under British supervision, they made the British give up all their stockpiles of the drug—20,283 chests in all—each chest containing forty balls of opium, each ball composed of three pounds of the refined opium extract, wrapped in heavy coverings of poppy leaves. 3 The Chinese forced this surrender by blockading the foreigners in the thirteen factories on the Canton waterfront, cutting off all river contact with the outside world. Chinese troops lined the streets behind the factories, placed guards in the esplanade, and stationed three cordons of boats on the river, all the way from the Creek to the Danish hong. Every Chinese servant and cook, linguist and comprador, coolie and water carrier—some eight hundred men in all—was ordered to leave his job with the foreigners, or be beheaded. A great silence fell over the normally lively area, as the isolated Western men tried to clean their rooms and sweep the floors, fill their own lamps with oil, polish their silverware, wash their plates, and cook in whatever way they could their stockpiled food, their diet determined by their skills: boiled eggs and potatoes, toasted bread, and rice. 4 As for the opium, the Chinese officials spent days disposing of it, mixing it in pots with lime and—after first apologizing to the spirits of the waters—flushing it out to sea. When all the opium was handed over, the British were allowed to leave Canton, and most other foreigners did the same.
But British merchants were affronted, London roused. A fleet and troops were sent, Chinese forts and ships destroyed, treaties agreed at gunpoint, only to be broken, the factories reoccupied by British traders and again abandoned in the face of Chinese rage, and fears of massacre. By May of 1841 the shifting tides of war had sent Chinese crowds surging through the abandoned foreign factories, gutting all that lay between Hog Lane and the Creek, smashing or stealing the mirrors, chandeliers, and marble statues, the weather vanes and clocks, and burning what remained. 5 Yet at the self-same moment the war, for the first time in China's history, brings British troops to the hills above Canton's walls— not now as isolated strollers or viewers of the fire, but fully armed and uniformed, backed by armored vessels in the river.
The British fleet—led by the British ironclad steamboat Nemesis —sinks over seventy Chinese junks and fireboats, and their guns raze much of the waterfront that has not already been fired by the Chinese themselves. British and Indian sepoy troops, in a daring amphibious maneuver, land from the river north of Canton, march around the city, and seize from the rear the four mountain forts that were meant to guard the city from all assaults. In a triumphant gesture of disdain, the British sailors cut the queues of hair off their Chinese captives, and take the clothes of several. Thus bedecked, in Mandarin robes, Chinese hats on heads, and dangling down their backs the severed queues of jet-black hair, they receive the plaudits of their countrymen. 6
As negotiations on the city's fate continue through sweltering days in May, British and Indian troops patrol the area of Sanyuanli, north of their encampment, on the road that leads to Hua county. There are incidents, clashes: troops march across the paddies full of ripening rice; gates are broken, food is stolen, clothes vanish. There is "foraging" for animals without due payment. Chinese women are accosted, raped. Graves are violated in the name of scientific curiosity—to see whether or how the Chinese embalm their dead. The small bound foot of a woman's corpse is taken from her coffin. The villagers of Sanyuanli bang gongs, assemble their irregular militiamen, most armed initially with little more than hoes, though some have spears. Other villagers join them from the northwest, and some of these have simple guns. More Chinese villagers come from the north, ten miles nearer Hua, some of them trained for water combat.
It is
But British merchants were affronted, London roused. A fleet and troops were sent, Chinese forts and ships destroyed, treaties agreed at gunpoint, only to be broken, the factories reoccupied by British traders and again abandoned in the face of Chinese rage, and fears of massacre. By May of 1841 the shifting tides of war had sent Chinese crowds surging through the abandoned foreign factories, gutting all that lay between Hog Lane and the Creek, smashing or stealing the mirrors, chandeliers, and marble statues, the weather vanes and clocks, and burning what remained. 5 Yet at the self-same moment the war, for the first time in China's history, brings British troops to the hills above Canton's walls— not now as isolated strollers or viewers of the fire, but fully armed and uniformed, backed by armored vessels in the river.
The British fleet—led by the British ironclad steamboat Nemesis —sinks over seventy Chinese junks and fireboats, and their guns raze much of the waterfront that has not already been fired by the Chinese themselves. British and Indian sepoy troops, in a daring amphibious maneuver, land from the river north of Canton, march around the city, and seize from the rear the four mountain forts that were meant to guard the city from all assaults. In a triumphant gesture of disdain, the British sailors cut the queues of hair off their Chinese captives, and take the clothes of several. Thus bedecked, in Mandarin robes, Chinese hats on heads, and dangling down their backs the severed queues of jet-black hair, they receive the plaudits of their countrymen. 6
As negotiations on the city's fate continue through sweltering days in May, British and Indian troops patrol the area of Sanyuanli, north of their encampment, on the road that leads to Hua county. There are incidents, clashes: troops march across the paddies full of ripening rice; gates are broken, food is stolen, clothes vanish. There is "foraging" for animals without due payment. Chinese women are accosted, raped. Graves are violated in the name of scientific curiosity—to see whether or how the Chinese embalm their dead. The small bound foot of a woman's corpse is taken from her coffin. The villagers of Sanyuanli bang gongs, assemble their irregular militiamen, most armed initially with little more than hoes, though some have spears. Other villagers join them from the northwest, and some of these have simple guns. More Chinese villagers come from the north, ten miles nearer Hua, some of them trained for water combat.
It is
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