Milk of Paradise

by Lucy Inglis

  By the 1720s, the Chinese government had realized it had a problem on its hands, and this coincided with the emergence of the opium dens in Fujian, principally Xiamen and Taiwan. A memo sent to the emperor described the ‘private run inns’ where opium was consumed, a corruption of the traditional teahouse. They were equipped with couches rather than chairs, fruit and sweets were still served, but the behaviour was ‘licentious’ and the ‘sons of good families’ were being lured and corrupted.42 Another account shows that the people of Guangdong were making their own madak by 1728: ‘The opium is heated in a small copper pan until it turns into a very thick paste, which is then mixed with tobacco. When the mixture is dried, it can be used for smoking by means of a bamboo pipe, while palm fibres are added for easier inhalation.’43 For the working-class Chinese who frequented these private houses, smoking madak was much the same as visiting a tavern or a teahouse after work, a social occasion. The pipe, made from bamboo with brass fittings, was passed around, and anyone wishing to lie down for a spell could take to one of the couches. This was in stark contrast to the upper-class male opium smoker, who would retire to his salon for a period of contemplation induced by opium fumes from his bamboo opium pipe with silver fittings, and was not to be disturbed during his ruminations. As with tea, the opium connoisseur could identify the source of the drug, preferring the superior production shipped from Aden or Bengal to that cultivated in Malwa (Punjab) or anything grown in China. As usual, such luxury was an import.

  The working-class lack of civility was at the root of the problem. The century after da Gama had arrived in the East had been marked by a global surge in commerce the kind of which the world had never seen before. The Catholic sailors, followed by the Protestant merchants of Europe, were commanding trade so rapidly and on such a scale that it defied regulation. Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, many railed against this new, seemingly unctuous, way of living beyond the bare necessities of life. Britain, unified in 1707, suffered the Society for the Reformation of Manners in the 1720s, where people were encouraged to inform upon their neighbours and to entrap them into immoral behaviour so that they might be publicly reprimanded. In the eleventh century China had invented a comparable system, baojia, to encourage mutual surveillance throughout the kingdom and thereby reinforce imperial power. It was revived and unified with governance during the Qing period in an attempt to halt this slide into immorality, and at the urging of the mandarins, the Yongzheng Emperor (r.1723–36) passed the eponymous edict of 1729, banning the import of opium.

  The Yongzheng Edict is famously cited as the first moment China stood up to the ruthless commercial barbarians threatening to ruin the country, but in the context of the problem they had at hand, it was little more than a bread-and-circuses gesture for the anti-opium fanatics. Official opium imports had remained low, about 200 chests a year in Xiamen, compared to the amount that was clearly smoked in the south-eastern provinces.44 Only approximately one third of the ships that weighed anchor in the Pearl River Delta and Xiamen were government or company ships; the rest were merchant vessels, arriving from Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, Britain, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden. For Guangdong, and its southernmost region, Bao’an County, the die was cast.

  Captain John Weddell at the Tiger Gate

  ‘The Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders, there is therefore no need to import manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our products.’45

  Emperor Qianlong

  On 27 June 1637, Captain John Weddell and his four ships anchored just south of Macao, ready to open negotiations for the first direct English trade voyage to China. The Portuguese there were trading extensively with Japan, and the atmosphere in Macao was unique: Muslim heritage meant that many women were lightly veiled in the streets, but they also wore bright colours and went about freely. They also wore Japanese kimonos when they were inside their own homes. The Portuguese had been tolerated by the Chinese authorities as they had been effective at keeping the Pearl River free of pirates, which had long been a problem. Robinson and Mountney, two of Weddell’s fellow sailors, were sent up the Pearl River to try and bypass the Portuguese, but were rebuffed by local customs officials who told them that they must apply to the mandarins for the proper papers in order to trade. They returned to Weddell and gave him this answer, and his response was to sail all his ships straight up the Pearl River towards Canton, seventy-five miles to the north-west.

