smoke it at any time. The proliferation of tobacco houses has led to more people suffering from opium persecution. More Chinese have become weaker and weaker because of excessive opium, and they have become the "sick man of East Asia" in the eyes of Westerners.