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Published: September 26th 2010
Greetings!
All is well and fine here in Guangzhou despite its impressive (oppressive?) warmth and humidity. Baby Julia and the rest of us count our blessings everyday with our continued health. A trip to the zoo this morning was documented by sweet Joshua as some of you may already have read in his first ever blog post! Shannon plans on posting a review of today’s events soon so I wanted to mention a little about the place we’re staying: Shamian Island.
I have posted several photos of its scenic byways. This tiny island is renown as the common host to the happy conclusion of the adoptive process for American families in China. However, as I have dug deeper into the past of this tiny island, the history revealed is quite disturbing.
While the Venetian Marco Polo was exploring China by overland routes back in the 1200’s, it was not until the 1500’s that Europeans established trade with China by sea when the Portuguese set up trading posts in Macau, an island just off the coast of Hong Kong. The British, Dutch, and Spanish were not far behind. Trade with China was deliberately limited in many ways for the
next few hundred years due to the Confucian ideals of “self sufficiency and exclusion of corrupting influences”. However, as the British taste for Chinese Tea, Silk, and Porcelain (literally fine “China”) grew stronger in the 1800’s, a more modern economic problem of trade deficits developed. The Chinese really didn’t need or want much from the Europeans and the only licit importable item was silver.
At this point our story takes a
very nasty turn as the British devised a viciously self-sustaining import market in southern China for Opium. This was simply engineered drug addiction on a massive scale to fuel the trade ambitions of the British Empire into the Far East. For an old story that is well documented but little discussed, the details are shocking.
East India at that time was largely under European colonial rule and the British Empire could easily grow and refine Opium from the East Indian poppy fields and then ship it through their accomplished merchant ship system to the southern China seaports of Hong Kong and Guangzhou.
Opium is a close relative of Heroin and is a highly addictive opiate. It was used to control pain and diarrhea (as anyone who’s
used percocet/oxycontin/vicodin/etc post-operatively and experienced its simultaneously analgesic and constipating properties can attest).
The devious drug trade undertaken during the reign of Queen Victoria worked its dark magic and an estimated 12 million addicts were quickly manufactured in Southern China. The results were devastating. The trade deficit reportedly did indeed reverse as China was then paying her majesty’s dope dealers dearly in tea, silk, and fine china in return for Opium. Not surprisingly, the economic output of the entire Chinese Kingdom was noted to slow.
The Chinese Empire was massive even in the 1800’s at ~300 million, maybe even more, but equal or greater than the current population of the United States! The ruling Qing dynasty tried to prohibit the importation of Opium by decree but these early attempts at regulation were ignored not only by the British but also by the Chinese middlemen involved in the lucrative drug trade. What followed was something I vaguely recall learning in high school history but never really paid attention to:
The Opium Wars.
The ruling Qing Emperor ordered enforcement of the Opium Prohibition stepped up and British traders were arrested while many tons of opium were seized and burned
in the Southern port cities of China. What predictably followed in return was open warfare on the Chinese by the outnumbered by technically superior British military. The British easily dominated the Chinese by sea and by land and crushed any resistance they encountered. The unusual aspect of this military campaign was its objective. The British did not want to gain or control land, they simply wanted to maintain their perversely enriching drug trade. There was no shame about this.
Consequently, the British would take vast swaths of land in southern China but release them in return for trade concessions which preserved their ability to keep the Chinese addicted to their imported Opium. The British were granted facilities and trading posts as well as legal protection and immunity from persecution under Chinese law. This became known as “Most Favored Nation” trading status, a term still used today in modern trade negotiations.
Shamian Island, the location of our famous White Swan Hotel, was a strategic sand bar on the North bank of the Pearl River back in the mid 1800’s as China tried unsuccessfully to defend the city of Guangzhou from the British aggressors. Ironically, its location on the main
Pearl River was a straight shot up the waterway from Hong Kong and this made it a key trade point. The sand bar was shored up and a defensive moat was dug around it. The tiny 900 x 300 meter island was formally granted as a ‘concession’ to the British and partly to the French in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. A single bridge across the moat was pulled up every night to limit access to the island.
Shamian Island became a tiny but well known and critically important European outpost and by the 1900’s many Western powers had facilities here including the United States consulate. The beautiful buildings you seen in our photos from this part of our trip usually date back about ~150 years and have an old classic European appearance because they are actually old classic European buildings!
The consulate buildings of the United States and Britain were built simultaneously in 1873. The U.S. consulate was closed due to the rockiness of Sino-American relations for much of the 20th Century but a new consulate building was built in 1990. However, this consulate has been replaced by a new U.S. building just recently opened closer
to downtown Guangzhou.
This entire sad passage became the first impression of the West upon China and, not surprisingly, has historically poisoned their perception of Western peoples to the present day. This chapter of Chinese history was both humiliating and infuriating to the people of China and gave rise to the predictable uprising in the year 1900 of the Boxer Rebellion. (You'll have to read about that for yourselves!) In any case, when I hear that Westerners are sometimes still referred to as "Foreign Devils" by the Chinese here, I can understand what might motivate that!
Our personal adoption story is in fact entwined with this historical narrative as we will travel to the new U.S. Consulate building in Guangzhou to take the oath of American Citizenship on Baby Julia’s behalf on the day before our departure. Baby Julia will technically be in a diplomatic limbo for about a day then as she will depart Chinese soil as a Chinese citizen with a Chinese Passport and an official U.S. Visa granting her permission to come to the U.S. Even once we have taken off and are in the air during the flight back to America, she is expressly
still
not a U.S. citizen but, by the idiosyncrasies of U.S. immigration law, she magically becomes one with her first
physical footstep onto American soil. Some U.S. ports of entry maintain that the gangway tunnel from the plane to the airport doesn’t meet the legal definition of stepping onto U.S. soil but everyone seems to agree that stepping into the airport gate area (which is in a building with a physical foundation grounded in U.S. soil) meets the requirements to declare oneself a fully fledged American Citizen.
This all belongs in the uselessly legalistic realm of “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. However, the one legal crisis that does actually arise in real life within this odd little corner of immigration law involves the scenario of planes with Chinese adoptees which are diverted to foreign airports while returning from China to intended U.S. ports. This most commonly happens with Americans returning to Seattle and getting diverted instead to Vancouver. Our agency has not explained what happens to fix this situation other than to say that a little Chinese baby with a Chinese passport in Canada is
not getting into the U.S. by land, sea,
or air regardless of visa status. I suppose one parent and the adopted child might be forced to return to China and try flying back again.
We’re aiming for Los Angeles soil so I have a good feeling about our odds! Just don’t tell the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that Julia isn’t actually walking yet. I don’t know if they have a work-around for that contingency so we better get her little toes to the floor ASAP as we cross the threshold into Los Angeles International!
Only 3 days left before we start our journey home!
JC
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lizzie
non-member comment
hi
Hello Emma you look so happy in china.In church today I praded for you.Have a safe plane ride home,And allso I have been working with your studdie budddy. We did pixie,and Jonny Apple Seed coloring .I miss you. One more thing,are you going to be at school on friday? lizzie