In the mid-16th century, Portuguese colonists based in their Indian outposts of Goa and Daman began trafficking opium to China, using the port of Macau as a hub. This marked the beginning of a large-scale drug trade between the West and China, which would eventually devastate the Chinese economy and society, leading to widespread addiction and social decay.

This early phase of the opium trade introduced the drug as a commodity of empire, a theme that would be critically examined in later Chinese and Western literature. The conflict between Chinese authorities and Western merchants over opium would become a central subject in 19th-century poetry and prose, with writers like Charles Dickens and the Chinese poet Lin Zexu addressing its moral and political implications.