Tricked, coerced, or forced someone into a difficult or undesirable situation, especially into involuntary service.
From Shanghai, China, where in the 1800s ships' crews would trick, drug, or kidnap men to work on ships bound for distant ports. The practice was so common that the city's name became synonymous with this crime.
Shanghai was literally the home port of this crime—desperate sailors would grab drunk men in bars, drug them, and they'd wake up on a ship heading across the Pacific. It was so infamous that the city name became a verb describing any form of coercion.
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