Opium is the juice of the poppy, a tropical plant that functions to relieve pain and sleep, and was originally an excellent medicine. But since India was introduced to our country, our people have sucked him up as a leisure product, and that is bad.
Opium contains poison and is addictive for a long time; Countless people were anesthetized by him, making them mentally weak, emaciated, and too lazy to do anything. This phenomenon quickly expanded, and there was really a danger of the subjugation of the country and the extinction of the species.
More than ninety years ago, Lin Zexu, the governor of Liangguang, first became aware of the poisoning of opium and strictly prohibited it. He searched out more than 20,000 boxes of opium from the British traffickers and burned them; And they are not allowed to do this kind of business in our country anymore. But the world is the world of power, and there are axioms to be told! The British only knew themselves, and regardless of whether others were dead or alive, they brought many warships to attack our country.
At that time, Lin Zexu insisted on Guangdong and resisted effectively, although they attacked fiercely, they finally had no effect. Unfortunately, the rest of the coastal guards were not used, so that their warships were beaten into the mouth of the Yangtze River and fought all the way to Nanjing. My Government panicked, made peace with the British, and as a result concluded an unequal treaty. In addition to compensating for military expenses, it is also necessary to cede Hong Kong and open up Shanghai and other places as commercial ports. Since then, opium has been sold more unscrupulously in our country.
We mourn the poisoning of opium and commemorate the shame of the "Opium War" even more, and we should rise up to continue Lin Zexu's spirit and shoulder the responsibility for expelling poison on our shoulders.
"Fuxing Chinese Textbook", Volume VIII, Lesson 21, edited by Shen Baiying and Shen Binglian, edited by Wang Yunwu and He Bingsong, Commercial Press, 1933 edition