China has a long history and has gone through countless changes of dynasties before it came into being today. Before the beginning of modern history, the Qing Dynasty, as the last dynasty, was spurned by the vast majority of the Chinese people, and since the late Qing Dynasty, our country has signed a series of unequal treaties with foreign Western powers, which have put the entire country and people in deep danger.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager Cixi controlled the power, and when other countries were improving their national strength, Cixi felt that our country was already very good, so she ordered to close the country.
Since then, our country has stagnated and has lagged far behind many countries. By the time the Western powers reach out to us, it will be too late. At that time, China had become a big fat piece of meat, and in 1840 the Opium War broke out, and the Western powers occupied our land and oppressed the people. The Qing government was in internal and external difficulties, and even a group of people called "indentured Chinese laborers" appeared.
1. People return to "slavery" and sign "piglet paper"
After the Opium War, the Qing government was weak and incompetent, and the people were struggling to make a living. In order to survive, people have to choose to go overseas to survive. But it is not easy for ordinary people to go abroad, and there are two ways. The first is that several people go abroad together, one of them bears all the expenses, and the rest of the written documents will be repaid with labor in the future, which is to put it bluntly, "pressing the debt", and the rest of the people who want to go abroad can only go to be "indentured Chinese laborers".
In the late Qing Dynasty, Chinese generally chose the Americas and Southeast Asia to go abroad, and in the middle of the 19th century, the United States and Canada were vigorously developing in the direction of gold mines, railways, and Nanyang, and manpower was also in short supply, so these countries looked at China at this time.
Under the pressure of Western invaders, the Qing government signed a large number of unequal treaties, one of which was that Western countries could recruit labor in our southeast coastal areas. When foreign companies find laborers, they will sign contracts with them with harsh conditions, and if they sign them, they cannot regret signing them, in fact, they are selling themselves, they call this kind of contract "piglet paper", and the Chinese who sign the contract are called "indentured Chinese workers", or "selling piglets".
At that time, the contract was an excuse for foreigners, and the Chinese were completely resigned to it when they actually arrived in a foreign country. China has also set up a number of special "pig sales" institutions to deceive those bankrupt Chinese, telling them that Nanyang has a lot of room for development in case they can get rich.
It doesn't sound like the word "indentured Chinese laborers" is not bad, but in the eyes of the Western powers, "indentured Chinese laborers" are equivalent to tools that use low-cost labor and extract value, and most Chinese are miserable and full of blood after the past. Many "piglets" go abroad, because of long-term oppression and exploitation, they either die of illness, or they are tired to death, and they can't come back after death.
Second, the environment is extremely harsh, and the youngest "pig flower" is only 5 years old
In 1854, the fourth year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty, the 19-year-old Cixi was promoted to the title of "Yi Concubine". A few years later, the prince she gave birth to became the emperor, and she naturally became the queen mother and began a 47-year reign, which was the thunderous Empress Dowager Cixi. In the same year, a British steamer "Inglewood" came to the Xiamen area of the mainland, and the humiliating history of hundreds of thousands of "pig flowers" began.
When the ship left China, 47 Chinese girls were huddled in a cabin about 2.7 meters long and 1.8 meters wide on this ship, the oldest being only 8 years old and the youngest only 5 years old. In this cramped cabin, the stench was terrible, and the floor was littered with the excrement and vomit of the young girls. In order to prevent the smell from escaping, the foreign traffickers also sealed all the crevices in the cabin.
In this extremely hostile space, the girl was covered with scabies, abscesses, and fleas. The girls' eyes were full of helplessness and fear, and some had died on the ship before they could be transported abroad, but this was probably the best choice compared to the girls who survived. Those who survived and were transported abroad did not see the light of day for an unknown period of time.
The word "flower" in the Cantonese dialect mostly refers to women who work in special industries. The woman who served the guests in the opium parlor was called "fireworks", and the "flower sister" was called a prostitute. Foreigners call the girl in the cabin "Pig Flower", which has a strong derogatory and discriminatory connotation. In their opinion, when these women go abroad, they are engaged in special industries.
When the first "pig flowers" were first sold, they were all privately traded, and naturally the scale was also very small. After the Second Opium War, the Qing Dynasty and the Western colonizers signed the "Beijing Treaty" that lost its sovereignty and humiliated the motherland, which contained a "recruitment clause". After that, the sale of "pig flowers" was legalized and expanded, and the lives of young Chinese girls entered darkness.
3. Sold overseas, the tragic life of "pig flowers" and "piglets".
Men who go overseas are generally called "piglets", and women are called "pig flowers". Whether it is a "piglet" or a "pig flower", the fate is not much better, most of them are tied up and abducted by people, and a very few are sold by themselves voluntarily or by their parents. Some of the women who are shipped overseas will be used as commodities by traffickers and marked with a price for people to buy, and if no one wants to buy them, the fate will be miserable, but even if they are bought, those buyers will not treat them well, and they are cruel to the extreme.
In order to make the "piglets" work well for foreigners, foreigners will also sell part of the "pig flowers" to the "piglets" as wives. This is not out of human considerations, but a means to control the "piglets". Some foreigners see that the price of "pig flowers" is more expensive than "piglets", and in order to make money, they go to rob people openly, and many men and women also die.
Many women who have come to foreign countries do not live long, and most of them die before they reach adulthood. Some women can't stand the shame, but they can't escape, so they choose to commit suicide. Although Cixi saw this kind of presumptuous behavior of foreigners, she would pretend not to see it and let those foreigners behave indiscriminately.
According to records, in the late Qing Dynasty, the number of "pig flowers" abducted by human traffickers reached hundreds of thousands, and the number of suicides for this purpose was also very large. At this time, the history of humiliation of the Qing Dynasty, few people would study such a cruel past, because as long as the thought of what those young children went through, it makes my heart ache.
The rulers of the late Qing Dynasty also wanted to delete such records, and there are few records in China. On the other hand, in Japan, "The Woman Who Was Trafficked Overseas --- Pig Flower" clearly records the tragic story of "Pig Flower", and there are photos of the time in museums in some foreign countries. The reason why foreigners can bully China so much is because the Qing government was timid and afraid of things and had no ability to protect its own people, so it was inevitable that it would eventually perish.
Remember history, don't forget the national shame! The existence of "pig flowers" and "pig boys" is not only a sad song for hundreds of thousands of innocent girls, but also an eternal pain for the Chinese nation. Therefore, we who live in peace should study harder.
This national catastrophe should let every Chinese know that the "Chinese Labor Contract" should also be compiled into textbooks, which is more worthy of being remembered than any form of political rhetoric, China and the Chinese people in the old era have gone through too many hardships, and now that our country has risen, history will not repeat itself!