The Social Life of Opium in China (review)

Zheng's ambitious book seeks answers to some of the most fundamental questions about opium consumption in China, including who smoked the drug and why, and the reasons for its centuries-long popularity. The book's most notable contributions to the growing literature on opium in China are its lengthy chronological scope, its intriguing and effective interdisciplinary approach, and its wide range of previously untapped sources. By looking at opium as an article of consumption in the context of other Chinese material cultures—specifically those of tea, cuisine, herbs, and utensils—Zheng eschews many of the moralistic assumptions that have biased much of the history of this drug.

Zheng begins her "genealogical method of anthropological inquiry" long before the infamous Opium War (1839–1942), when opium was not yet conceived of as a vice or an emblem of imperialist aggression (2). Instead, the drug was part of China's rich material life; it became a marker of elite taste and distinction. Zheng's use of anthropological-commodity theories to frame this "biographical" approach to the social life of opium in China yields new insights into the psychosocial patterns of consumption and the means by which smoking and opium consumption were incorporated into Chinese life. The volume maps out the transformation of meanings and functions attributed to opium, beginning with its evolution from medicine to aphrodisiac, then tracing its growing popularity as a foreign commodity or yanghuo, and eventually discussing its transformation in the nineteenth century into a necessity and key component of popular culture in the Qing and Republican eras. Zheng mines an impressive and intriguing array of sources that include literature, pornography, medical tomes, and officials' journals, among others. They reveal a complex and fascinating process by which the meanings of opium consumption were altered and redefined as time passed, and the habit filtered down from elite to ordinary Chinese. The volume explores how domestic and internal forces structured Chinese demand for opium, a precondition for the massive smuggling of the drug that generated the political crises of the mid-nineteenth century. Zheng also examines the role of opium in the sex industry and the sex lives of elite Chinese, and in one chapter explores the double-edged impact of the drug on the lives of Chinese women.

The Social Life of Opium in China is a lively and readable volume, although it contains some frustrations for scholars wishing to explore some of its conclusions and interpretations. For example, Zheng frequently interjects that particular scholars have studied an aspect of the history of opium (or briefly summarizes the scholars' approaches or arguments) without listing the titles of their books in the text or bibliography, and she relies too frequently on rhetorical questions to drive the argument or indulge in speculation. At times, Zheng's otherwise careful and important observations also include sweeping generalizations, such as the claim that filial piety and opium restrictions exempting those older than sixty helped sustain "the massive consumption [of opium] among the elderly population in the late Qing and beyond" (162–163). The assertion sounds reasonable, but Zheng provides no evidence to support either the reasons for, or the existence of, widespread smoking among the elderly.

In the effort to situate opium within a broader Chinese material culture, Zheng sometimes struggles to reconcile her focus on the incorporation of opium into China's material culture with the existence of long-standing Chinese legal restrictions on the drug. Zheng tends to deny the existence of genuine anti-opium sentiment, noting, not without justification, that the elites credited with this sentiment were more often than not smokers themselves. However, to say that "Good Christians and anti-opium activists supported prohibition, but only in public and in theory" is unproven and thus incorrect (193). She also neglects to point out that opium prohibition was a pillar of the Taiping agenda and attracted some support among ordinary Chinese. In tracing changes in official and legal attitudes toward opium, Zheng...