1. 'The art of alchemists, sex and court ladies'; 2. As the Empire changed hands; 3. 'The age of calicos and tea and opium'; 4. 'A hobby among the high and the low and the officialdom'; 5. Taste-making and trend-setting; 6. The political redefinition of opium consumption; 7. Outward and downward 'liquidation'; 8. 'The volume of smoke and powder'; 9. 'The unofficial history of the poppy'; 10. The opiate of the people; 11. The road to St. Louis; 12. 'Shanghai vice'.
This book traces the transformation of opium from medicine to narcotic over a period of five hundred years.
Zheng Yangwen is a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. She received her PhD from Cambridge University in 2001.
'A forthcoming book by Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium (Cambridge University Press) makes a perfect complement to this one, as it concentrates much more on the 1500-1911 period …'. History Today
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