Addiction (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

Considering how I tend to think of Hong Kong as a bastion of law and order (where, on a personal level, I am able to be regularly out and about in the city on my own late at night), it's ironic to realize that it came to have the position it does in the world in large part due to a substance banned all over the world because of its ability to lead people into serious addiction. More specifically, Hong Kong Island was ceded by the Chinese Qing government to imperial Britain as one consequence of the former losing the First Opium War (1839-1842) against the latter; with the rest of the territories that now make up Hong Kong also coming under imperial British rule before the 19th century came to an end -- and all of it only being returned to China in 1997.

The last opium den in Hong Kong closed down in the 1970s -- and these days, the major addiction that the authorities are waging war against is that involving nicotine, not opium. (Therefore, we can safely assume that when they put up signs that say "Smoking can kill" (as can be seen in this Photo Hunt entry's lower photo), they mean the kind of cigarettes associated with such as the Marlboro Man.)

Although he was originally condemned on the grounds that his actions were a major catalyst for the First Opium War, Lin Zexu (1785-1850), the incorruptible Chinese scholar-official who sought to wage war against opium, has since come to be viewed as a Chinese hero. Among the monuments erected in his honor are a Lin Zexu Memorial Museum and a 3 meter high statue of the man in the grounds of the Lin Fung Temple where he stayed at on an official visit to Macau in 1839. Also, June 3rd, the day that Lin confiscated crates of opium in his campaign against the drug, is commemorated as Anti-Smoking Day in Taiwan!