How does a Chinese plate end up at Chor Bazaar? To answer that you’d do well to go back to 1635, when British ships began lurking off the coasts of China like suitors with decidedly questionable intentions. For China, that insouciant siren, was well-endowed; her silk, porcelain, and most especially tea, threw the trade-hungry British into a fit of desire. Unfortunately, the Chinese weren’t interested in what the British had to offer, preferring their own goods to any of the foreign stuff. The British and their insatiable appetite for tea would soon rack up a staggering trade deficit with their Eastern partner, which they then decided to balance by importing vast quantities of highly-addictive opium from their Indian colonies. With an increasingly drug-addicted population on her hands (even the emperor himself—a teenager who spent most of his time in bed with his concubine Cixi—was a user), the Chinese government demanded that the drug shipments cease. When the order was ignored, Chinese officials confiscated nearly a year’s worth of opium from British merchants, thus marking the start of what would become known as The Opium Wars.

For a good fictional account of the events leading up to The Opium Wars, check out Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies. Read Less