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Yuen Cheong smoked his opium in the most refined way. The main hall in the first courtyard of his residence was turned into his smoking room. It had a four-panelled screen covered with embroidered animals, birds, fish and flowers in the Suzhou style. All the furnishings—couch, chest and table—were of carved rosewood. Yuen Cheong’s pipe was made of Burmese ivory and he smoked the highest-grade raw opium exported by the East India Company.
    Mrs. Mak became expert in attending to her husband when he smoked. Just before the craving came on, she would prepare the pipe so that the opium bubbled up ready for her to put it into his hand. She had learned just the right height for the pillow, the right angle for the footstool, and the choice and arrangement of the snacks. As soon as he lay down on the couch, five little dishes would be artfully laid out on the table ready for him. Jerky strips, char siu pork buns, and various cakes made of green beans, sesame or lotus paste were the usual fare, together with a cup of milk. His smoking implements were rubbed until they glistened and were laid out neatly in the chest until the time came for them to be used.
    Mrs. Mak was distressed to see the family fortune dissipate in the smoke from the opium pipe, but she had her own way of calculating the losses and gains. Her husband had been a vigorous and energetic man who would not stay put at home, and who spent his time eating and drinking and getting into fights. It was far better that he should be tied to the house by an opium pipe. She knew too that if she did not attend to his needs, he might go and buy himself a concubine and get her to attend to him instead. That was what men did when they had enough money.
    Once his urge for a smoke was satisfied, Yuen Cheong became the mildest of men. He was not yet thirty years old, but when he smiled, there was a touch of an old man’s benevolence in his expression. He spoke gentlyand even with a touch of wit. He liked his wife to parade around in front of him in the clothes and finery he bought her in Canton. Sometimes this was in front of the servants, in the opium-smoking room. At other times, it was when they were in their bedroom; then he would shut the doors and windows and would use more than his eyes. Mrs. Mak minced around in an attempt to evade his groping hands, her face flushed just like in the heady days when they were young.
    Not only were the jagged edges of Yuen Cheong’s once-fiery temper rubbed smooth by the opium—so too were the rough edges of the wide world. He was at ease with the world and it with him. As his twinkling gaze swept over everyone around him, he had no idea that, thousands of li away, the Empress Dowager in Beijing’s Forbidden City was desperately shoring up what remained of the Qing Empire after the onslaught by Western armies. He also had no idea that, much closer to home, his tenant farmers and household servants were stealthily nibbling away at his family’s property like so many hungry mice.
    When he had had his fill of opium, Yuen Cheong would make his eldest son sit beside him and, breaking off a piece of sesame or green bean cake, put it into Ah-Fat’s hand. “And what did Mr. Auyung teach you today, son? Did you practise your calligraphy?” He had seen straightaway that his eldest was a quick learner. Maybe one day his son might pass the Imperial examinations. He racked his brains to see if he could remember any Cantonese operas in which a slaughterman’s son passed the Imperial examinations creditably enough to achieve an audience with the Son of Heaven in the Golden Carriage Palace—but could not think of any.
    Looking at the smoking equipment scattered around the opium couch, Ah-Fat said nothing but his eyebrows drew together in a worried frown. His father was used to this expression on his son’s face; since the moment he was born, the boy had seemed grown up. Yuen Cheong soaked a piece of beef