It is here, in 1919 in Shanghai, that he met Eric A. Later, after the war, Fairbairn would create and train a s pecial anti-riot squad for the SMP and many of the tactics and techniques developed here are still in use today.
This was a golden age for the Green Gang triad, collaborating with the senior Chinese officer in the French gendarmerie Huang Jinrong in taking over the whole opium trade which now made more money than ever. Ten years later, in 1917, the last legal opium shop was closed. The same year he was stabbed a dozen times by members of a Chinese separatist gang and left to die in the back streets of Shangha, but luckily he managed to survive this brutal experience. Around this time more than 10% of the Chinese were smoking opium. About 15% of China’s crop acreage was dedicated to opium while 20 years later twice as much, a change which would greatly diminish the need for British export of opium to China.Īs a result of the initiative taken a year earlier, the Shanghai Municipal Council stopped issuing licenses to opium dens in 1907, the very year of Fairbairn’s arrival. Of course as with any city, and in particular port cities, gambling and prostitution was also common and it was by some called the vice capital of the world. (For more on this see the 1st Opium War & the 2nd Opium War). This increased dramatically after opium trade once again became illegal in 1906, after having been forced upon and “legalized” in China by the British Empire.
Here he spent much of his time practicing various forms of martial arts with Japanese and Korean fighters, practiced drilling with the Royal Marines and fighting Japanese Army troops with bayonet.įairbairn left the military in 1907 and instead joined the Shanghai Municipal Police, serving in one of the red light districts, then considered to be one of the most dangerous places in the world. Shanghai was a one of the most important centres for the opium trade, the precursor of today’s heroin and cocaine trade and just about as sinister, with related crime and well-armed gang activity. He was deployed to serve in Japanese-occupied Korea already in 1903, then at the real age of 18. Fairbairn joined the British Marines at the age of 15, using faked documents stating that he was of legal age, i.e. 18.
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