IT was so hot on Friday that some of the antique merchants in Beijing's Liulichang Street picked out ancient fans from their displays of bric a brac and flapped listlessly at the torpid air. They called out to us, pointing to old watches and bronze Buddhas for sale, but we had come looking for an object which was not on display. My friend wanted a yanqiang, an old opium pipe.
At the mention of the word the fans fluttered a little faster and eyes darted from side to side. A woman whispered in our ear. "Not here. Walk a bit farther." She materialised at a counter further along and beckoning us over. From a crumpled newspaper the dealer produced two opium pipes, one of copper, the other of elephant bone, for the equivalent of £20 each. He picked the copper one and we sidled out of the arcade.
I hasten to explain that we were not purchasing an instrument to smoke the "just, subtle and mighty opium", as Thomas De Quincey described the oldest known of drugs, but an imitation tourist souvenir of the kind that could be found until recently in out of the way Beijing junk shops.
With the return of Hong Kong in 15 days, however, it is not the "correct time", as the antique dealer put it, to show off the instrument of national shame. It was opium which weakened and corrupted the Chinese and led to the loss of Hong Kong in 1841 in the first Opium War.
That conflict had its roots in Emperor Dao Gang's instruction to Commissioner Lin Zexu to stamp out the drug trade, then flourishing in Guangzhou. In mid 19th century China, opium was the opium of the people. And the drug dealers were the traders of the British Empire.
Lin's public incineration of a heap of opium pipes after a raid on the dens and brothels of Guangzhou is the starting point of the epic film, Opium War, premiered last week in Beijing's Great Hall of the People as part of the celebrations to mark the return of Hong Kong.
It relates how English traders were illegally selling Indian produced opium to corrupt Chinese officials using a river base near Guangzhou. The incorruptible Lin, played by Chinese actor Pao Guoan, had his forces surround their camp and forced the surrender of 20,000 chests of the "foreign mud". The commissioner destroyed it in the Pearl River, much to the fury in particular of the evil opium trader, Dent, played by British actor Bob Peck (who was eaten by a dinosaur in Jurassic Park).
It was the biggest drugs bust in history and it led eventually to the British seizing Hong Kong as a secure base for trade. Britain was an expanding industrial nation, which desperately needed new markets for all sorts of commodities. It would not allow Chinese idealism to stand in the way. As Queen Victoria commented in the movie, she didn't blame the Chinese for destroying opium but "we must teach them a lesson on free trade".
Veteran Chinese director Xie Jin mortgaged his three houses to help underwrite the $15 million patriotic blockbuster with a cast of 50,000, including 3,000 non Chinese actors. It is not propaganda, he said at the Beijing premiere, but it was attended by Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and Minister for Film, Radio and Television, Sun Jiazheng, whose presence signified clear approval by China's culture commissars.
Before the movie started 20 children, all wearing tee shirts saying "Opium War", ran up and presented bouquets of flowers to the 20 dignitaries. Mr Xie told us as we perched on uncomfortable chairs: "Only when a nation stands on its own feet can we look back at the period when we were forced down on our knees."
There is a wave of patriotism sweeping China and a feeling of pride that, as China Daily critic Yu Wentao said: "Gone are the days when China was bullied by ancient powers." The lesson he took from the film is that "if a nation is backward and its officials corruptible it inevitably will be attacked by foreign powers".
In this atmosphere antique and imitation opium pipes recalling the backwardness and corruption of the Qing Dynasty suddenly disappeared from sale in Beijing last week. Public security officials visited Liulichang Street, the city's "Left Bank", and told dealers to get rid of them.
The purge of pipes was prompted by a leading Communist Party member, Li Binsheng, who expressed his incredulity in a Beijing newspaper at finding a shop in Liulichang with 100 different kinds of opium pipes on the counter.
The police were unenthusiastic about enforcing the new prohibition. An officer told the Beijing Youth Daily on Friday that they have come across the "phenomenon of opium sale and use in the capital in recent years but they regarded the antiqueshop pipes as collectors' items. The boss of the Liulichang Cultural Development Company commented indignantly that the were simply selling handicrafts, and that drug addicts these days needed only silver paper and tinfoil.
But Li Binsheng, guardian of the national pride, responded that if the shop owners didn't take the yanqiang off the counters, the public security police should collect and burn them. He evidently has seen the movie. For now the astute antique dealers are playing it safe. But if you really want one of those souvenir pipes.