The Opium Lord's Daughter

by Robert Wang

  Higgins tried to imagine a land where everyone was besotted from smoking opium. “They just lie around and smoke it all day? Lawfully?”

  “Not at all, lad, it ain’t, but the bureaucrats are so bloody corrupt we can do anything if we pay off the right Chinamen bosses.”

  Higgins scratched his head. “But we’re breaking Chinese law, then?” He changed the direction of his questions. “So we buy the opium cheap in India, is that it?”

  “Aye, it’s bloody brilliant! No better place to grow the stuff than India. Comes from poppies, did ye know? The East India Company has a monopoly, which means no one else can sell it. So we look the other way while English merchants buy the opium and transport it to China on their ships, pass it by corrupt Chinese customs men, and sell it to Chinese dealers, who peddle it all over China. The Chinese dealers pay the merchants in silver, and they use it to purchase tea and fancy goods.” McNeil paused. “Bloody pathetic—so many of the monkeys are smoking it that Mr. Jardine can’t keep up. He’s got to build more ships and hire more young lads like you to sail ’em. And thanks to the East India Company, not one other country can get a part of the business. God save the king!” McNeil lifted his mug.

  “But, sir, how long can this last?” Higgins wondered.

  “As long as Mr. Jardine has ships and His Majesty has India,” said McNeil. “Can you imagine giving up tea—or paying a hundred times as much for it?”

  Higgins was still curious. “And what’s it like, opium? Why are so many Chinamen smoking it? And how much are we shipping, do you reckon?”

  “Damn me, but you ask a lot of questions, lad!” McNeil drained his ale and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. “From what I hear, it takes away all a man’s pains. Makes life slip by like floating on a cloud. And I expect most of those yellow buggers have plenty of misery to smoke away, kowtowing to the rich man, carrying burdens on their backs like bloody donkeys. And once they get a taste for it, there’s no stopping ’em. Which is good for business, eh?” McNeil paused. “As to how much are we shipping, fellow who keeps the books for Mr. Jardine told me it’s more than a thousand tons a year. A thousand tons!” He shook his head in wonder. “Can you even imagine?”

  Higgins set sail on the Red Rover as second assistant to the navigator, excited to begin his career as a world traveler. As soon as his ship docked and he was given leave, Higgins set off to explore Bombay. The people in their outlandish clothing, the smell—and taste!—of the food cooking in street stalls, the jasmine incense drifting over market tables of vegetables and spices, the doe-eyed women—it was all new to Higgins and everything he had hoped for. His penmanship had improved considerably, but he had never lost his habit of taking notes, and he recorded everything with care each night before he dropped into his bunk. The other sailors mocked him good-naturedly for it, calling him Shakespeare, but when there was any debate to be settled, they began calling on Higgins as an authority on many topics.

  The East India Company was everywhere Higgins looked. It had its own militia of 250,000 men, he learned, and the company appeared to be in control of everything. It had received its royal charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1600, twelve years after England defeated the Spanish Armada. English merchants saw great opportunities for trade in the East Indies after the Spanish ceded control, and the East India Company was one of the first to take advantage of the freshly opened markets.

  Higgins watched wagon after wagon arrive at the docks, each packed full of opium chests. Indians and Persians working for the East India Company conducted auctions of the opium out in the open like any other commodity, and the bidding was brisk.

  Before the Red Rover sailed for China, Higgins spent an evening at the officers’ club to try to learn a little more from the old Asia hands. Immediately he noticed a senior East India man holding court; when the conversation turned to China, Higgins sauntered over and offered to stand a round. He was wholeheartedly welcomed by the more experienced officers.

  Higgins listened intently for a while, and when there was a lull in the conversation, he spoke up. “So why is it so easy to sell opium to the Chinese if it’s illegal there?”

  “Well, that’s a question that will take some time to answer,” the older man replied in a lilting Indian accent.

  “I’ve got all night, sir, and I’d love to learn about China before I get there,” Higgins said eagerly.

