Chasing Dragons (c. 1900s)

With the establishment of Singapore as a free port, the opium tax-farming system was introduced as a means to raise revenue. The Opium Regulation was passed in 1830. ¹

In the late 19th century to early 20th century, a Chinese diaspora happened from the southern coasts of China to Southeast Asia. This was known as “過番.”² And many started working as coolies³, a derogatory term used for low-wage labourers, typically those of Indian or Chinese descent. 

Coolie house sign

Early 20th century | Painted wood | Gift of Lim Min Sing and Chan Kim, National Museum of Singapore collection

New immigrant workers from China usually took up temporary residence at lodging houses. Most of these spaces were crowded and grim. The workers stayed there until they found work in Singapore or left to work in the Malayan interior.

By the end of 1847, the Chinese made up most of the local population, numbering about 40,000 out of 70,000 persons. Of these, there were an estimated 15,043 habitual opium smokers, who were mostly Chinese coolies.⁴ For many of these working-class men, opium smoking was a form of relaxation and escape from their cramped and unpleasant living conditions. However, if they succumbed to addiction and could not pay the rent, they would be turned out by their landlords.

Opium pipes and water pipes

Wood, silver, mixed materials | Late 19th century and early 20th century | National Museum of Singapore collection

The long Chinese opium pipe, unlike the smaller tobacco water-pipe, is designed to distil rather than combust opium pellets. These pellets are placed in the pipe and held over a lamp for smoking. As the heated opium vaporises, a black sooty residue known as dross is deposited on the inside of the pipe head.

British-run opium houses in Malaya supplied opium in small lead tubes. They also sold small portions of dross for those who could not afford opium. When smoked, dross is particularly toxic for the liver.

Chasing the dragon

It is believed that opium smoking became popular in China after the Ming court banned tobacco in 1641. Opium smoking later spread beyond China and became ingrained in India and Southeast Asia. Refined opium was known in Malay as chandu.

As in many societies, “social evils” such as opium smoking were common in Singapore. Opium was legal and sold throughout the town, which had 550 licensed opium shops in 1900. For the workers at the river, port, plantations, mines or in the streets, opium masked their fatigue, so that they could continue working despite the physical strain.

In Singapore, as it was elsewhere, large opium dens offered supplementary services such as Chinese tea. Large teahouses and brothels also had opium-smoking services for their customers.

Coolies were said to consume about 3 hoon (35 grams) of refined opium everyday; rickshaw pullers were believed to consume twice that amount. It led to addiction, which the colonial government belatedly recognised as a problem in 1908.

However, opium was also big business. Historian Carl Trocki has argued that without it, “there probably would have been no British Empire.” In the first century of colonial rule in Singapore, 40 to 60 percent of the government’s locally derived revenue came from licensing merchants to sell opium locally. The merchants in turn used opium fortunes to invest in banking, insurance and steamship businesses.

The Straits government was in no hurry to ban opium. Despite Britain’s participation in international conferences and treaties, colonial governors believed prohibition was ineffective in reducing addiction. To protect opium revenue while appeasing diplomatic pressure, the Straits government monopolised the opium business, opening government-controlled shops where registered smokers could buy rationed tubes of opium. An Opium Revenue Replacement Fund was also established in 1925 to hedge against expected revenue loss. Amid growing pressure by the United States for a complete ban on opium, the Home Office admitted Britain’s stance was “an equivocal and an embarrassing one”.⁶

It was the general rule for the British government that with regards to the sales of
opium or alcohol, any private dealings were strictly forbidden. Instead they asked for vast sums as bids for official monopoly control from the powerful families.⁷ The government earned most of its revenue by franchising the opium trade to wealthy Chinese businessmen. Well-known names in the opium trade include Lau Joon Tek and Cheang Sam Teo, who made up the Lau-Cheang Syndicate. Cheong Hong Lim (1841-1893) and Tan Seng Poh (1828-1879) were other well-known names who partnered with Tan Hiok Nee (Tan Yeok Nee, 1827-1902) in spirit and opium farming.⁸ 

Many of the leaders of the dialect groups in Singapore were members or
leaders of the secret societies.⁹ The decade from 1870-1879 was the
decade of what can be described as the symbolic unification of the Chinese
temple system, just as it saw the unification of the competing factions within
the Great Opium Syndicate (made up of Cheang Hong Lim, Tan Seng Poh
and Tan Hiok Nee, the Teochew representative of the Sultan of Johor). The
Great Syndicate linked the Singapore, Johor, Melaka, and Riau Islands opium
and alcohol farms. This was the heyday of the opium kings of Singapore.

Banning Opium and the Death Penalty

The sale of opium became controlled and in 1925, the government issued licences to opium smokers to smoke opium in their own premises. In January 1929, supplies of opium were rationed and registration of opium smokers became compulsory and only adult Chinese above 21 were permitted to consume opium. In 1933, the Chandu Revenue Ordinance was amended and opium possession by those under the age of 21 was banned.