  Travelling with Weddell was Peter Mundy. Originally from Penryn in Cornwall, as a boy he had accompanied his father, a pilchard fisherman, to Rouen, and in 1611 had been put aboard a merchant ship to start his career at sea. In his late twenties he began to travel, first to Constantinople and then on to India, where he went into the pay of the East India Company. A keen diarist, his blow-by-blow account of Weddell’s attempts to begin trading with China on behalf of England provide an almost cinematic vision of how the catastrophe played out.

  One of the problems the English had in trading with the Chinese was that, in Chinese eyes, they looked far too much like the Dutch, of whom the Chinese had formed a poor opinion, and were called ‘red barbarians’. In 1635 an English ship, the London, had called at Macao and the crew identified as Dutch, and the higher Chinese authorities had imposed a fine upon both the mandarins and the Portuguese for trading with them. This united the Chinese and the Portuguese in wanting to be rid of Weddell as soon as possible, and with minimal fuss. And now, he had sailed straight up the Pearl River. Weddell passed two small Chinese junk fleets and reached the Tiger Gate, where he decided to put in and wait to assess the situation. When his men attempted to go ashore and secure some fresh food, they were driven back by the local villagers, who, aware of the fine, wanted no part in helping the red barbarians. Instead of retiring back to the ships and considering his position, Weddell instead put out a bloodied ensign and made preparations for war. Quite what was going through his mind at the time remains a mystery. A messenger was sent, along with an interpreter, to request that Weddell stand down and wait six days, after which his passes would be granted and the tiny fleet would be allowed to go up to Canton. The following day, some of the men went ashore carrying a white flag on a stick before them. This meant nothing to the rural Chinese villagers, who associated white with death and funerals. They at first refused to trade with the English, but then relented, and followed the party of foreigners around as they bought what they wanted and inspected the village.

  Peter Mundy, probably the most well-travelled Englishman of the seventeenth century, was travelling with the fleet on behalf of the EIC, and went ashore out of curiosity. When the villagers offered him refreshment, he took it. ‘The people there gave us a certain Drinke called Chaa, which is only water with a kind of herb boyled in itt. It must bee Dranke warme and is accompted wholesome.’46

  Cha passed from there into the Indian languages, and is now usually written as chai, but apart from Mundy’s early reference, Pepys knew the same drink as tea. This is because English merchants found themselves dealing largely with the merchants of Fukien province, where the same drink was known as teh.47

  Weddell, meanwhile, waited out his six days quietly, and when the messenger returned to ask for another four, promptly discharged his guns upon the fort at Tiger Gate. The fort fired back, but as the English ships were so close, and they lacked the ability to aim at that angle, most of the balls rolled harmlessly out of the cannons’ mouths into the grass. Only one shot connected with Weddell’s ship, and none of the others suffered any damage. The soldiers from the fort promptly fled, and Weddell and his men went into the fort, took the bits of it they needed for repairs, some useful artillery, and went back to the ships.

  When a messenger arrived again, and offered to take representatives to the commodore further upriver, Robinson and Mountney set out, bearing gifts. The commodore, suspecting that the English could offer a lucrative proposition, did not turn down their request for
trading rights, but didn’t grant it either. A Chinese intermediary who called himself Paolo Norette, but claimed to hate the Catholic Portuguese, acted as translator between the English party and the Chinese officials. Norette was what the Portuguese called a comprador, an agent who understood Chinese language and customs, and had a wide circle of local acquaintances harnessed to business acumen and specialist commodity knowledge. The compradors had become invaluable to trade in Canton, Macao and the south China coast; finding the right one was crucial. Mundy identified Norette’s fluid role as a comprador succinctly when he described their new factor as ‘a Mandareen who formerlie had bene a servant and broker in Mocao, whoe being abused by the Portingalls fled to Cantan’.48

  The English petition, in which Weddell and company assured Norette ‘wee were English men and Came to seeke a trade with them in a faire way of merchandizinge’, was hastily drawn up by the nearest Chinese calligrapher and handed over to the commodore.49 Presented by the commodore to his superior, the marine superintendent immediately rejected it and ordered the English ships back out to sea, on pain of death: ‘you have shown great daring by attempting to trade by force with us, we having forbidden it; and in doing so you appear to me to be like puppies and goats who have no learning and no reason’.50

  Norette, returning to the English ships with this response, translated this to Weddell as the marine superintendent having granted Weddell’s request to trade and to establish a trading fort in the river mouth. He requested that three of the English party accompany him to Canton, and that Weddell return the guns he had taken from the fort at Tiger Gate.