  “Then allow me to introduce myself before I begin. My name is Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. I was born and raised here in Bombay, but my parents are from Persia. I traded opium and cotton for the East India Company for several years before taking a position with the Jardine and Matheson Company. Now, you could say, I am a principal trader of opium for the company. Anything you wish to learn about the China trade, I will enjoy sharing with you, young man.”

  “Travers Higgins, sir, second assistant to the navigator on the Red Rover. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir!” Higgins could hardly believe his luck.

  “So to answer your question of why is it so easy to sell opium in China,” Jejeebhoy continued, “it’s because the Chinese make it easy.” He laughed out loud. “Those in charge are so corrupt that you can buy your way into anything. They have all these bloody rules and imperial edicts about the opium, but not a one is enforced with any consistency. Every customs officer is in someone’s pocket, all the way to the top brass—what we call the mandarins—in the capital. The profit is so high, and the amount of opium is endless, so there’s more than enough bribery money to go around.”

  “These mandarins,” said Higgins, “who are they?”

  “They are government officials,” Jejeebhoy replied. “One begins by sitting an exam at the provincial level. The smart lads who pass the provincial exam then travel to Peking to sit for the imperial palace exams. Those who pass the imperial palace exams are awarded a high rank, and they act as judges and magistrates. We call them mandarins, but they call themselves guans, which simply means high officials.”

  Higgins was puzzled. “Why do we call them mandarins, sir, and not guans?”

  Jejeebhoy gave Higgins a look that the younger man had become accustomed to seeing on the faces of his masters and superior officers. But instead of cutting off the endless stream of questions, he smiled. “Mandarim is a Portuguese word. They were among the first Europeans to trade with China, long before we got there, you know, and ‘mandarin’ is what we’ve always called the upper-crust Chinese officials.”

  Higgins was puzzled. “So these mandarins run the country?”

  “Not exactly. China is ruled by an emperor, anointed by the heavens and treated like a god himself, and the guans answer to him. He has the last word on everything, but,” he paused for effect and winked, “the emperor only knows what his advisors tell him, and those advisors, who are the highest-ranking guans, are more concerned with saving their own skins and fortunes.” Jejeebhoy paused, then added, “And the guans have their very own hierarchy. A level one guan is as high as it goes, and the power diminishes all the way down to a level nine, a rank with very little power attached to it. Anyone with enough money and a well-connected friend or two can buy a low-ranking guan title and the respect and social position that come with it.” He smiled at the look of astonishment on Higgins’s face. “Imagine if one could be a Member of Parliament without being elected or having any experience whatsoever. And something else, nearly every guan will do favors for money—it’s a part of the ruddy culture.” Jejeebhoy smiled. “Now I think you are beginning to understand the China trade, young man.”

  “Traders with opium bribe the right man and make pots of money so they can bribe even more guans to bring in even more opium?”

  Jejeebhoy nodded. “And the guans are collecting bribes from the opium traders and from the Chinese merchants who are selling the stuff to their own people, many of whom would sell everything they own to keep their pipes full. So yes,” he nodded wisely, “highly illegal, my boy, thoroughly prohibited, as you can see.”

 
Higgins went to bed that night with his head whirling, and not only from the strong whiskey. Jejeebhoy’s information kept him up for hours, and he wrote everything he could remember in his notebook. The Parsi had given him some valuable background about the East India Company as well. It represented half the world’s trade in silk, indigo dye, tea, and porcelain as well as opium, which it sold almost exclusively in China.

  In the seven years since Travers Higgins sailed from London, he rose to the rank of first officer and chief navigator in Jardine and Matheson’s private fleet of opium-smuggling ships. He was a skilled navigator, and he never lost his ravenous curiosity about foreign parts. In 1837, His Majesty King William IV died, and his niece, Victoria, succeeded him. The opium trade, already at 1,200 tons in 1838, continued to expand, with no end in sight.

