Opium Fiend

by Steven Martin

  There were other unpleasant side effects as well. Because it was difficult to gauge one’s optimum dosage, all but the most regular smokers of the opium and tobacco mixture would have become nauseous every time they tried it. Smoke too much and toxic shock caused the body to involuntarily vomit, the smoker retching for hours even though there was no opium in the stomach to expel. Burning opium also changed its chemical makeup, destroying certain alkaloids that made opium intoxication pleasurable. So neither of these early methods of ingesting opium, eating nor burning, was suitable if opium was to be used recreationally as a thrill to the senses.

  The innovations that would give opium users a sophisticated and pleasurable high wouldn’t happen until the eighteenth century, when some nameless Chinese craftsman, whose creativity seems to have been surpassed only by his anonymity, came up with a design for a true opium pipe—an instrument whose purpose was not to burn opium but to vaporize it. In the West, this was known as “opium smoking,” but the term is actually a misnomer since vapor, not smoke, is produced. Opium vaporizes at a relatively low temperature, which allows heat-sensitive alkaloids to survive and that, in turn, makes for a superior high. This is why confirmed opium smokers would never consider “smoking” the drug in any apparatus other than a true opium pipe.

  The new and improved opium pipe’s vaporization process took place in its unique “pipe bowl.” Nothing about its shape suggested a traditional bowl in which tobacco is deposited before being burned and inhaled. The typical opium pipe bowl looked more like a doorknob, with one tiny hole on its topside and a much larger hole on its bottom. This bottom hole had a metal fitting around it (the “collar”) that attached to a second metal fitting (the “saddle”), which was permanently fixed to the pipe stem. This design allowed for the pipe bowl to be affixed to the pipe stem in an airtight manner, and it was easily detachable so the interior of the bowl could be periodically cleaned. If the opium pipe was not completely airtight, vaporization could not happen. The pipe stem was about two feet long, because a flame (the opium lamp) was needed to heat the opium for vaporization, and a long pipe stem allowed the smoker to stay a comfortable distance from the lamp.

  This diagram of an opium smoker illustrates how the opium pipe’s unusual design facilitated the vaporization process. Based on a drawing from Opium des fumeurs, published by the Archives de Médecine Navale et Coloniale, Paris, 1890.

  The opium lamp was a simple oil-fueled burner upon whose squat, ventilated base sat a glass chimney designed to funnel heat upward. Vegetable oil was used instead of kerosene or alcohol because it produced a low-temperature flame that did not destroy those all-important alkaloids. In China, camellia oil was said to be the best for opium lamps. In Southeast Asia, coconut oil was the obvious choice, and after opium smoking was introduced to America, peanut oil became the preferred fuel for opium lamps there.

  Once a dose of opium was prepared—the drug having been cooked, rolled into shape, and attached to the pipe bowl—the smoker then held the primed bowl just above the lamp while in a reclining position. This is the reason opium smokers are always seen lying down in old photographs. Their position had less to do with opium making them drowsy—although after many pipes it definitely did—and more to the fact that reclining was the best position for the smoker to comfortably hold the pipe steady over the lamp while monitoring the opium as it vaporized. The smoking process was delicate and took some concentration, and was all but impossible to do for long periods unless lying on a horizontal surface. That surface was often just a floor covered by a mat or carpet, but sometimes it was a wooden “bed” built specifically for the purpose of opium smoking.

  I know nothing about physics, but the thing that impresses me most about the opium pipe and lamp is that they are a simple solution to a complex problem—how to efficiently get heat-sensitive opium alkaloids into human lungs where they can pass into the bloodstream and create almost instantaneous pleasure. Somebody in China was taking opium intoxication very seriously during the eighteenth century when this type of pipe was invented.

  Some historians believe that these novel developments were a result of a tobacco ban enacted by Chinese officials. Having been recently introduced to China from the New World, tobacco was seen as a greater evil than opium. Whatever its inspiration, this new pipe design opened the door for opium to become a national sensation among China’s artistic and elite classes. As the drug’s popularity increased, the smoking experience improved. The Chinese learned to refine opium especially for the newly invented pipes by boiling it, filtering it, and allowing it to age. The result was chandu, a potent form of opium made specifically for vaporizing.

