Opium and the Origins of Treason in Modern China: The View from Fujian

In early March of 1839, a Chinese opium broker known to his British suppliers as Shik Po was on the lam. The Qing authorities in the region were on high alert, as the entire southeast coast was experiencing the height of the world’s first war on drugs. Shik sought out protection from his British partners, hiding on the Jardine-Matheson opium ship the Lady Hayes while it was anchored in Shenhu Bay, just offshore from his hometown of Yakou village in Jinjiang county, Fujian.1 As Captain John Rees and Shik Po watched from the deck of the Lady Hayes, Qing troops once again descended on the secluded bay, setting fire to boats and houses in the village. Yakou was home to some of the most active and aggressive opium brokers on the coast, and local authorities had repeatedly attacked the village during the late 1830s, burning the infrastructure of the opium trade to the ground, only to see it rebuilt in the morning.