by Robert Wang
Jardine’s opium profits soared, but one final obstacle remained: He was unable to set up his own shop among the factories because that was reserved for those with a license to trade under treaty with China. The East India Company would never allow a fellow Briton to set up shop and compete with them in Canton. Jardine’s break came when another opium trader, Charles Magniac, fell ill and had to return to England. Magniac had managed to get himself appointed consul of Prussia, so he was able to run his shop out of the Canton factories under the Prussian flag. He offered Jardine partnership in the company in exchange for helping the Magniac family transfer their wealth from Canton to London. When Jardine took control of Magniac and Company, it was the beginning of his total dominance of the opium trade.
Jardine’s consistent success earned him a reputation as someone who could be trusted. His work ethic and attention to detail were legendary among the Western opium traders, and the corrupt mandarins could count on him paying their bribes in full and on time. Matheson brought working capital and solid relationships, while Jardine’s experience in the opium trade brought more business than they could handle. The partnership, renamed the Jardine and Matheson Company, became the largest opium trading house in history.
By the late 1820s, there were so many opium ships coming in that opium smugglers had to hide in plain sight, anchoring off the island of Lintin, near Hong Kong. There, they awaited smaller junks to bring the cargo into Canton, a much less conspicuous operation than offloading large shipments directly at the Whampoa. Large floating warehouses that dwarfed the junks were erected at the anchorage so Chinese buyers could inspect the merchandise.
In 1833, Parliament passed the Government of India Act, allowing private companies to trade with the two countries independently. This move was welcomed by all opium smugglers, who could finally buy and sell directly. Jardine returned to England in January 1839 as one of the richest men in Britain. Prior to his departure from Canton, a farewell party was thrown in his honor at the factories. In his farewell speech, Jardine proclaimed that neither he nor anyone else who brought opium to China was a smuggler—the Chinese government and its corrupt officers were the true criminals. The crowd cheered in agreement. Jardine, Matheson, and other smugglers of opium knew what the drug was doing to millions of addicts in China, but they supported each other in denying any responsibility. They were all God-fearing, Christian men, and if the Chinese were a nation of opium smokers, it was no concern of the British.
There was more, much more information than even Higgins could absorb, but the more he learned, the more questions arose about the nature of his cargo, its intended buyers, and the effect it was having on the economy of every nation involved. Everything will be clear when I get to China, he decided.
February 24, 1841
The evening before the attack on Fu-Moon, Captain William Hutcheon Hall of the Nemesis ordered all hands on deck.
“Your attention, men!” He mustered all the energy he had to give his words credence. “We’ve done our best with these blasted yellow monkeys, but they don’t seem to want free trade, and they won’t bloody listen to reason. So we are here to teach these buggers how to conduct trade with Her Majesty’s merchants. We have what they crave, and they have the goods to exchange for it. And the rest is politicking and Eastern bloody-mindedness.” He took a deep breath. “This insult to Her Majesty will not stand! We have superior firepower and the right of the matter on our side, so let’s show these bastards what we’re made of and steam on past their rickety junks and rusted cannon. No need to beat the bloody monkeys down, remember—we represent Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, and we show restraint and mercy where it is fitting. God save the queen!”
The crew of ninety navy men echoed his words at the top of their lungs as they waved their caps. Anchored off the shores of Lintin, near Hong Kong, were twenty ships carrying thousands of cases of high-grade opium waiting to be delivered. The Nemesis was part of the military task force to clear a way through the Pearl River entrance to Canton. Alongside it was an armada of more conventional warships, including Wellesley, Blenheim, and Melville, with seventy-four guns apiece, the forty-four-gun frigate Druid, the forty-two-gun Blonde, and a host of smaller frigates. A few hundred elite Indian sepoys of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment, 3,200 sailors and marines under Captain Sir Le Fleming Senhouse, and another 2,200 soldiers under Sir Hugh Gough would land and make their way to Canton and further inland, with force if necessary, to negotiate a reinstatement of the opium trade.
Captain Hall allowed all hands an extra ration of rum before retiring to his cabin. The minute he closed the door, he dropped to his knees and vomited on the floor, sick with remorse.
“What the bloody hell am I doing?” he said as he swiped a handkerchief across his mouth. “Pushing opium and calling it free trade, blasting our way into a foreign country to shove this filth down their throats whether they want it or not. What kind of empire treats another sovereign power thus?”
Hall was a Royal Navy man through and through. He’d done his training in Glasgow and had made passages across the Irish Sea and up the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. Hall was an educated man, and he had witnessed the devastating effects of opium firsthand when a classmate descended into addiction to an early death. Opium was a common medicine in England at that time, used to treat nausea, pain, and other ailments, but it was no less addictive for being legal.
Bringing the Nemesis to China to back up what he saw as Britain bullying another kingdom into breaking its own laws to satisfy his country’s need for Chinese tea and other products and the profits earned from them caused him deep moral conflict. He considered himself a good Christian and a man of honor, but he was also a career officer in the Royal Navy, and orders were orders. And now he was steaming the Nemesis up a river to make way for an invasion force, all because the Chinese Imperial Court was upholding its ban on the importation of opium and had set up an embargo against all British ships and trade until the illegal opium trade ceased.