  During the early nineteenth century, the vanguard of Chinese society—artists, poets, and even the attendant eunuchs of the imperial palace—were inspired enough by their fondness for opium smoking to fashion a new lifestyle around it. Later, respected scions of the elite such as nobles, scholars, and mandarins lent their sense of taste and sophistication to create rites and procedures for this novel pastime.

  Despite opium having been known to some of the most inventive and trendsetting cultures of the ancient world—Egypt, Greece, Persia, and India immediately come to mind—it was in China and later Vietnam that the paraphernalia of opium smoking saw dizzying innovation in both design and artistry. Pipes, lamps, and other tools made specifically for vaporizing opium were crafted from the finest materials—ivory, jade, porcelain, rare hardwoods coated with lustrous lacquers, and precious metals encrusted with valuable stones. In some circles, the ritual of opium smoking became as elaborate as that of tea drinking—not the stylized and formal pantomime of a Japanese tea ceremony, but the spontaneous and convivial version that is uniquely Chinese.

  A casual opium smoker might become a committed addict after using the drug over a period of several months or years. Not all who smoked became addicts, but heightened availability made opium’s pleasures difficult to resist. Among upper-class Chinese smokers, young men who were not yet financially stable were discouraged from taking up the pipe. It was, however, socially acceptable for older men and women of sufficient wealth to indulge on a frequent and regular basis—and these were the smokers most likely to spend lavish amounts on their paraphernalia in order to please themselves and impress their smoking friends.

  A retired merchant might have an opulently appointed private smoking room in a quiet part of his house. The truly wealthy might have two different smoking rooms, one for the summer months and another for the winter, in order to take advantage of the seasonal changes in sunlight and temperature that could subtly affect the opium-smoking experience. The smoking room might be outfitted with lavish trappings, including an opium bed of intricately carved hardwood, enclosed on three sides to create a cozy atmosphere.

  In his book Travels in China (1855), the French missionary Abbé Huc described what he saw firsthand:

  At mansions of the rich there is usually found fitted up for accommodation of friends, a private boudoir, richly ceiled, and garnished with superb adornments, such as art only can achieve and wealth procure; and here rich paintings, with choice scraps from Confucius, adorn the walls, and carvings in ivory with other articles of vitù, grace the tables. Here also provided in chief the gilded opium-pipe with all its appurtenances; and here host and guests, unrestrained by curious eyes, deliver themselves up without concern to the inebriating chandoo and its beatific transports.

  After the Chinese invented the vaporization process, a simplified version of the Chinese opium pipe went west along some of the same trade routes that had originally brought opium to China with the Arabs. In other words, the Arabs brought opium to China, but the Chinese taught the Arabs how best to enjoy it. This probably happened during the nineteenth century, and to this day a localized version of the Chinese opium pipe is clandestinely used to vaporize and inhale opium in some countries of the Middle East. Instead of using an oil lamp as a heating source, Middle Eastern smokers used a glowing piece of charcoal held wi
th a pair of metal tongs, a method that to me seems wasteful, but perhaps in regions where there was an abundance of raw opium this was not an issue. Because they did not use an opium lamp, Middle Eastern smokers were able to indulge sitting upright—there was no need to recline in order to monitor the pipe’s distance from the flame.

  Understanding opium’s effects on its users is key to understanding its popularity in China and other parts of Asia. High-quality opium ingested in small quantities was conducive to both mental and physical work. Candidates for official positions smoked opium before they sat for the imperial exams. Merchants conducted business while smoking opium, agreements being sealed with some leisurely draws on the pipe. Opium thus served much the same function in social situations as did alcohol, but with an important difference. The symptoms of moderate opium intoxication were difficult to detect. Unlike drinkers of alcohol, experienced smokers could easily hide any evidence of their indulgence. There was no reckless casting off of social inhibitions that could sometimes lead to embarrassment. Opium also lacked any kind of hangover.

