In 1907 an American magazine writer travelled through China to see the opium trade for himself, from Shanghai’s international settlement, Tientsin and Hong Kong to a poppy-growing province in the interior. Merwin describes the smoking dens, the profits of the British-Indian trade and the imperial edicts by which China was trying to stamp out the habit.
Frankly journalistic and indignant, a vivid record of China’s campaign against opium in the last years of the empire. Download the free EPUB.