“We’ve all gone bloody mad,” Hall muttered. The enormity of Britain’s actions was staggering, but Hall could do nothing. England and the rest of Europe were not going to simply do without Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, and whatever other exotic merchandise was in demand, nor could they afford to pay the true market price for it. The industrial revolution had created the factories and processes that allowed Britain to produce enough of its goods to sell them all over the globe, and China was a prime market. That door to prosperity could not be allowed to close, and Hall knew it. And so he would participate in an invasion force into the interior of one empire to protect the rights of another nation to buy its goods and pay for them with poison.
“England for England,” he said wearily and rang for his steward.
At the time the Nemesis was anchored off Fu-Moon, there were more than fifty opium parlors in Canton alone. Addicts brought their own opium, or bought it on the premises, and they rented a bed where they lay while a server warmed the paste and put it in the bowl of a long pipe, where it vaporized over the heat of an oil lamp and the addict inhaled the smoke until the paste was consumed. Wealthy patrons, like Lee Da Ping, had their own custom-made beds, lamps, and pipes with ornate bowls carved out of jade and decorated with precious stones and metals. They smoked in private rooms instead of the communal areas. These establishments operated openly, without fear of the law, and no one gave a moment’s thought to where the steady stream of opium was coming from or what might happen if it were to suddenly dry up.
General Kwan Tien Pui summoned his vice general, Lo Ping, and his personal steward to his quarters. General Kwan was the commander of the Guangdong Province water force, which protected the area from any threat arriving by sea. Fiercely loyal to his emperor, he despised the civilian leadership that influenced and controlled the budget for China’s military. He had seen firsthand the corruption and incompetence of high-level guans who, under the guise of improving China’s military strength, wasted and squandered precious
resources instead of fulfilling the emperor’s desire to improve the imperial armaments. Just a few years prior, in 1835, General Kwan had requested reinforcements for the defense of Fu-Moon, including forty large cannons. When the cannons were finally delivered after countless delays, ten of them exploded during test firings, killing one soldier and injuring a few more. When the general investigated this incident, he found that the overpriced cannons were made of mostly scrap metal, and the interiors of the barrels were uneven and pitted.
“The enemy will most likely attack at dawn,” he told Lo Ping, “and we must be prepared to hold Fu-Moon, no matter the cost. If we lose it, the foreign devils will march right into Canton.”
He handed his personal steward a carved box containing a thick lock of hair cut from his long, braided queue. “Bring this to my wife tonight, and tell her that I will forever be with her.” The steward bowed wordlessly and disappeared into the night.
Chapter Six
Macau, 1839
“Good! And again.”
“How doo you doo?” Su-Mei said carefully.
“Now say, ‘How is the weather?’”
“How eez da weydaa?”
“Better. Let me hear the alphabet.”
Su-Mei began reciting the strange English figures, which didn’t mean anything on their own and were impossible to remember.
“No, you missed one.”
Su-Mei couldn’t remember when she had felt so alive. During the ten days that she’d spent with Pai Chu, she had picked up quite a lot of English, although it was still difficult to pronounce the words correctly. Su-Mei was very eager to learn enough so that she could actually speak with a foreign devil. She liked everything she had seen about these people’s habits and lifestyle and wanted to learn even more.
Pai Chu had also never felt this way before. She was fascinated by Su-Mei and felt an instant kinship with her. Everything Su-Mei did was intriguing, and every move she made was graceful. Su-Mei was gentle, kind, and so beautiful! Pai Chu would have spent every moment with her if she could. She rushed through her other duties at the convent and counted the minutes until their English lessons, the only time they spent completely alone. Being in Su-Mei’s presence made her feel as if a lamp had been lit in her soul. Heavenly Father, she prayed at night before retiring, thank you for bringing the blessing of Miss Su-Mei into my life as a reflection of your grace and love. If it is your will, please find a way for her to stay with us in Macau a little longer.
Su-Mei finished reciting all twenty-six letters and picked up a thin booklet written in English. She had already started to read and found it easy. Unlike Chinese, reading in English was just looking at the letters and sounding out the words they made, and Su-Mei was very good at spotting English words once she’d learned them and recognizing related words by their groupings of letters. Pai Chu was quite impressed with Su-Mei’s progress—she was beautiful and intelligent.
Her “punishment” was nearly over, and Su-Mei was scrambling to think of ways to extend it. She enjoyed living in the convent and had learned much about the foreign devils’ religion. It made a lot of sense to her that there was only one god and he was the creator of everything and had rules that everyone needed to follow if they wanted to go to a wonderful place after death instead of suffering forever. This god sent his only son to the world to cleanse its sins, but he was executed by the authorities on a wooden cross. Every time she saw the carvings of the god’s son on the cross, she remembered that she’d thought they were second-rate art pieces when she’d first arrived and cringed in embarrassment. But Pai Chu said this god was very forgiving and merciful, so perhaps he didn’t blame her for her ignorance.
