page_title: Lin Zexu
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Lin Zexu / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the entrance to the Lin Zexu Memorial in Fuzhou from 2004.
context_page_description: Lin Zexu, courtesy name Yuanfu, was a Chinese head of states, Governor General, scholar-official under Emperor of the Qing dynasty best known for his role in the First Opium War of 1839–42. He was from Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Lin's forceful opposition to the opium trade was a primary catalyst for the First Opium War. He is praised for his constant position on the "moral high ground" in his fight, but he is also blamed for a rigid approach which failed to account for the domestic and international complexities of the problem. The Daoguang Emperor endorsed the hardline policies advocated by Lin, but then blamed Lin for the resulting disastrous war.
context_section_description: Lin died in 1850 while on the way to Guangxi Province, where the Qing government was sending him to help put down the Taiping Rebellion. Though he was originally blamed for causing the First Opium War, Lin's reputation was rehabilitated in the last years of the Qing dynasty, as efforts were made once more to eradicate opium production and trade. He became a symbol of the fight against opium, with his image displayed in parades, and his writings quoted approvingly by anti-opium reformers.
  Despite the antagonism between the Chinese and the British at the time, the English sinologist Herbert Giles praised and admired Lin: "He was a fine scholar, a just and merciful official and a true patriot."
  Lin's former home, situated in Fuzhou's historic Sanfang-Qixiang ("Three Lanes and Seven Alleys") district, is open to the public.  Inside, his work as a government official, including the opium trade and other work where he improved agricultural methods, championed water conservation (including his work to save Fuzhou's West Lake from becoming a rice field) and his campaign against corruption are well documented.
  In China, Lin is popularly viewed as a national hero. June 3—the day when Lin confiscated the chests of opium—is unofficially celebrated as Opium Suppression Movement Day in Taiwan, whereas June 26 is recognized as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in honour of Lin's work.
  Monuments to Lin have been constructed in Chinese communities around the world. A statue of Lin stands in Chatham Square in Chinatown, New York City, United States. The base of the statue is inscribed with "Pioneer in the war against drugs" in English and Chinese. A wax statue of Lin also appeared in Madame Tussauds wax museum in London.
  More recently, Lin has appeared as a character in River of Smoke, the second novel in the Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh, which takes the Opium Wars as its setting to shed new light on a much-repressed history while offering a contemporary critique of globalisation. The novel takes place in 1838–1839, during which time Lin arrived in Canton and tensions escalated between the foreigners and the Chinese officials.
  Three films have been made on his role in the Opium Wars such that he is now one of the symbols of modern China's resistance to European imperialism.
  His grandson Commodore Lin Taizeng was an officer in the Beiyang Fleet and commanded one of China's two modern battleships purchased from Germany in the 1880s, Zhenyuan, during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). He committed suicide with an opium overdose after the ship ran aground and had to be abandoned. His descendants are living in Fuzhou, Fujian and surroundings, Jieyang (Puning), Meizhou, Guangdong and surroundings, various places in China and United States.
  Lin is also remembered for a couplet he wrote after his exile which reflects his stoic acceptance: "海納百川，有容乃大。壁立千仞，無欲則剛。" ("The sea accepts the waters of a hundred rivers; its tolerance results in its grandeur.  The cliff towers to a height of a thousand ren [unit of length roughly equal to a fathom]; its lack of desire gives it its resilience.")  The first line of the couplet was chosen as the motto for Chinese Wikipedia.
caption: The Lin Zexu Memorial in Fuzhou from 2004
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