  Weddell, well pleased, began busily trading in sugar. The locals, seeing the business being transacted by the Englishmen on the banks of the Pearl River, reported to the marine superintendent, who sent three junks downriver, armed and impressive, to try and dissuade him. But Weddell was feeling confident – his translator had, after all, told him that he was permitted to carry out his trade. He responded to the official warning to desist with a curt reply: ‘We have no leisure, at present, to answer your vulgar letters at more length.’51 In the middle of the night of 9–10 September, the watch saw three small, darkened junks approaching, and when they were within range, let off a warning shot. The junks were crammed with fireworks, supposed to go off when they bumped into the English ships. Instead, they were now blazing yards away in the Pearl River, but drifting downstream towards the fleet. Weddell managed to manoeuvre his ships out of the way, but when dawn broke and they saw the burnt-out junks, they realized how close they had come to disaster. Peter Mundy recorded how worried they were about their men up in Canton. Robinson and his men had been seized and locked in an empty house without food, and Norette severely and publicly beaten. Norette had, of course, betrayed them. He became so notorious as a double-dealer that letters of warning reached London merchants and King Charles I less than a year later.

  Weddell set about raiding local villages in revenge, and destroying the fort at the Tiger Gate. Then he withdrew to mountainous Lintin Island, populated mainly by goats, and wrote the captain-general of Macao a blistering letter about the treatment he and his men had received from Canton. At Macao, it took another three months for the Portuguese and Chinese alliance to drive Weddell out, but finally, on 27 December, they were hounded onto their ships ‘by Fire and Sword’ and left, as Peter Mundy recorded. Of the main group, the resourceful Mundy was the only one to make it back to England. Robinson died on Madagascar, and Weddell disappeared somewhere in the Arabian Sea after leaving Cannanore in India. It was assumed his ship was lost with all hands. Thus ended England’s first attempt at trading directly with the Chinese merchants of Canton.

  The Beginnings of Hong Kong and the Rise of Canton

  Hong Kong island was originally one of many hilly islands just outside the Pearl River Delta. The good natural harbours and fresh water supplies of the islands were known to Western sailors from the early sixteenth century onwards. There were around twenty small villages and hamlets on the nearby coastline, with others living on houseboats.52 Labourers came and went with the seasons, but the main industries were fishing, pearls, quarrying, and harvesting the Aquilaria sinensis tree for incense. Incense was an important part of Chinese funerary rites, as the semi-preserved bodies of family members were sometimes kept in the home for up to two years. This was the main trade until the coastal evacuation of 1662–9, which devastated the area economically.53 Aquilaria grew on the barren, hilly landscapes where nothing else would, and was in high demand throughout first China, then further afield. The scent arising from the water-driven incense mills, grinding the dried Aquilaria into powder for joss, or good-luck sticks, led to the fishermen living in the hamlets calling one particular bay ‘Hong Kong’, the ‘fragrant harbour’, and its related settlement Hong Kong Village.

  Twice during China’s long history, the south-east and the South China Sea coastal regions have backed the wrong side in dynastic wrangles. The first time, while harbouring the Southern Song from the Mongols, they benefitted from a significant economic boost, not only in domestic but in international trade, as the imperial refugees brought with them a more sophisticated infrastructure than the primitive fishing culture already in place. The second time they supported a losing dynasty was a disaster for the area.

  The Manchurian Shunzhi Emperor came to the throne of the new Qing dynasty in Beijing in 1644. The Southern Ming Emperor and the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong still opposed Manchurian rule and Zheng had been a particularly troublesome agitator, bringing 100,000–170,000 men out of Fujian to fight against the Manchus. Fighting styles were particularly important, as the vastness of China meant military skills and preferences for fighting differed widely across the nation: the Manchus were Mongols and therefore had developed a strong cavalry base, whereas the Southern Ming of Zheng Chenggong fought on foot, and owing to a dense population, could ship in more soldiers by water to Zhejiang and Jiangsu as they needed them. Zheng retreated to Taiwan to consider his next move.

