Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction

Funny how things come along. No sooner had I posted the shots yesterday of an opium raid in Shanghai in 1925 than I read in The New Yorker (June 25th 2012 edition) about Steve Martin who both has a massive collection of opium paraphernalia that sounds fascinating but was also a serious opium addict in Thailand hooked on 30 to 40 pipes a day. And now he’s apparently written a book on the subject, Opium Fiend – haven’t read it as it’s not out till the end of June – but thought it interesting enough to post.

A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world’s oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery.

A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu. But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction—from quitting cold turkey to taking “the cure” at a Buddhist monastery in the Thai countryside.

At once a powerful personal story and a fascinating historical survey, Opium Fiend brims with anecdotes and lore surrounding the drug that some have called the methamphetamine of the nineteenth-century. It recalls the heyday of opium smoking in the United States and Europe and takes us inside the befogged opium dens of China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. The drug’s beguiling effects are described in vivid detail—as are the excruciating pains of withdrawal—and there are intoxicating tales of pipes shared with an eclectic collection of opium aficionados, from Dutch dilettantes to hard-core addicts to world-weary foreign correspondents.

A compelling tale of one man’s transformation from respected scholar to hapless drug slave, Opium Fiend puts us under opium’s spell alongside its protagonist, allowing contemporary readers to experience anew the insidious allure of a diabolical vice that the world has all but forgotten.

A 1925 Opium Raid in Shanghai

Came across this silent newsreel from Kinograms: The Visual News of all the World. It’s from 1925 and includes footage of the Shanghai Municipal Police and the Shanghai Chinese police busting some opium den and then displaying the seized opium before burning it in special kilns.

Shanghai Police march out of the barracks to go bust an opium den…

Seized bundles of dope…

And into the kiln it goes to be burnt and destroyed…

Talking of Escaping from Hong Kong…

…as well as the title of Tim Luard’s new book, Escape From Hong Kong, on the exploits of Admiral Can Chek in WW2 (see previous plugs for his recent China events on this site), it was also the title of a pretty atrocious 1942 C-movie (or whatever is lower than a B-movie?) starring the mostly forgotten Leo Carillo, Andy Devine, Marjorie Lord, Frank Puglia and Chester Gan. OK, so it was all for the war effort with American vaudeville entertainers in Hong Kong for Pearl Habor. “JAPS TAKE COVER… when 3 American sharpshooters play rat-a-tat-tat on their skulls! “ wasn’t much of a tagline for the movie either but given that Pearl Harbor was December 1941 and the movie came out in May 1942 that’s not bad going!!

Excuse to stick the old poster up anyway…not an overly great attempt to artistically recreate the Hong Kong waterfront I have to say

And I’m going to stick my aviation ignorant neck out here too – those Jap planes bombing Hong Kong don’t look like the “light bombers” the Japanese used to bomb Hong Kong (I think) but rather British Lancaster’s (judging by the tails – but which anyway had four and not two engines). and it can’t be a Lancaster bombing a Jap ship because they didn’t have Lancaster’s in Hong Kong – right? But what do I know? Plane spotters feel free to ridicule me and my amateurish guesses!! (pics below anyway).

According to IMDB Tim Luard’s Escape from Hong Kong is in development – and would make a good film for a bit of Anglo-HK collaboration. I hope they use the same title.

Japanese light bombers with reconnaissance aircraft over Hong Kong…

A British Lancaster with its distinctive tail

London – A Queer Orientalism: Sex, Power and Cultural Difference in the ‘Memoirs’ of Sir Edmund Backhouse – 20th June

I know from previous posts on the recent new edition of Decadence Mandchoue that a lot of you like old Sir Edmund Backhouse so this event at Birkbeck College in London may be of interest…

Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

A Queer Orientalism: Sex, Power and Cultural Difference in the ‘Memoirs’ of Sir Edmund Backhouse
20th  June 6pm – 8pm Room B06 Birkbeck Main Building
Speaker: Morris Kaplan (BIH Visiting Fellow)
“A Queer Orientalism” traces the intersections among sex, power and cultural difference in the memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse. Born in 1873, Backhouse lived in China from 1898 until his death in 1944; he co-authored two important, controversial studies of Chinese politics during and after the Boxer Rebellion. His two book-length manuscripts, “The Dead Past” and “Manchu Decadence,” tell the story of erotic and political adventures in fin du siecle Europe and in Beijing during the last decade of the Manchu dynasty. He places himself near the center of the court of the Dowager Empress during the years 1989-1908 and claims extensive interaction with her and with her most important advisors. Backhouse is virulently anti-British and positions himself as an anti-imperialist. Very learned in Chinese history and culture, he attempts to appropriate an indigenous tradition of same-sex love while holding onto a certain erotic privilege as a “foreign devil”. More fantasy than history, Backhouse’s “memoirs” display vicissitudes of desire and cultural interaction in a distinctively queer and oriental(ist) context.