On her second Sunday at the convent—the foreign devils had names for each day that corresponded to celestial bodies—Su-Mei went with Pai Chu and Mother Amanda to the cathedral to attend a ritual they called Mass. The beauty and grandeur of the cathedral, after the small, mean rooms of the convent, took her breath away. It had brilliantly tinted stained-glass windows stretching up to the tallest ceiling she had ever seen. At the front were a long altar and a very large crucifix—that was the name of the carving of the god’s son—with intricate, rich decorations all around it.
Su-Mei couldn’t believe how quiet everyone was before the ceremony began. During the Lunar New Year and a few other times a year, her mother took her to a Buddhist temple, so she was accustomed to worshippers bustling back and forth, saying their own prayers and bowing to the statues of the Buddha or to the ancestor shrines. Instead of everyone burning sticks of incense before the altar, as was done in Buddhist temples, a man in white robes carried a large incense burner on a chain and swung it back and forth until the whole enormous space was filled with aromatic smoke. She was profoundly moved by the serenity and tranquility within as the entire group bowed their heads in silence.
But nothing prepared Su-Mei for what she felt when the organ began to play and beautiful harmonies arose from the group of men singing at the front of the temple. Su-Mei did not understand a word the priest was saying; but his voice moved her just the same. When everyone stood up and sang together, Su-Mei’s skin prickled, and she had to blink away tears without knowing why. When she recognized the chorus of the song, she found herself singing along, inspired by the sound and being one voice among many. Su-Mei sneaked a glance at Pai Chu, who was in the front row with the other novices. She too seemed to be moved by the ceremony, her eyes closed and her face bathed in colored light from the windows.
After the song was over, Su-Mei sat on her bench with the rest of the participants. Everyone seemed to be walking up to the altar to receive a blessing from the priest. Pai Chu walked back down the aisle after she’d received hers, and when Su-Mei stood, Pai Chu shook her head in her crisp white headdress. Su-Mei returned to her seat.
Pai Chu stepped out of the line of novices and came to sit next to Su-Mei. She grasped her hand and said, “I noticed you were touched by the Holy Spirit.”
“The what?”
“The Holy Spirit, Su-Mei. There is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is the feeling you get in your heart when you hear Mass.”
Su-Mei digested this. “Why did you shake your head at me just now?”
“Because you are not ready for the sacrament of Holy Communion, Su-Mei. If you choose to join our faith—and I pray every day that you will—then you will learn all about the sacraments.” Pai Chu smiled and gripped her hand even tighter.
Su-Mei knew she had a lot to learn about this religion, but what she was feeling was indescribable and nothing like how she felt in the temple at home, bored out of her mind while the monks chanted in a language that no one really understood, while others came and went as they pleased. Here, at the cathedral, everyone seemed to be connected. There was a sense of community, of togetherness, and everyone seemed to be touched by this Holy Spirit. Su-Mei was intrigued. From what Mother Amanda and Pai Chu had taught her, this foreign god did not have as many rules as Buddhism and Taoism. There were only ten! And there didn’t seem to be anything about obeying your parents even if they wanted to have your feet broken and deformed so you could marry someone they chose for you without asking your opinion. From what she’d learned so far, the main rules were about loving one another and loving this god and his son.
Also, there was nothing about being reincarnated. The foreigners believed that you died and either went to heaven if you had lived a good life or went to a burning place of torment if you had not. Su-Mei had long been convinced that she would return as a cockroach in her next life because she had broken so many of the rules set by Master Sage Kong Fu-tzu, especially regarding obedience and respect for one’s parents. She knew she had not committed any evil acts that would send her to this hell, but she wasn’t sure if she was good enough to enter heaven. After all, she was the daughter of an opium lord.
Whether she knew it or not, Lee Su-Mei, daughter of Lee Shao Lin, was already converting to Christianity in her heart and believing in its
principles. Mother Amanda suspected this was happening because of the questions Su-Mei asked during their daily lecture on faith. She was pleased that another heathen had found God and might spread his word among the other sinners. She also noticed the intimate friendship that had sprung up between Sister Maria and Su-Mei. She had seen it happen before between young women, and they generally grew out of it, but she would watch the two closely just the same, and perhaps remind Sister Maria of the vows she was about to take.
Mother Amanda met them outside the cathedral. “Lady Su-Mei, I have good news. I just received word that your Honorable Father is due to arrive tomorrow for a meeting in Macau, and he will take you back with him to Canton afterward, a few days ahead of schedule. We will miss you here! I hope you take what you have learned home with you.” Mother Amanda smiled meaningfully.
“Oh no!” Su-Mei exclaimed. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow, Lady Su-Mei. Aren’t you happy to return to your honored family?”
“Yes,” Su-Mei lied. “But I want to learn so much more from you and Sister Maria, especially about your god.”
“I am pleased to hear that, my child, but we must return you to your Honorable Father. In time, if it is the Lord’s will, you may return to us, and we can continue our discussions.” Silently, Mother Amanda made a prayer that this would be so and that the seed planted in Su-Mei’s heart would bear fruit.