In the eighteenth year of Daoguang (1838), Lin Zexu presented a letter to the hands of the Daoguang Emperor, in which Lin Zexu showed that opium seriously damaged the health of the people, and if he could not help it, the country would be poor and weak.
On November 15, 1838, the Daoguang Emperor officially appointed Lin Zexu as the minister of Qincha and went to Guangdong to ban opium.
After arriving in Guangzhou, Lin Zexu immediately took action, united with the governors of the two Cantons, strengthened coastal defenses, and informed foreign merchants to surrender all their opium within three days, while detaining suspicious British merchant ships and seizing large quantities of opium.
After a resolute struggle, Lin Zexu successfully defeated the British commercial superintendent in China and the opium traffickers, and on May 18, 1839, nearly 20,000 boxes of opium were confiscated, and finally the opium reached the equivalent of 2,376,254 pounds.
After all the opium was submitted, Lin Zexu gave a fold to the Daoguang Emperor, and after the Daoguang Emperor saw it, Long Yan was very happy and said: "More than 20,000 boxes have been handed over, it is really a great pleasure and a great relief!" ”
All the opium was handed over, but what to do with the opium next?
According to Lin Zexu's initial expectation, the confiscated opium was to be transported back to the capital, but when Lin Zexu asked the Daoguang Emperor to deal with these opies, the Daoguang Emperor's reply was that it could be destroyed directly on the spot without being transported back to the capital.
The Daoguang Emperor also made this decision very thoughtfully, after all, from Guangzhou to the capital, the road is far away, it is difficult to ensure that there is no fork in the road, instead of this, it is better to destroy it on the spot.
After Lin Zexu received Daoguang's will, he began to think about destroying opium on the spot, but for the way to destroy opium, he fell into deep thought, how to destroy it?
As early as a few months ago, Lin Zexu mixed a small part of the confiscated opium with tung oil and burned it on fire, but the results were very unsatisfactory, because people who were very addicted to smoking at that time could still scoop up the residue of the leaked opium from the burned opium soil, and some opium smokers dug up the soil at the burning site and then boiled out one-tenth of the opium.
In order to avoid future troubles, this time, Lin Zexu decided not to use fire to burn opium, after all, if you continue to use fire to destroy more than two million catties of opium, it is very incomplete.
Since the burning method did not work, Lin Zexu heard that opium was most afraid of lime and salt brine, and he finally came up with a way to dig a pool by the sea to soak opium, and then put salt and lime to stir and destroy opium on a large scale.
Therefore, Lin Zexu arranged migrant workers to take advantage of the natural advantages of the Humen coast to dig two large square pools with a length and width of more than 15 zhang on the beach heights of Humen Zhenkou Village, spread stone slabs at the bottom of the pool, sprinkle layers of thick lime on the bottom of the pool, open a ditch behind the pool to divert water into the pool, and a culvert in front to excrete opium residue into the sea.
On the morning of June 3, 1839, Lin Zexu led Guangdong officials to sell cigarettes for the first time on Humen Beach, throwing each piece of opium into the tobacco pool to soak for a period of time, and then pouring lime to incinerate.
In this way, the scraps of opium could not be smoked anyway, and then Lin Zexu ordered people to open the pool, let the sea water wash away everything in the pool, and wash the pool with clean water without leaving a trace.
The process of selling cigarettes was very slow, and after more than 20 days of intense work, until June 25, 2,376,254 pounds of opium were destroyed under the supervision of Lin Zexu.
Lin Zexu's sale of cigarettes to a certain extent curbed the spread of opium in China, and people also had a clearer understanding of the dangers of opium, and Lin Zexu was also revered as a national hero.
However, a year after Humen sold cigarettes, the situation began to deteriorate.
However, Humen's move to sell tobacco seriously affected the interests of British imperialism in China, so they launched the Opium War in May 1840 and marched north to Tianjin.
At this time, all kinds of frames, blows and accusations fell on Lin Zexu's head one after another, and the Daoguang Emperor was incompetent, and in order to curry favor with the British, he was dismissed on the pretext of Lin Zexu's incompetence, and sent Qishan to Guangzhou to surrender to the British.
On July 14, 1841, Lin Zexu was sent to Ili, Xinjiang, and on the way there, he was still worried about the fate of the Qing dynasty, and when he said goodbye to his children and wives, he wrote a poem that read, "If you live and die for a country, you will avoid it because of misfortune." This is not only the expression of his patriotic feelings, but also the portrayal of his noble personality.