Description: This book traces the transformation of opium from medicine to narcotic over a period of five hundred years.
Brief description: Zheng Yangwen is a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. She received her PhD from Cambridge University in 2001.
Review Quotes: "This ambitious social history of "life history" of opium consumption in China contributes to a growing scholarship on the subject. Yangwen traces the transformation of opium from a medicinal to a recreational drug. The author also examines the relationship of opium to women and gender, the sex industry, and literature, as well as many other facets of modern Chinese history."
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