Chinese Stories of Drug Addiction

Beyond the Opium Dens

Guy Ramsay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781138608993
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317368526
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études ethniques

Addiction to illicit drugs is a pressing social concern across greater China, where there are likely several million drug addicts at present. This research breaks new ground by examining Chinese people's stories of drug addiction.

Chinese Stories of Drug Addiction systematically evaluates how drug addiction is represented and constructed in a series of contemporary life stories and filmic stories from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. These stories recount experiences leading up to and during drug addiction, as well as experiences during drug rehabilitation and recovery. Through analysis of these contemporary life stories and filmic stories, the book presents a comprehensive picture of how Chinese people from both inside the experience of drug addiction and outside of it make sense of a social practice that is deemed to be highly transgressive in Chinese culture. It employs a blended discourse analytic and narrative analytic approach to show how salient cultural, political and institutional discourses shape these Chinese stories and experiences. Complementing existing humanities research which documents the historical narrative of drug addiction in China at the expense of the contemporary narrative, the book also provides health and allied professionals with a rich insight into how Chinese people from different geographical locations and walks of life make sense of the experience of drug addiction.

Moving beyond historical narrative to examine contemporary stories, Chinese Stories of Drug Addiction offers a valuable contribution to the fields of Chinese studies and personal health and wellbeing, as well as being of practical use to health professionals.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315670904-1

Despite a global war against illicit drug use and trafficking, which has been carried out over many decades, drug addiction remains a pressing social concern in countries throughout the world. China is no exception. Drug addiction blighted twentieth-century Chinese society until it was virtually eliminated from mainland China in the early 1950s, following the Communist victory in 1949 (Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Liang & Lu 2013; Zheng 2005; Zhou 1999, 2000b). The phenomenon, however, re-emerged in mainland China alongside the program of reform and opening up [改革开放] that was initiated in 1978, following the death of Mao Zedong some two years earlier (Biddulph & Xie 2011; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Liang & Lu 2013; Luo et al. 2014; Zheng 2005; Zhou 1999, 2000b). Drug addiction in the Chinese communities of nearby Taiwan and Hong Kong was an enduring concern during the Japanese and British colonial periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and persists to the present-day under local rule (Chou, Hung & Liao 2007; Chu 2008; Hsu 2014; Li 2013; Traver 1992).

Chinese Stories of Drug Addiction: Beyond the Opium Dens explores the phenomenon of drug addiction in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The book moves beyond the opium dens of the Chinese historical narrative to examine contemporary stories told by Chinese people suffering from drug addiction as well as contemporary stories told by others about Chinese people suffering from drug addiction. The stories examined in the book include real life accounts of drug addiction written by Chinese people in rehabilitation or recovery, and filmic accounts of drug addiction presented in contemporary mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong film and television productions. The book utilises the perspectives and approaches of discourse analysis and narrative analysis to analyse the representation and construction of drug addiction from these different authorial positions, located both inside and outside the experience of addiction. In so doing, the book explains how salient discourses – cultural, political and institutional – shape these Chinese stories of drug addiction.

Drug addiction in greater China

Clinical research profiles the typical Chinese drug addict as a young (under 35 years of age), single male, who lacks formal education and is either unemployed or self-employed (Chou, Hung & Liao 2007; Gao 2011; Liang & Lu 2013; Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009; Lu & Wang 2008; Luo et al. 2014; McCoy et al. 1997). Minority nationality groups [少数民族] are overrepresented in mainland China, a consequence of their close proximity to the southwestern and western borders with the drug-producing centres of Burma, Laos, Pakistan and Afghanistan (Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009; Lu & Wang 2008; McCoy et al. 1997; Trevaskes 2013; Zheng, 2005). Recent United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) percentages on the annual prevalence of illicit drug use among 15–64 year-olds place opiates (natural opium products) and opioids (synthetic products that behave like opiates) at 0.5% in mainland China, 0.4% in Taiwan, and 0.4% in Hong Kong (UNODC 2011). These figures resemble that for Australia (0.6%) but are well below that for the United States (6.47%) (UNODC 2011). The use of amphetamines registers at 0.6% for Taiwan and 0.4% for Hong Kong, with no data for mainland China (UNODC 2011). Their use is more common in the United States (1.5%) and Australia (2.7%) (UNODC 2011).

These data point to the continuing popularity of opiates, opioids and amphet amines amongst illicit drugs users in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Nevertheless, recent UNODC figures for people in treatment for drug addiction show that opioids, such as heroin, constitute the leading illicit drug of addiction in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (79.7%, 73.1% and 57.9%, respectively), followed by amphetamines in mainland China and Taiwan (19.1% and 22.1%, respectively) and ketamine in Hong Kong (27.4%) (UNODC 2011). More people in Hong Kong are being treated for addiction to the dissociative drug, ketamine, than for addiction to the stimulants, amphetamine and methamphetamine (8.7%) (UNODC 2011). This prominence of ketamine addiction in Hong Kong is borne out in the Hong Kong life stories and filmic stories of drug addiction that are analysed in Chapters 3 and 4 of this book. Biddulph (2013), Lee, Hsu and Tsay (2013), Levin (2015), Li (2013), Luo et al. (2014) and the UNODC (2013) also point to an emerging ketamine problem in mainland China and Taiwan at present.

