As we all know, china in modern times not only has a very humiliating history, but also has a history of the courage of the Chinese people to resist. It is the only way for China to move from backwardness to prosperity and strength, and it is also a historical journey for China to open a new chapter. In modern history, opium has brought great disasters to China, and some people have become obsessed with the so-called "Fushou cream", which has led to the destruction of their families and the separation of their wives and children.
At the same time, the Chinese nation was also devastated by the absurd decadence of the Chinese people, making the land of China almost become a colony of the great powers.
In 1837, in a magazine published in Guangzhou and Macau about China, there was an article that vividly and sadly described the whole process of a rich man who was obsessed with opium from health and wealth to poverty and hardship.
In addition, the article also published many pictures, in turn, a young and rich man, in his palatial home, while a servant came in from outside with opium. The rich man was reclining on the couch with a smoking gun in his mouth and surrounded by several prostitutes, living a good life. Later, as the addiction grew and the opium smoking became longer and longer, the rich man's face gradually became withered, his body was emaciated, and he was drowsy all the time.
Under such physical conditions, the rich man was still addicted to opium. Later, in order to buy opium, the rich man sold his land and property, resulting in a worse and worse health situation. And his wife and children, because of the family road, did not have enough to eat and wear. Finally, after a long period of opium smoking, the man completely destroyed his family property. At this time, he could only barely put together a few copper plates and go to the pipe to find the remaining fragments of tobacco from others to smoke.
This is the epitome of a typical opium addict in China's modern history. If the accompanying drawing of the article continues to be painted, then it should be a picture of this young man's wife, who really cannot stand such a life, and leaves this person with her children. And this person was also too addicted to smoke, resulting in too bad health, and eventually, died of hunger and cold.
Opium, which has humiliated the Chinese nation, is behind the painful memories of the entire Chinese nation and the root cause of China's suffering in modern times.
However, there are always many absurd things in history, for example, in modern China, according to the relevant records of the Xiamen Chronicle, many wealthy families, in order to prevent their children from going out to gamble and cause trouble, do not hesitate to use opium smoke as bait to lure their children to stay at home. However, opium is inherently poisonous and even more harmful, and its discovery and application in the West is much older than in China, and its impact is naturally much greater.
According to relevant historical records, Europe is the homeland of opium, and it is also the place where opium was first cultivated. In the 4000 BC Neolithic house village site excavated in Switzerland, archaeologists have found the remains of the seeds and fruits of "opium", and they belong to the cultivars of artificial hybrid cultivation. By 3400 B.C., the crops had been cultivated on a large scale in the two river basins of present-day Iraq.
By the 19th century, people's concept of opium smoke had not changed, nor was they aware of its harm. At this time, European countries introduced many prohibition laws, but there was no smoking law.
It can be seen that in the minds of Europeans at that time, opium smoke was not as harmful as alcohol.
Until then, opium smoke had not been considered toxic around the world, it was just a pastime like wine and tobacco. In addition, because opium has a certain healing function, some people at that time even thought that opium is beneficial to people.
The review of opium is conducive to a deeper understanding of China's modern history. Throughout the world, opium has been cultivated and used elsewhere for much longer than in China. But none of these countries has caused such a serious problem as China's because of opium smoking. Of course, there are historical reasons for this, and there are also problems with the overall social environment at that time.
Among them, the reason why opium smoke is rampant in China is mainly for two reasons:
First, it has been affected by external factors.
The second is the reason for China itself under the qing government at that time.
The combined effect of these two factors has created the world's largest opium tobacco consumer market.
In the 19th-century Qing Dynasty book Dreamworks Miscellaneous Works, the pain of opium smoking is recorded in this way:
"Addiction, its people are in tears, the hands and siblings can not lift, that is, the white blade is added to the front, the leopard and tiger are forced to the back, and only the head is bowed to death, and can not exercise a little." Therefore, those who have been eating opium for a long time have their shoulders shrugged and shrunken, and their colors were withered and dying, if the sick man first rose. ”
At that time, most of the chinese people's thinking was numb, but there was no shortage of sober people.
For example: Lin Zexu, the hero of the anti-smoking war at that time. Selling cigarettes in Humen is undoubtedly a great pleasure to the people," and it is also a patriotic action that conforms to the will of the people. However, it is ridiculous that a group of bureaucrats at that time were simply stupid, and in the face of the Chinese people and the land of China, which were poisoned by opium smoke, they actually put forward the absurd statement of "opium warfare Chinese", that is, China itself planted opium to resist foreign dumping of opium on China.
However, this move not only did not eliminate the harm caused by opium to China, but also led to the proliferation of opium. Moreover, the Qing government at that time was somewhat incomprehensible in the handling of this matter. The harm of opium to the people and the whole country is obvious, but if opium is completely banned, it will be a big loss for taxation, and if opium is not banned, the whole country may be dragged down.
In the end, the Qing government could only adopt the policy of "open prohibition and secret release" and allow opium to flood.
Until the Republic of China period, this situation did not change, and the subsequent Kuomintang reactionary regime took the ban on smoking as a source of revenue, and even engaged in "prohibiting taxation", "promoting prohibition by levying", and amassing wealth with smoking bans, in addition to the tobacco mu tax and transit tax, it also collected donations from special tobacco houses, smokers turned on the lights and took drugs "license fees", etc. For example, from 1932 to 1935 in Guangxi, the "anti-smoking" tax was the largest tax in the provincial tax.
There is even a song that satirizes:
"I have three acres of land, the government told me to plant tobacco, I planted tobacco, so that I can smoke and donate;
I have one or two silver, the government told me to buy cigarettes, I bought cigarettes, good lamp donation;
I have grown cigarettes and bought cigarettes and smoked, why do I quit smoking? ”
In addition, during the Japanese invasion of China, the Japanese invaders continued to encourage Chinese to grow and smoke opium, and they wanted to completely disarm Chinese from the depths of their souls. However, this situation did not last long, and in the later period of the Japanese occupation period, due to the awakening of the Chinese national consciousness, the resistance to "opium" gradually became successful, and the number of smokers decreased significantly, so the income from the Monopoly of Japanese Opium also decreased.
It was not until after the founding of New China that the people's government made up its mind and adopted all coercive means to eliminate the hidden danger of opium. By the end of 1952, with the exception of Gansu, Sichuan, Xiangxi, Guangxi, and other areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, which had been extended to 1956 and 1957, all inland provinces and cities and hanmin districts in remote provinces had been eradicated from opium.
Until 1960, it was difficult for the whole country to see those addicts, and the devil of opium ended his entire life in Chinese history.
Resources:
["Modern and Contemporary Chinese History", "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", "The Complete Works of Lin Zexu", "One of the Economic Lifelines of the Manchu Qing Dynasty - Opium"]