In 1934, opium possession was banned by anyone who did not have a medical practitioner’s certification that they needed opium for health reasons. However, there were still supposedly 16,552 opium addicts in 1941. During the Japanese Occupation (1942‒45), it is thought that the number of opium addicts could have risen to a high of 30,000.

Despite attempts to control and ban this narcotic and addictive drug, the opium trade continued clandestinely. The death penalty was introduced for opium drug dealers and peddlers in 1989¹¹ in a bid to put a complete stop to it.¹²

Footnotes:

1. Derks, H. (2012). History of the opium problem: The assault on the East, ca. 1600-1950. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, pp. 44‒45. (Call no.: RSEA 363.450950903 DER); Turnbull, C. M. (2009). A history of modern Singapore, 1819-2005. Singapore: NUS Press, pp, 34‒35, 46. (Call no.: RSING 959.57 TUR-[HIS]); Makepeace, W., Brooke, G. E., & Braddel, R. (Eds.). (1991). One hundred years of Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press, pp. 55‒56. (Call no.: RSING 959.57 ONE-[HIS]); Little, R. (1848, January). On the habitual use of opium in Singapore [Microfilm no.: NL 1889]. The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 7‒11; Straits Settlements. Opium Commission (1909). Proceedings of the Commission appointed to enquire into matters relating to the use of opium in the Straits Settlement and the Federated Malay States [Microfilm no.: NL 14242]. London: Darling & Son Ltd, p. 11. ↩︎
2. 汕頭百載商埠的發源地西堤碼頭，見證了千千萬萬潮汕人從這裡「過番」謀生，也見證了汕頭從漁村、碼頭到港口、商埠的變遷。https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/過番, accessed 18 Sep 2025 ↩︎
3. Header picture:
   Coaling at night
   1890s | Reproduction of woodblock print | National Museum of Singapore collection
   Coaling stations were set up for steamships to stop over and refuel. Coolies from coaling ships lugged large baskets of coal suspended from a thick bamboo pole, with an average load rate of about 200 tonnes an hour. Singapore was the only regional port with such extensive facilities until well after 1914.
   