  The Shunzhi Emperor died, and was replaced by the six-year-old Kangxi Emperor (r.1662–1722), whose regent, Oboi, fearing Zheng’s ability to bring troops in by water, ordered the clearing of the coastal regions from Shandong to Fujian and south to Guangdong, so that there would be no support for Zheng should he try to return that way. This measure was understandable in the light of the new infant king on the throne, whose regents needed to impose stable rule, but the severity of the southern coastal clearances changed the economic and ethnic landscape of Guangdong forever. For the fisherman and tenant farmers of San On county, which included the island of Hong Kong, the evacuation meant they were relegated to living on the edge of the clearance zone, inland and homeless in an inhospitable landscape. Many of those without family in the interior died from starvation. The production of incense ceased, and Hong Kong was a fragrant harbour only in the memory of the exiled fishermen.

  By the 1680s, the edict had been revoked and people had returned to the coast, and Hong Kong was inhabited once again. The first groups to arrive were poor, the peasant farmers and fishermen who had previously eked out a living there. The workforce was not large enough to be productive, so the government tried to induce migration by offering benefits to those willing to move there. A large number of China’s migrant or Hakka people responded, including the two Zhu brothers. The new arrivals, euphemistically termed ‘guest people’ in Chinese, quickly found that, as poor as the island was, it was exposed to Japanese, Chinese and international pirates alike, so one brother took several families to settle in the safer environment of Kowloon Bay, and the other brother took families to Shek Pai Wan, or what is now known as Aberdeen Bay. There, upon a hill, they built a walled compound that became Hong Kong Village, and took in women of the shuishang ren, the Tanka water-people, to help them get established. The wall was still standing in 1957.

  For a long time, Hong Kong continued as a poor, scrappy settlement made up of seven villages, exposed to the bandits of the sea,
and looking on somewhat forlornly as the huge cargo ships of international companies and the yachts of the privateers sailed straight past them on the way from Macao to Canton. The friendly bays and good water meant that storm-damaged ships would put in for running repairs, but business was done elsewhere. And business was brisk: the eighteenth-century sea trade in Canton set the scene for trade between the British and the Chinese for the next two centuries. After Taiwan was captured in 1683, in 1684 the Kangxi Emperor issued an edict ordering ‘I command you to go abroad and trade to show the populous and affluent nature of our rule. By imperial decree I open the seas to trade.’54 Canton was decided upon as the funnel for trade. So, as Chinese ships rushed out towards Manila and Japan in their hundreds, European ships rushed up the Pearl River. In 1685, the people of Edo (now Tokyo), aware that they were almost mined out, issued an edict banning export of all precious metals from Japan. Canton was suddenly dependent entirely upon trade from Indonesia and the West. All along the Pearl River Delta, tiny settlements sprang up to service the incoming ships, called bankshalls, a corruption of bank-stalls, run by what the English called ‘Sampan-Sams’, taken from the little three-plank sampan supply boats the Chinese owners punted up and down the coast. For European sailors who had spent months aboard ship surviving on salt beef, pork, beans, chickpeas and ship’s biscuit, the sampans formed convenient floating markets of fresh fruit and vegetables, and even live pigs, goats and wild duck, as well as medicines and women. Bigger bankshalls were run by compradors, and provided more official services. All of them were known as the Cantonese by the Europeans. These compradors were particularly useful in dealing with on-board deaths, which were a common occurrence, as Europeans could not be buried in mainland China. The bodies of European traders from Macao were returned there, but those without ties were taken to Dane’s Island, now known as Changzhou, or French Island, now known as Xiaoguwei. These islands belonged to neither the Danes nor the French, but the merchant ships of both nations camped out on them to perform repairs and gather themselves before arriving in Canton proper. Whampoa Island, halfway between Macao and Canton, was a convenient staging post for the largest bankshall depots and served as an administrative halfway house.