First come first served – no registration.
Co-sponsored by BiGS

Julia Eisner, Manager

Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities
Birkbeck Institute for Social Research
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HX

T:  (0) 20 7631 6612

E:  j.eisner@bbk.ac.uk

“The Marvellous Chinese Conjurer” Chung Ling Soo in 1915

A while back in 2010 I posted a few times on the then famous magician Chung Ling Soo and recommended Jim Steinmeyer’s biography of him too. The interesting thing about Chung Ling Soo is that he was one of the most famous magicians of his day – originally an American called Bill Robinson he became Chung Ling Soo and passed himself of as Chinese, complete with robes, pigtail and interpreter (gibberish to English!) and made a mint doing magic tricks. All went well till 1918 when, at the Wood Green Empire, he did his famous bullet catching trick (complete with Boxer storyline and effects), it went wrong and he was shot dead on stage! Robinson went to great lengths not to be revealed as a white man, though it was known among the magician and music hall fraternities it was not widely known by his audience. He was so convincing to many (who probably had not, to be fair, had a lot of contact with Chinese people) that one woman who became infatuated with him rejected him as uninteresting when he appeared to her as a white guy in a suit!

Anyway, Chung Ling Soo is seen in posters and advertising ephemera from his shows – all highly stylised – and there are some photos but only one tiny bit of newsreel footage. It shows Robinson/Chung in London welcoming back heroes of the trenches from the war in 1915 and performing a benefit concert for them. It’s only 15 seconds long and on Youtube. I’ve screengrabbed a couple of stills below so you can decide for yourself whether he was convincing or not…

China Visual Festival – London – June 22-July 6

If you’re in London and find the concept of all sport utterly dreary (as you should) then this visual festival related to China might be of interest. You never know with these things of course but the idea of looking at “aftershock” of the Olympics and what the notions of “speed” in China might have done to bulldozer. However, the Shanghai 1930s version of Sweet Charity (scroll down to the bottom) sounds interesting…

Rise in Chinois Splendour at Marshall & Snelgrove’s

I popped into the Museum of London the other day – hadn’t been since school!! It’s still a great museum and the new recreation of a Pleasure Garden is superb. Anyway, of course it’s the China-related stuff that catches my eye. Lovely to see they have a a Chinese styled panel that once adorned the sumptuous left (elevator to those who must) at the Marshall and Snelgrove department store in the 1930s. Marshal and Snelgrove (the original M&S!!) was on Oxford Street and the panel remained until 1974. It’s available as a greeting card by the way. No details of the artist though I’m afraid.

RAS Suzhou – 17th June – Escaping Under Enemy Gunfire without Your Wooden Leg is the Pits

Sunday, June 17, 2012

2pm

Suzhou Bookworm

The one-legged Admiral Chan Chak left behind his wooden leg when he had to swim for his life in a barrage of gunfire to escape the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong on Christmas 1941. He and sixty British companions made their way overland across enemy lines in China’s interior to eventual freedom. Tim Luard relates this unbelievable trek in his Suzhou Bookworm talk about his book, “Escape from Hong Kong: Admiral Chan Chak’s Christmas Day Dash, 1941”.

Tim Luard graduated in Chinese at Edinburgh University in 1973 and spent the next seven years in Hong Kong, working as a freelance journalist.  Highlights of his 23-year career at the BBC included covering the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square during a two-year stint as Beijing Correspondent for the World Service and making a 6-part radio series on the history of Hong Kong to mark the handover.

Tim and his wife Alison — whose father Colin McEwan was a member of Admiral Chan’s party — retraced the escapers’ 80-mile route to Huizhou on foot in 2009 and put together an exhibition on the escape which is showing till the end of 2012 at the Hong Kong Coastal Defense Museum.

At the Suzhou Bookworm: tell your taxi driver the intersection of Wu Que Qiao and Shi Quan Jie.

Or, take the subway to the Lindun Lu stop in downtown Suzhou and take a 10 minute ride by pedicab or five-minute taxi ride to the Bookworm. It’s a fifteen minute walk due south from the Lindun Lu subway station: Gongyuan Lu (across from the old Sofitel Hotel – now Marco Polo), cross Shi Zi Jie to Wu Que Qiao. The Bookworm will be on your left at the intersection of Wu Que Qiao and Shi Quan Jie.

30 rmb for students; 50 rmb for members; 90 rmb for non-members. Includes one glass of wine or beer. For more information or membership applications, contact Bill Dodson at bdodson88@gmail.com.