   Chinese coolies, who were engaged mostly in unskilled, hard labour, formed the early backbone of Singapore’s labour force. They were mainly impoverished Chinese immigrants who came to Singapore in the latter half of the 19th century to seek fortune, but instead served as indentured labourers. Coolies were employed in almost every sector of work including construction, agriculture, shipping, mining and rickshaw pulling. ↩︎
4. Little, R. (1848, January). On the habitual use of opium in Singapore [Microfilm no.: NL 1889]. The Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 65‒66. ↩︎
5. Opium bed
   Early 20th century | Wood with marble inlay | National Museum of Singapore collection ↩︎
6. Harumi Goto-Shibata, “The International Opium Conference of 1924–25 and Japan,” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (October 2002): 976–77. (From JSTOR via NLB’s eResources website); John Collins, “Drug Diplomacy from the Opium Wars through the League of Nations, 1839–1939,” Cambridge University Press, 25 November 2021, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009058278.002; William B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An International History (London; New York: Routledge, 2000), https://archive.org/details/drugdiplomacyint0000mcal. ↩︎
7. Opium for the Gods: Cheang Hong Lim (1841-1893), Headman and Ritual Libationer of the Hokkien Community, Leader of the Singapore Great Opium Syndicate (1870-1882)
   Kenneth Dean, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 66e Année, No. 193 (Janvier-mars 2021), pp. 115, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27126216 ↩︎
8. Opium for the Gods: Cheang Hong Lim (1841-1893), Headman and Ritual Libationer of the Hokkien Community, Leader of the Singapore Great Opium Syndicate (1870-1882)
   Kenneth Dean, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 66e Année, No. 193 (Janvier-mars 2021), pp. 109-110, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27126216
   Within a few years of the founding of Singapore, Chinese merchants had
   cornered the opium farm monopoly While the first years of the opium farm
   are difficult to reconstruct, the overall power struggle within the Chinese
   community in Singapore is easier to determine A group of Hokkien Paranakan
   Straits born merchants arrived shortly after Sir Stanford Raffles set up the
   free port of Singapore in 1819, and established themselves at the head of the
   regional and transnational shipping business Figures like See Hoo Kee 薛
   佛記 (1793-1843) and Tan Tock Seng 陳篤生 (1798-1850) were the largest
   contributors to the Heng Shan Ting 恒山亭 (Eternal Mountain Pavilion and
   Hokkien cemetery) and to the Thian Hock Keng 天福宫 (Temple of Heavenly
   Good Fortune) The latter temple was located on the beach facing the sea and
   the harbor for the boats bearing the trade to and from Singapore The Hokkien
   Huay Kuan 福建會館 was located in the back building of the temple
   Another faction was connected to the Teochew dialect group Seah Eu Chin
   佘有进 (1805-83) was a major Teochew pepper and gambier plantation owner
   He raised from the age of 9 his future brother in law Tan Sen Poh (b 1828 – d
   Dec 19, 1879), the son of Tan Ah Hun, the “rich Captain China of Perak”
   (Song, 1967: 21) Seah and Tan were based in the Wak Hai Cheng Beo 粤海
   清廟 (Guangdong Temple of the Calm Seas), where from 1848 onwards they
   operated the Ngee An Kongsi 義安公司 in the back building of that temple
   These two factions would compete over and eventually unite to control
   the opium farm in Singapore from 1847-1880 An initial partnership was
   established from 1847-1860 between the Hokkien representative, Cheang San
   Teo 章三潮，from Changtai district, Zhangzhou, Fujian 福建長泰縣 and Lau Joon Tek, a Teochow leader 2 In 1860, Lau passed away, and the Teochew faction backed Heng Bun Soon to take over the Johor and Singapore opium
   farm, leaving Hokkien representative Cheang San Teo with a much reduced
   hold over only the Singapore and Johor spirit (ie, alcohol) farms Cheang
   fought back by smuggling opium and processing it into chandu for smoking
   and distribution in Johor, perhaps in association with Wee Bock Seng The
   Teochew faction managed however over the next few years to take complete
   control over the Johor opium spirit farm, in partnership with the Teochew
   aide to the Sultan of Johor, Tan Hiok Nee 陳旭年 (1827-1902), also known
   as the Chinese Major of Johor
   Later Tan Sen Poh forced Cheang to retreat to Singapore, where he was
   reduced to running only the spirit farm, which he passed on to his son Cheang
   Hong Lim (fig 1) in 1865 In 1868, Hong Lim’s younger brother Cheang Hong
   Guan attempted to outflank the Teochew alliance by buying the Malacca
   opium and spirit farms, and using these assets to augment his ownership of
   the Singapore spirit farm This effort failed, and he was driven into bankrup-
   tcy He sued his elder brother Hong Lim, claiming the latter had forged their
   father’s will, but the case was thrown out by the British colonial court after a
   few days of testimony He was never able to repair the family quarrel, and this
   brother was not buried in the Cheang family graveyard on Alexandra Road ↩︎
9. Opium for the Gods: Cheang Hong Lim (1841-1893), Headman and Ritual Libationer of the Hokkien Community, Leader of the Singapore Great Opium Syndicate (1870-1882)
   Kenneth Dean, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 66e Année, No. 193 (Janvier-mars 2021), pp. 111, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27126216.
   Trocki (1993: 250) speculates that the very first
   Teochew partner Lau, the partner of Cheang San Teo, was a leader of the
   Ghee Hin secret society Zhao Wenbin 趙文炳 was a Ghee Hin member and a
   council member of the Cantonese Ningyang Huiguan 寧陽會館 Deng Xujin
   鄧旭進 was both a Ghee Hin member and the Director of the Fuk Tak Chi
   on Telok Ayer Street, which linked Cantonese and Hakka migrant groups
   Conflicts in the early years of Singapore between the Teochew and the
   Hokkien communities was constant, and almost structural, pitting the Hokkien
   merchant network with its port cities against the gambier and pepper plan-
   tations carved out of the jungles of Singapore, Johor and the Riau islands
   The cultural gulf between the “downtown” and the “outskirts” of Singapore
   would last for 150 years The Teochews controlled the godowns along the
   Singapore river, where they unloaded ships owned by the Hokkien merchants
   and transferred on board their local produce of gambier for sale to China and
   pepper for Europe or elsewhere in Southeast Asia These tensions probably
   underlay the conflicts between their respective “secret societies,” which first
   came to a head in the 1846 Chinese Funeral Riot when a Ghee Hin funeral
   procession got into a fight with a rival Guan Tek 關帝 (Guandi) secret society
   This event revealed early signs of tension between the competing groups of
   secret societies backed by different dialect groups ↩︎
10. Headlines of Zhao Nan Ri Bao articles on the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Nanking. (From left) “Nanjing Treaty Centennial – China’s 100 Years of Pain from Britain’s Aggression” and “Join Forces with the Empire to Defeat the Anglo-Americans and Erase the Shame of the Nanjing Treaty”. Images reproduced from Zhao Nan Ri Bao, 28 August 1942, 1. ↩︎
11. Death penalty extended to cocaine, cannabis and opium dealers. (1989, December 1). The Straits Times, p. 27. Retrieved from NewspaperSG; Republic of Singapore. Government gazette. Acts supplement. (1989, January 12). Misuse of drugs (Amendment) Act 1989 (Act 38 of 1989, pp. 1–7). Singapore: [s.n.]. (Call no.: RSING 348.5957 SGGAS)
    27. Toh, M. (2009, November 29). 76, and an opium addict. The Straits Times, p. 15. Retrieved from NewspaperSG. ↩︎
12. Opium and its history in Singapore, SINGAPORE INFOPEDIA, Thulaja, Naidu Ratnala, https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/article-detail?cmsuuid=f99cf90e-c3a5-4576-b77e-f3971d19c2d9, accessed 13 Dec 2025 ↩︎