  Chapter Three

  Canton, 1839

  Just as his father had planned, Da Ping was kept busy with tutors and visits from the sons of other noble families. It wasn’t long before he began to believe in his own importance, with so many people treating him like a prince. In less than a year, Da Ping’s ego became so inflated that he began to test this power over others that his father and tutors told him he possessed, but deep inside, he felt insecure and convinced that he would never be able to handle the responsibilities his father spoke of. He wanted only to spend his days playing and enjoying the luxuries his father’s wealth provided. He had been coddled and pampered from birth as Number One Son, and he saw no reason why that should change.

  Su-Mei began to lose touch with Da Ping as he was swept into this world of privilege and fawning sycophants, which was also her father’s plan. She was seventeen now, a woman of marriageable age, and her family was abandoning her. “Why?” she said to herself, holding back tears. “Because I didn’t want to have my feet bound and I don’t want to marry someone my parents choose for me?”

  Contrary to the teachings of Master Sage Kong Fu-tzu, Su-Mei openly defied her parents and refused to be shown to a matchmaker representing another noble family. This family bore a heavy debt that Shao Lin promised he would repay if their only son would marry his daughter. He was getting desperate because Su-Mei was approaching eighteen years old, and soon she would be too old to marry anyone, let alone a nobleman. Even Da Ping was angry at his sister over this refusal; the potential husband happened to be part of Da Ping’s entourage, a young man who flattered him constantly—as instructed by his father—and Da Ping thought he’d make a perfect brother-in-law. He tried to persuade Su-Mei to at least meet the matchmaker.

  Su-Mei’s response was quick and terse. Da Ping was no longer on her side, and he had already changed into someone she no longer knew or could talk to. Their relationship was reduced to polite exchanges in public, much to the approval of their father.

  To drive an even bigger wedge between his children, Shao Lin devised a clever plan to separate them physically. One morning, after breakfast and before his first meeting of the day, he summoned his daughter to his study.

  “Su-Mei, I will give you one more chance. Will you meet with the matchmaker who may be able to join you to a noble family—at significant cost to me, which is the only way I can manage to attract a husband for such a defiant and ugly-footed daughter? And will you be civil and act like a proper, dutiful young lady?”

  Su-Mei shook her head vehemently. “No, Honorable Father, I won’t marry someone who is indebted to you and needs your money.”

  “Other fathers would have you whipped for your insolence and force you to marry anyway,” snapped Shao Lin. “But I have another punishment in mind—I am taking you with me to Macau.”

  Su-Mei was shocked into silence. Her father had never taken her anywhere.

  “My interpreter, Father Afonso of Sao Lourenco, tells me of a boardinghouse for young ladies who refuse to marry. As punishment, they are forced to study all day long in small, bare rooms.” Something must have been lost in translation for Shao Lin to interpret a convent as a place to punish young ladies who refused to marry, but it sounded like just the thing for his wayward daughter. It will straighten out this little fool and keep her from getting in the way of her brother’s development into manhood, he thought. Fifteen days there with those foreign devils and their strange habits, and she’ll come back begging for us to find her a husband!

  Su-Mei listened to her father drone on about filial respect, about honor and reputation, the teachings of Master Sage Kong Fu-tzu, and how spending time in solitary confinement without the luxuries she was accustomed to would be the proper punishment for refusing to meet the matchmaker. She did not want to argue and cause a greater rift between them, so she bowed her head and accepted this severe punishment of spending half a month away from home in a quiet room on her own. In her heart, however, she was elated. It sounded like a welcome holiday from her nagging parents, the puerile boys who followed her brother around like pet ducks, and a future as Number One Wife to some man whose family owed her father a debt.

  Macau was a Portuguese settlement on the western side of the Pearl River, a day’s travel by riverboat from Canton. Portugal had leased the land from China in 1557 for a trading post, and because the Portuguese envoys managed their relationship with the Imperial Court with great respect and humility, the Portuguese were granted numerous concessions not afforded to other foreigners. They were able to bring their own religion and culture to Macau without Chinese interference, which made life there a very pleasant experience for Western visitors and residents. And Portugal’s singular entry into the lucrative China trade by way of Macau became the envy of all Europe.