  Chinese and other Asian cultures value self-control, order, and decorum. For many of China’s elite, opium was the perfect drug. By the early nineteenth century, opium smoking was already an integral part of Qing dynasty high culture—a rare treat for those whose could afford it.

  Then along came the British. Tea is what they were after, and China had plenty of it, but the Chinese would take only silver in trade. Such was the insatiable British thirst for the caffeinated joys of tea that London’s silver reserves were rapidly depleted. The British scrambled to find some item that the Chinese lacked, but it seemed there was little demand in China for any of Britain’s manufactured goods. To Chinese eyes, Britain’s exports were crude and shoddy—British woolens looked barbaric when compared to Chinese silks. Some European-made goods such as timepieces became status symbols in China, but few could afford such luxuries. Britain combed her colonies in search of something that might suitably excite Chinese cravings equal to the British demand for tea. In time, opium was hit upon.

  From her Indian colony, Britain oversaw the cultivation of the opium poppy and the harvest of its medicinal sap with an efficiency that ensured raw opium from Bengal and Bihar was consistently of the finest quality and purity. Patna, especially, was considered to produce the Château d’Yquem of opium. Balls of the raw narcotic were packed in mango wood crates and shipped to ports along the south China coast. Chinese brokers and merchants then processed the raw opium into chandu and repackaged and sold it under such brands as Fook Lung (Abundant Luck) and Lai Yuen (Source of Beauty).

  British India’s opium was well received in China and proved to be so popular that the British could demand payment in silver—thus turning the tables on the Chinese tea monopoly. American traders tried to get in on the act by importing opium to China from Turkey—and some New England families prospered as a result—but Turkish opium was considered inferior to that of British India by China’s discriminating smokers.

  When Chinese officials became aware that the flow of silver had reversed, they attempted to stop the opium trade by force, not once but twice. Both Opium Wars—the first of which ended in 1842 and the second in 1860—were disastrous for China. Not only was China outgunned by the British, but many port cities such as Canton, complicit in the lucrative opium trade, were invested in seeing China defeated so that the flow of opium would continue unrestricted.

  Postcard made from a portrait depicting “opium smoking” posed in a studio in China circa 1910. Although not depicting actual smoking, images like this are historically important for the paraphernalia on display. (From the author’s collection)

  What Britain gained, besides the right to openly trade opium with Chinese wholesalers, was a rocky, barely inhabited island near the mouth of the Pearl River, 110 miles southeast of Canton. This island became the British colony of Hong Kong. Over time, this shimmering jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown prospered while China grew ever more addicted, corrupt, and ungovernable.

  To this day, China and many Chinese around the world view opium as a dastardly British trick that kept their country poor and backward long after the British opium trade had ceased. This lingering taste in Chinese mouths—as bitter as a lump of opium melting on the tongue—seems to have kept them from saving any record of opium’s cultural importance for posterity. Apart from endless retellings of historic episodes that show China as a victim heroically struggling to throw off the foreign narcotic plague, there is no hint in the official version of Chinese history of opium’s important place in the social life of the imperial past; no mention of the hundreds of tons of opium that were being cultivated in the Szechwan and Yunnan provinces by the mid-nineteenth century. In fact, some historians surmise that by the 1880s, China was growing two times more opium than it imported.

  If ever there was any great Chinese language tome on the art of opium smoking, it no longer exists—at least I have been unable to uncover any evidence of one. Surely this was the main reason I was having such difficulty finding reliable information about antique opium pipes. Any such work written in China during the height of the drug’s popularity would have been banned and then destroyed by the end of the Cultural Revolution.

  With all this official Chinese historical revisionism in mind, I can’t help but wonder, What if? Had the Chinese not perfected the art of opium vaporization and thus vastly improved the quality of opium intoxication (which, in turn, increased demand for the drug), would the historic British opium trade ever have happened?