Historically, opiate addiction was a major social and political concern in China in the centuries leading up to the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949. Opium had been grown and used for medicinal purposes in China since the Tang dynasty of the seventh to tenth centuries (Baumler 2007; Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009; Zheng 2005). It began to be used as an aphrodisiac by the elites during the middle period of the Ming rule¹ (Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009; Zheng 2005). Over time, opium was assigned a ‘luxury… and feminine, if not explicitly sexual’ status that it continued to hold through to the Qing rule of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries (Zheng 2005, p. 17).

The smoking of opium (often laced with tobacco as ‘madak’) was introduced by the Dutch in the sixteenth century and remained largely confined to southeast China, the hub for maritime trade, through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009; Zheng 2005; Zhou 1999). During the early part of the nineteenth century, opium smoking started to extend beyond the southeast coast, leading to the popularisation of its recreational use across China, often in specialised premises known as opium dens [鸦片馆 or 鸦片窟] (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Zheng 2005; Zhou 1999). Unlike heroin today, at this time, opium served as ‘one of the chief factors of social inclusion rather than exclusion’ (Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004, p. 46). As a consequence, by the mid-nineteenth century, opium was ‘used across the social scale, from the imperial household down to the poor rickshaw puller’ (Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004, p. 47). This crossing of class lines, Zheng (2005, p. 4) claims, sparked agitation for the prohibition of opium: ‘When the rich smoked it, it was cultured and a status symbol; when the poor began to inhale, opium smoking became degrading and ultimately criminal.’ At the turn of the twentieth century, the number of opium users in China numbered around 2.5% of the population (Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004). Before too long, around one in four Chinese men were regularly using opium and its derivatives (Lu, Fang & Wang 2008; Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009).² Drug addicts were turning to opium derivatives such as morphine and heroin, in part due to the lower cost of parenteral administration and the increasing popularisation of the use of syringes (Baumler 2007; Brook & Wakabayashi 2000; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Eykholt 2000; Zheng 2005). At the time, the use of morphine, like the use of the syringe, represented ‘a “modern” statement’ that ‘conferred status, respect and prestige’ on the user (Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004, p. 152). As a consequence of this, Dikötter, Laamann and Zhou (2004, p. 186) state: ‘the punctured skins of narcotic users became a cultural marker of addiction’ in Republican era China (1912–1949).

A robust, well-organised and widely supported movement against the use of opium and its derivatives emerged during the late imperial and early Republican periods (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Zhou 1999). During these periods, the notion of drug addiction as a social vice gained social and political currency, being lexicalised in the expression yin [瘾] (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004).³ Fears about opium addiction escalated, Dikötter, Laamann and Zhou (2004) contend, even though its recreational use probably caused few problems for most users. The development of the anti-opium discourse in large part can be attributed to a political agenda that sought to ferment nationalistic sentiment (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Wyman 2000; Zhou 1999, 2000b). This agenda successfully linked opium to the decline of China, as epitomised by the loss of the nineteenth century wars with Britain and Japan and the subsequent occupation of Chinese territory by foreign powers, which continued through the Republican period (Baumler 2007; Zheng 2005; Zhou 1999). Opium addiction thus came to represent both ‘the epitome of imperialist power’ and ‘the principal cause of “racial” decline and “moral” turpitude’ in China (Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004, p. 109). The strength of this discourse is demonstrated by its continuing resonance in present-day China (Liang & Lu 2013; Zheng 2005). This occurs even though the origin of this discourse, somewhat ironically, can be traced back to foreign missionaries (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004).

The anti-opium movement ostensibly had some success during the Republican period in that opiate use was criminalised (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004).⁴ Criminal sanctions included incarceration and even execution (Baumler 2007; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Zhou 1999, 2000b). The effectiveness of the anti-opium laws and movements, in the end, was limited by the political instability and the fracturing of Chinese sovereignty during the Republican period, a result of warlordism, foreign occupation and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists (Baumler 2007; Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009). At this time, the colonial governments of nearby Taiwan and Hong Kong held monopolies over the legal production and supply of opium to local residents (Baumler 2007; Hsu 2014; Kobayashi 2000; Li 2013; Munn 2000; Traver 1992; Wakabayashi 2000). The Japanese rulers used their monopoly to significantly curb the use of opium in Taiwan, by gradually reducing supply and potency (Brook & Wakabayashi 2000; Chu 2008; Hsu 2014; Li 2013).⁵ The British rulers, on the other hand, used their monopoly to maximise government revenue,⁶ by permitting the use of opium in Hong Kong while proscribing the use of competing drugs, such as morphine and heroin (Traver 1992). After World War II, opium was supplanted by heroin in Taiwan and Hong Kong, due to opium’s criminalisation and heroin’s relative ease of use (Traver 1992).

When the Communists took control of mainland China in 1949, around 5% of the population were opium users (Lu, Fang & Wang 2008; Lu, Miethe & Liang 2009). Within a few years, drug addiction virtually had been eliminated from mainland China (Biddulph & Xie 2011; Dikötter, Laamann & Zhou 2004; Liang & Lu 2013; Zhou 1999, 2000b). Mainland China remained drug-free throughout Ma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Gendered exemplars: life stories of drug addiction and recovery
• 3 Institutional schema: life stories of drug addiction and rehabilitation
• 4 Marginalisation and palliation: filmic stories of drug addiction, rehabilitation and recovery
• 5 Conclusion
• Index