Archaeologists have discovered a building that served as a drug rehabilitation center about a century ago in central China's Hunan Province, Xinhua News Agency reported today.

 

The ancestral hall of the Li family in Daweishan Town of Liuyang City was built in 1815 and turned into a rehabilitation center in 1907 after many younger family members became addicted to opium.

 

Experts with Changsha's cultural relics protection bureau identified the building during a recent investigation.

 

The legalization of opium during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), after Britain defeated the Qing government in the two Opium Wars (1840-1842, 1856-1860), resulted in millions of Chinese developing an addiction.

 

Li Huachun, then clan leader, declared a family war on opium and ordered more than 80 addicts to the ancestral hall for three months abstention, according to a history of the Li family revised in 1938.

 

Those who refused to come to the rehabilitation center were taken there by force, according to the family's history. The move proved to be successful as all the addicts broke their habits after their time in the center, said the Changsha experts.

 

The ancestral hall, covering 884 square meters, is a brick and wood structure. Once the place where the Li family offered sacrifices to their ancestors, however, it has now fallen into disrepair. However, the Liuyang municipal government is planning to place it on a protection list and allocate funds for its repair.

 

China started its first battle against opium in 1839, when Lin Zexu (1785-1850), a senior official of the Qing Dynasty, ordered the destruction of about 1,000 tons of smuggled opium confiscated from foreign dealers at Humen in south China's Guangdong Province. This costly action resulted in the first Opium War and the British occupation of Hong Kong.

 

(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2006)