April 1995

During the night of November 21–22, 1928 a steamer moored at the docks in the Chinese section of Shanghai, and a group of harbor coolies, flanked by a squad of thirty armed guards, began to unload chests onto the dock. Alerted by a tip some weeks before that the chests would contain a large consignment of opium, the civilian police agents of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau were already concealed among the warehouses nearby. At the blast of a whistle, the police agents ran forward, shouting out their identity as police officers and warning the opium smugglers to surrender.