The smoking of pure opium, fueled in part by the 1729 ban on madak, which had at first effectively exempted pure opium as a potentially medicinal product, becomes more popular as the eighteenth century progresses.

The smoking of pure opium, described in 1736 by Huang Shujing, the first Imperial High Commissioner to Taiwan, involves a pipe made from bamboo rimmed with silver, stuffed with palm slices and hair, fed by a clay bowl in which a globule of molten opium is held over the flame of an oil lamp.

This elaborate procedure, requiring the maintenance of pots of opium at just the right temperature for a globule to be scooped up with a needle-like skewer for smoking, forms the basis of a craft of "paste-scooping" by which servant girls can become prostitutes as the opportunity arises.