At the front door of Parliament House, a flower bed. Its centre shows the Scottish flag - the blue in Scottish bluebells, plastic, made in Hong Kong, the saltire picked out in bits of silver cash. This is the flag that flew on the ships of Dr Jardine and Mr Mathieson when they peddled opium in the Pearl River Estuary. Let there be a silver skull in the top quadrant of the saltire.
Silver was the only commodity the Chinese wanted from the West, so when the Peruvian mines ran out, a new need was created for them. A patch of Remembrance Day poppies at the bottom right corner of the flower bed represents Hong Kong Island.
In the 1830s the opium trade was going so well that Jardine and Mathieson were taking on all the tonnage they could. A model of the Psyche, bottom left, sailing towards Hong Kong : it was converted from a slaver on the Atlantic run to an opium clipper in the South China Sea.
When he retired to Scotland, Mathieson bought the Isle of Lewis. Not long after that, its inhabitants were threatened with famine by the potato blight. Mathieson bought enough grain to feed the islanders, and that earned him a baronetcy. A patch of potatoes top left represents Lewis. This may also remind MSPs of the Tory parliamentarian who suggested that Hong Kong residents with right of abode whowished to migrate to the United Kingdom in 1997 be sent to a Scottish island.
Top right, a black marbel stele inscribed with the letter from Governor Lin of Canton to Queen Victoria. The inscription is in Chinese characters, in the Governor's calligraphy. There is no need for an English translation since (a) the message did not get through, or was not acted upon, and (b) every Scot will know it better than the Declaration of Arbroath :
'… Let us ask, where is your conscience ? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden in your country ; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries - how much less to China ! Of all that China exports to foreign countries, there is not a single thing which is not of benefit when resold : all are beneficial. Is there a single article from China which has done any harm to foreign countries ? Take tea and rhubarb, for example ; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day without them. If China cuts off these benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive ? …'
Behind the flower bed stands a very large billboard. The message on the hoarding will of course change from time to time, but the first might appear as follows : an image of Monument Valley, Arizona ; on the valley floor, tens of thousands of coolies are smoking hookahs. The legend reads : WARNING : WELCOME TO THE BIG COUNTRY.