Free Republic

A Chinese Restaurant Operator is in big trouble after he laced his noodles with Opium drugs in an attempt to keep customers coming back. Chinese Guangxi Province-based restaurant intended to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more. The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t...

Despite the U.S. declaring an “Open Door Policy” in support of China’s sovereignty, U.S. Marines on May 31, 1900 invaded China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion. With imperial Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, and Russia trying to carve China into colonies, Secretary of State John Hay in the fall of 1899 declared the United States would honor an “Open Door Policy” that respected Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and allowed equal trading privileges for all nations. Nineteenth-century imperialists had forced China’s ruling Qing Dynasty to accept foreign dominance over much of China’s economic affairs. Two Opium Wars with...

A wonderful set of photographs taken in China and Japan which gave the Western world one of its first glimpses of the Far East is going for auction. And one particular image of Chinese corpses at North Fort in Peiho in 1860 has presented a stark reminder of the Second Opium War. The North Fort was one of several Taku Forts - strategically-placed defences in China that guarded the mouth of the Peiho River. The fort, which was located near modern-day Tianjin, was breached on August 20, 1860 and its garrison surrendered after a fierce fight.