Smoking out the truth

FULLY 150 years after it ended, China is intent on reliving the opium war of 1839-42. Last week at Humen, the place by the Pearl River delta where the mandarin Lin Zexu destroyed nearly 3m pounds of British opium in 1839, an anniversary rally was convened in the town square, which boasts a giant pair of stone hands snapping an opium pipe. Heroin and “ice” (a pure form of cocaine) were piled high and set afire, sending smoke billowing through the crowds. A new stone frieze is going up behind the hands, which glorifies local resistance to British opium smuggling. And at the local museum in honour of Lin Zexu and other anti-British patriots there stands a stone tablet of Jie Ma, a Chinese general's horse that kicked Englishmen and, after capture, starved to death rather than accept poppies as fodder. When China's president, Jiang Zemin, visited Humen, he said that everybody should “learn from the spirit of Jie Ma”.