Hong Kong and Macau_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 14th Edition) - Andrew Stone [6]
These turbulent times saw the birth of the Triads (Click here). Originally founded as patriotic secret societies dedicated to overthrowing the Qing dynasty and restoring the Ming, they would degenerate over the centuries into Hong Kong’s own version of the Mafia. Today’s Triads still recite an oath of allegiance to the Ming, but their loyalty is to the dollar rather than the vanquished Son of Heaven.
More than four generations passed before the population was able to recover to its mid-17th-century level, boosted in part by the influx of the Hakka (Cantonese for ‘guest people’), who moved here in the 18th century and up to the mid-19th century. A few vestiges of their language, songs, folklore and cooking survive, most visibly in the wide-brimmed, black-fringed bamboo hats sported by Hakka women in the New Territories.
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ARRIVAL OF THE OUTER BARBARIANS
For centuries, the Pearl River estuary had been an important trading artery centred on the port of Canton (now Guangzhou). Some of the first foreign traders or ‘outer barbarians’ were Arab traders who entered – and sacked – the settlement as early as the 8th century AD. Guangzhou was 2500km south of Peking, and the Cantonese view that the ‘mountains are high and the emperor is far away’ was not disputed in the imperial capital. The Ming emperors regarded their subjects to the south as no less than witches and sorcerers, their language unintelligible and their culinary predilections downright disgusting. It was therefore fitting that the Cantonese should trade with the ‘outer barbarians’.
Regular trade between China and Europe began in 1557 when Portuguese navigators set up a base in Macau, 65km west of Hong Kong. Dutch traders came in the wake of the Portuguese, followed by the French. British ships appeared as early as 1683 from the East India Company concessions along the coast of India, and by 1711 the company had established offices and warehouses in Guangzhou to trade for tea, silk and porcelain.
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OPIUM & WAR
China did not reciprocate Europe’s voracious demand for its products, for the most part shunning foreign manufactured goods. The foreigners’ ensuing trade deficit was soon reversed, however, after the British discovered a commodity that the Chinese did want: opium.
The British, with a virtually inexhaustible supply of the drug from the poppy fields of India, developed the trade aggressively. Alarmed by the spread of addiction and the silver draining from the country to pay for opium, the Qing emperor issued an edict in 1799 banning the trade of opium in China.
The ban had little effect and the lucrative trade continued. In late 1838 Emperor Dao Guang (r 1820–50) appointed Lin Zexu, governor of Hunan and Hubei and a mandarin of great integrity, to stamp out the opium trade. Upon arrival in Guangzhou, Lin surrounded the British factories in Guangzhou and cut off their food supplies, forcing them to turn over more than 20,000 chests of the drug.
The British chief superintendent of trade, Captain Charles Elliot, suspended all trade with China while he awaited instructions from London. The foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, goaded by prominent Scottish merchants William Jardine and James Matheson, ordered an expeditionary force of 4000 men under Rear Admiral George Elliot (a cousin of Charles) to extract reparations and secure favourable trade arrangements from the Chinese government.
What would become known as the First Opium War (or First Anglo-Chinese War) began in June 1840. British forces besieged Guangzhou before sailing north and occupying or blockading a number of ports along the coast. In August, British forces reached the city of Tianjin, less than 160km away from Beijing. The emperor was forced to send his envoy (and Lin’s successor) Qi Shan to negotiate with the Elliots. In exchange for the British withdrawal from northern China,