Category: Yellow Peril

• The "Opium" Kidnapping

  This theory claimed that Chinese laundries and related urban spaces used mysterious "steam," fumes, or chemical vapors to incapacitate passersby and pull them into hidden systems of confinement, addiction, or servitude. It emerged from a wider anti-Chinese panic that linked laundries, opium dens, interracial contact, and urban vice. The surviving record shows extensive racist folklore around Chinese businesses and opium, but the specific kidnapping-by-steam narrative belongs primarily to the history of urban legend, yellow-peril propaganda, and moral panic.