Colonial area remains long after wars

During a visit to South China's Guangdong province earlier this month to report on the relevance of the 19th century opium wars in modern China, I spent part of a morning in Shamian, where I saw mostly tourists, joggers, female "square dancers" and elderly people gather.

The area in the provincial capital, Guangzhou, was built as a Western concession in the 1860s after the ruling Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) lost for a second time in wars with Britain, which Chinese historians say were fought over colonial expansion in Asia and the Qing resistance to the opium trade by agents of the erstwhile British East India Company.

British, French and some other Western businesses had set up their factories in the Thirteen Hongs enclave on the banks of the Pearl River in Guangzhou during Qing times.

The settlement was burned down during the conflict, a plaque informs visitors, which is why, in 1859, Britain and France got the governor of Canton (presentday Guangdong) to lease Shamian to them. It wasn't until 1946 that the Chinese government retook possession of the area.

A Cantonese-speaking colleague and I approached some elderly men who were chatting among themselves to ask what they thought of the architecture.

"Beautiful - and it has a long history," said one, but he added that the buildings with large rooms and spaces between houses are impractical in the context of China's large population.

"I think it is a waste of space."

Shamian is a cultural complex that's been under government protection since 1996. Its early Chinese residents were civil servants whose children have moved out to other parts of Guangzhou.

Some of the buildings are as old as 150 years, another elderly man from the group told us.

"You can tell their age also from the trees that were planted by foreigners at the time," he said.

The buildings housed consulates from more than 10 countries and dozens of foreign banks in recent decades.

There are at least two primary schools and the resident offices of three provincial governments in Shamian now.

But commercial activity seems to be limited to a handful of cafes and hotels, unlike former concessions in the eastern metropolis of Shanghai.

There was a time when China's "opium dens" were so famous that they appeared in popular culture elsewhere. The Blue Lotus from The Adventures of Tintin series, by the Belgian author and illustrator Herge, for instance, has the protagonist reporter being told by a key character in the 1930s comic book about a secret society in China called Sons of the Dragon that was fighting opium smuggling.

British merchants "dumped" opium on the Chinese market to make up for the trade deficit Britain faced during the Qing rule, according to museum exhibits about the wars and foreign trade in Guangdong. China was then selling tea, porcelain and silk to Britain.

By many accounts, millions became addicted to the intoxicant in China in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Unrelated, the vibrant poppy flowers from which opium is made have been the subject of paintings by European masters such as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh.

Contact the writer at satarupa@chinadaily.com.cn