Emily Hahn: Times and Places

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 Word Count: 580

From Times and Places by Emily Hahn

“All in all, if I'd been asked how I was faring I would have said I’d been getting on fine. I had no desire to change the way I was living. Except for the doctor, foreign outsiders didn’t seem to guess about me; they must have thought I looked sallow, and certainly they would have put me down as absentminded but nobody guessed. The Chinese, of course, were different, because they’d seen it all before” (352-353). 

“I can stop whenever I want to. You don’t know me well, but I assure you I can stop any time” (354).

Emily Hahn’s time in China was really interesting to read because it showed the psychology behind doing drugs like opium and its consequences. Emily had said she always wanted to be an opium addict which was strange to me. This sentiment alone allows readers to see into the culture she grew up in. While opium was still illegal, since she believed this it was evident that opium was seen as a good thing and idealized in the culture, or at the very least normalized.

When she visited Heh-ven she was ecstatic to smoke opium for the first time. From there opium truly became her life, even though she did not want to admit it. She in fact believed, like many addicts, that she could stop at any time if she wanted to, she just didn’t want to. The opium itself of course had physical effects of relaxation but also a change in how she experienced time. Many people also began to  comment on her declining health and appearances and yet she still believed that she was not actually addicted to opium. The pressure to continue smoking was hard for her especially when she got the opportunity to get help to quit. She found people who didn’t smoke to be boring intellectually. Opium was idealized with some groups of citizens but not by others. Heh-ven’s wife, Pei-yu, was upset over the fact that Heh-ven got Emily addicted to opium and yet she did not try to stop it. It seems to me that since there was a lack of a reaction, Pei-yu and probably many others are used to seeing opium addicts and figure it is useless to try to help them.

While opium might have been idealized or normalized with the citizens of China, the government hated the idea of opium running rampant. Part of the doctor's motivation for helping Emily was so that she could tell the government and spread the word about his treatment so that his treatment might become the standard and he might become employed by the government. Emily claimed that she ultimately listened and stopped using opium because of the way opium impacted her decision making and susceptibility to the influence of others but I also think that she began to recognize how it was truly affecting her. When Bobby, the doctor, told her about the consequences of going to Kuomintang and smoking opium, she actively believed she could stop but Bobby forced her to realize that she could not stop without professional help. In that moment she finally understood how opium was truly affecting her life and career and in the end she put those things first rather than the opium. The government probably understood the effects that opium had on its people and outlawed it so that their economy could thrive instead of being choked by the effects of opium, like how it choked Emily.


Comments

  1. Rachel AntonFebruary 27, 2023 at 6:43 AM

    I also found it strange how she wanted to be addicted to opium. It really does go to show just how different different cultures can be. I wonder how people got to the point of idealizing opium/addicts in their community.

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  2. Christopher ThiryFebruary 27, 2023 at 6:47 AM

    I too found it quite strange when Hahn said she longed to be an opium addict. Obviously it was glamorized throughout social circles, but most people would never dream of becoming an addict even with the glamorized public perception. Unfortunately, Hahn was obviously uneducated on the the negative effects of smoking opium until it was too late and she was already experiencing them.

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