The Fall of the God of Money: Opium Smoking in Nineteenth-Century China

In this first truly cross—cultural study of opium, Keith McMahon considers the perspectives of both smokers and non—smokers from China and the Euro—West and from both sides of the issue of opium prohibition. The author stages a dramatic confrontation between the Chinese opium user and the Euro—Westerner who saw in opium the image of an uncanny Asiatic menace. Opium was inextricably bound up with generalizations made about teeming Asiatic masses, nightmarish opium sots, effeminate Chinamen, ...