  The Dutch, always eager to jump into international trading alliances, also wanted to establish a foothold in China. They hoped to take Macau for themselves. Holland had established a trading post in Japan at Hirado Nagasaki, but it couldn’t compete with Portugal—no other nation could get so close to China. Holland had a superior military and decided it would try to take Macau from Portugal. It attacked in 1601, 1603, and 1607 but failed every time. The Chinese didn’t take sides in these conflicts and watched with amusement as these European powers tussled over a pocket of land.

  In October 1622 the Dutch invaded Macau with a force that drastically outnumbered Portuguese defenses. Macau was doomed to fall. The invasion force had landed and was marching toward the center of town when a Portuguese priest by the name of Giacomo Rho fired a cannon that hit a wagon filled with barrels of gunpowder in the middle of the invading troops, killing many soldiers. The invasion failed as a result, and the Portuguese considered their victory an act of divine intervention. They held on to Macau for another three hundred years.

  Many opium smugglers owned lavish homes in Macau. It was their preferred port of call to enjoy European culture in Asia while they waited for the winds that would send them back to England in the fall, their ships loaded to the gunwales with highly sought after Chinese products after the busy summer trading season.

  Lee Shao Lin had kept his children within the family compound their entire lives, rarely allowing them to go into town, where they might see opium addicts, foreign devils, and common merchants. They grew up sheltered from the world outside until their father determined it was in their—or his—best interests to learn more about it. Su-Mei had never even seen a Western person before. She boarded a luxurious riverboat with her father a few days later on her first journey out of Canton. Competing with her fears about staying in a strange place where she knew no one was profound relief that she would not have to hear a single lecture about filial duty from her father for fifteen days.

  Lee Shao Lin and his entourage were greeted by Father Afonso when they disembarked in Macau.

  “Welcome to Macau, Lord Mandarin Da-Guan. Your thousand-gold little daughter is beautiful,” he said in flawless Chinese. He noticed with surprise that his patron’s daughter had unbound feet peeking out from below her fine clothes. “Shall we begin our journey to the convent?”

  Su-Mei stared in awe through the curtains of her sedan
chair as she passed through the busy streets of Macau. She was stunned by the sights and sounds: foreign devils walking around, wearing long swords at their waist and strange headgear, with brightly colored uniforms that made them look even more peculiar. She saw foreign men and women walking side by side, sometimes even touching each other or speaking in public. The men protected the women from carts rumbling past and mud in the streets, as if they were precious. The foreign women strode rapidly in their strange, billowing clothing, with their heads held high—there was nothing wrong with their feet. “I must learn the ways of these foreign devils,” she said to herself. “They have traveled a long way to come here, but why? Why would women want to go on a ship to come all the way to our Celestial Kingdom? How gigantic their ships are!” The docked British ships she’d spotted in the harbor in Canton and Macau had looked very different from the familiar wooden junks.

  The entourage of sedan chairs arrived at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, not far from St. Paul’s, a beautiful church that had recently burned to the ground; only the façade remained standing. Shao Lin was surprised that there was no welcoming party to greet them. Don’t these foreign devils know who I am? he thought, irritated. Instead, a lone foreign woman, absurdly tall and wearing a bulky black robe with a very large headdress, emerged from what he supposed was their temple. She made her way slowly to the sedan chairs and spoke with Father Afonso. Shao Lin didn’t recognize the language, but he knew it wasn’t English.

  The strange woman walked over to Shao Lin and in passable Chinese said, “Welcome to our convent and orphanage. I am called Mother Amanda. Women only are allowed within, so please have your female servants bring your daughter’s belongings inside.” She smiled briefly. “May I be introduced to your thousand-gold daughter?”

  Shao Lin tried not to laugh out loud at this strange woman who spoke with such a thick accent and looked directly into his eyes as she addressed him. He called brusquely for Su-Mei.