It was barely 5 minutes from the Red Light District, a mere alley separated them, this distance, as we will see later is poetic because of the relationship of Chinatown to drugs. Those that arrived from China, entered the Netherlands to work as mariners on ships and shipyards, while a significant population arrived from the Dutch East Indies as students in Dutch universities. Unlike the former, who were mostlt Han Chinese, the latter were usually Peranakan or Straits Chinese. A large wave of ethnic Chinese arrived in the Netherlands in from Indonesia as a result of ethnic strife back home.
Similar to the Chinese immigration experience elsewhere around the world, the recent immigrants from China do not mix well with the overseas Chinese from other parts of the world. The scene changed as we walked along this street. The coffee shops, sex shops and brothels were replaced by mandarin characters, fortune cats, and traditional chinese medicine stores. Hong Kong-style char chan teng coffeeshops, the Asian kind not the Amsterdam kind occasionally dotted the street with all sorts of roasted meats hung from the transparent window.
I spied on the glistening roasted chicken and duck drips of juice, that was going to be some succulent meat, I salivatedβ¦ but we had to move on quickly. Just for the irony, there was a large Taiwanese Buddhist temple just opposite it, a temple that I reckon practices vegetarianism. Our guide stopped in front of a merchant store that had yet to open, playfully mimicking the fortune cat behind the windowpane. It turned out that the Chinese traders did not just bring tea from China but something else that the British in turn first brought to China β opium.
Opium is the raw material used to make hard drugs like heroin and other opioids. Opioids are a big problem in many societies the United States, for example, is currently in the throes of an opioid epidemic.
Before, you say think that opioids is causing havoc only today, do not forget that the First Opium War was caused by obviously opium, and it was essentially a war against drugs that led to the surrender of Hong Kong and the beginning of the colonial empires in China.