  Of course there’s no way to know the answer to this question, but one fact is certain: Whereas before the Opium Wars the narcotic sap of Papaver somniferum was a rare cerebral delicacy whose devotees ranked among China’s wealthy and privileged, the British victory suddenly made opium available to nearly everyone. Even the lowliest rickshaw puller could now afford a cheap, adulterated form of the drug. This caused an epidemic of addiction that, in China with its teeming millions, was obvious even to visiting foreign observers.

  Christian missionaries targeting China for conversion found in opium a ruthless demon as shocking as foot binding and female infanticide. By writing books and articles and giving public talks aimed at Westerners, particularly North Americans and Britons, the missionaries helped generate the public outrage that eventually gave rise to a global, American-led movement to halt the opium trade and prohibit opium smoking in nearly every country worldwide.

  But the commercially shrewd British and their lopsided Opium War victories also inspired another movement—a short-lived one that has been all but completely forgotten, and this was the rise of skilled Chinese craftsmen who began producing tools for a diverse and fast-growing market. It was during this time, roughly from 1850 to 1910, that Chinese artisans created opium-smoking paraphernalia of previously unseen artistry.

  Because of opium’s relatively new and semi-outlaw status, the adornment of opium paraphernalia did not have to conform to the strict and proper parameters that were based on ancient Chinese art forms. Much latitude was given to the craftsman, and, just as important, to the patron for whom a piece was being made. Adornment on an opium pipe could be custom-made to the whims of an individual smoker.

  Traditional Chinese art is often stylized and repetitive. Apprentices copied their masters so closely from generation to generation that, to the layman’s eye, the decorative motifs seem barely to differ from one dynasty to the next. The adornment of opium paraphernalia, on the other hand, was like visual jazz: It didn’t conform to rigid convention and so comes across as spontaneous, festive, and fresh. In fact, artisans so broke from tradition when making opium paraphernalia that contemporary experts of Chinese art often mistake their works for provincial art created in Southeast Asia by ethnic Chinese who had no formal training in the arts of the mother country.

  In my opinion, the crafting of opium-smoking accoutrements reached its apex in what is now Vietnam. There the craftsmen—many of them ethnic Chinese�
�were exposed to European decorative motifs brought over with the French who began colonizing Indochina in the 1860s. The artisans of Vietnam preferred silver over the hard, nickel-like alloy called paktong that was the Chinese material of choice for metal parts and fittings on opium pipes and lamps. The Chinese liked paktong for its durability, and the alloy was also used to make scholarly objects such as containers for calligraphic ink.

  Silver is softer than paktong, and its malleability enabled Vietnamese artisans to use both repoussé and chased work techniques, hammering out ornamentation in the minutest detail. Their designs sometimes dispensed with Chinese convention altogether, replacing it with realistic Art Nouveau depictions of flora and fauna. But more popular was a harmonious combination of Chinese and European art. An example of this cross-culturalization is an obscure mammal whose image was probably imported from France and first applied to Vietnamese opium paraphernalia. The dormouse is a nocturnal rodent similar to the squirrel, fond of eating grapes by night and sleeping the day away in the shade of grapevines. The French phrase “Dormir comme un loir” (“Sleeping like a dormouse”) implies a delicious, unhurried slumber. Thus, the dormouse on a cluster of grapes became a common European motif on opium pipes that were otherwise Chinese in adornment—a tiny image of the rodent curled up under the pipe bowl in celestial slumber, behooving the owner of the pipe to do the very same.

  But Vietnam’s most remarkable contribution to opium smoking was a unique style of lamp, and those who are able to view a lighted one are in for a visual treat. The Vietnamese love for dragons as a decorative motif is often evident, as these auspicious beasts writhe up the sides of the lamp’s base and oil reservoir. Muscles bulge beneath scaly hides, wickedly hooked claws shred clouds, and gaping maws expose needle-sharp teeth and serpentine tongues. The dragon’s legs sometimes form the base of the lamp, supporting a crystal chimney etched with bamboo stalks and leaves—giving the effect that the dragon is poised to burst forth from a glowing jungle lair.