Osmond Tiffany's The Canton Chinese

Osmond Tiffany (1823-?), The Canton Chinese, or the American's sojourn in the Celestial Empire (Boston : James Munroe & Co, 1849).

Let the texts speak for themselves:

Preface: "In May, 1844, I sailed in the barque Pioneer for Canton, and after a tedious passage arrived at Macao on the 22d of September following...We at once went to Canton...I determined to come in actual contact with the people, instead of remaining in the hongs and obtaining all my information from the numerous books which had been written on the Celestials." (p. vii)

"Voyages are proverbially tedious, even from the days of Columbus, and every commercial traveller who now-a-days embarks in a Liverpool packet, never fails to inform his friends or the reading world in general." (p. 2)

In Java, the proprietors of the mansion of a fort, "a very large, good-natured lady" "was quite alone in the little village...she had no female friend. She wished to hear the latest news from America, and told how much she had been amused, a few weeks previous, by hearing a genuine down-easter repeat some of his queer Yankee yarns. We sent on board for our spare books, for which she was very grateful." (p. 8)

In the English party in Java, "[t]here were two missionaries from Oxford, going to enlighten the Chinese on the thirty-nine articles, and two or three young merchants, going to win golden opinions among the Hongs of Canton." (p. 9)

"Their printing is done by means of wooden blocks, with the characters upon the surface, and the paper used, being thin, it is printed on one side only, and the fold is on the outer edge, sot aht the leaves do not have to be cut. Their books sell for a very small sum, and may vie in cheapness with the professedly cheap editions of the United Staes, for all those millions of people enjoy the pleasure of literature." (p. 87)

"One little [Chinese] boy if nt acqyaubtabce was quite remarkable for his matter-of-fact views; he had a little shop in China street, and I never sawy any one else in it. He employed himself in making paper blank books, and ruling them very neatly for the foreign merchants. He also made envelopes of approved form, and frequently came to the hongs for orders." (p. 193)

"Books are extremely cheap in China, and the 'sing song' books, as they are called, are more lively and entertaining than most others. All the plays represented can be found in print, and a complete collection would outnumber the British drama." (p. 211)

"He [the European visitor] has few newspapers to look into for local information; a straggling copy of the Bombay TImes comes along now and then, and he finds nothing in the Hong Kong Gazette except advertisements, and the fact that another ship has come into harbor. Canton, indeed, is the most stupid place in the East Indies; a stranger can only be interested in the native population, and the foreign resident only in business." (p. 213)

"The English and Americans are not the only representatives of foreign nations to be seen in that little oasis. There are Turks, Arabs, Jews and Parsees...the Parsees are the most remarkable of any of the races to be seen in Canton. They are as singular as the Chinese themselves, and as exclusive...are acknowledged to be the most accomplished merchants in Asia...they have no idea of devoting themselves to business so keenly as they do without some amusement. The give feasts and drink wine, and cheer vociferously, and are a jolly set. Their dress is peculiar, in summer a white robe fitting closely to the back and arms, with wide pantaloons of the same, or of red or blue. In the cold season they have dark colored coats cut in the same fashion, and edged with red cord. Their hair is shaved in part, leaving it growing at the temples, and all wear the most enormous moustaches, which may often be seen as one walks behind them...Many of them speak English well, and all are very courteous in their manners." (p. 244-246)

"The shops in Hong Kong are of the most wretched order, there being no rich natives on the island, and the Europeans being supplied from several shops kept by English, and in which the wares of London are retailed at enormous profits. But the ravening wolves most successful in Hong Kong are the hotel keepers." (p. 261)

Recent reading IV, with excerpts

1. Elizabeth Rosen, "Somalis don't climb mountains: the commercializatio of Mount Everest,"Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2007, pp. 147-168.

What is it about the city that might make a person more inclined toward extreme and adventure sport? For one thing, the city is a place of enforced anonymity where it is difficult to stand out becuase of the sheer numbers of people. We use certain codes to identify others; one of these is the work someone engages in, but more and more, it is not their work, but their play which identifies and separates people from one another. (Turner and Ash 14)

A hobby such as mountain climbing identifies the hobbyist as unique and perhaps as a whole host of other things as well: brave, crazy, strong, "macho." Such identification can potentially be very helpful in an urban environment where "impression management" may be at work. "Impression management" is a theory which supposes that people are always fostering impressions of themselves and are concerned with their appearances because "it is on the basis of appearances that persons will formulate their definitions of the situation" (Karp, Stone, and Yoels 102). That is, we attempt to appear to be that which will "win recognition and approval from others" (102). This on-going process of defining one's public persona, evaluating others', and deciphering the resultant relationships which develop is even more necessary in an urban money culture that iterates the need to (e)valuate things (Karp, Stone, and Yoels 30). (151)

2. Daniel Black, "Wearing out racial discourse: Tokyo street fashion and race as style," Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009, pp. 239-256.

"a more comprehensive consideration of these media forms shows that the utilization of racialized features in the design of these characters is actually quite varied, different racial features being associated with a variety of styles and genres...rather than suggesting a singular idealization of one set of racial attributes, then, such a use of racialized bodies figures a set of varied racial significances that make their related physical features appropriate in particular circumstances for creating differing styles." (248)

"In discussing the popularity of foreign models in Japanese advertising, Millie R. Creighton argues that, in addition to the perception that white foreigners are the standard of attractiveness and the bodies for which fashionable clothes are designed, gaijin also are considered to have bodies more appropriate for certain kinds of behavior. Sexuality, individualism, and self-indulgence (all useful qualities when encoruaging consumption) can be represented by gaijin, who are associated with such qualities, rather than Japanese, in whom such behavior has traditionally been frowned upon. In addition, kissing and nudity - (248) considered inappropriate public behavior in Japan - are associated with foreign models ("Imaging the Other in Japanese Advertising Campaigns" 142-45 [in Occidentalism: Images of the West])." (p. 249)

3. Joseph Bosco, "Young people's ghost stories in Hong Kong," Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 5, 2007, pp. 785-807.

"An anthropologist who must remain nameless) once said that even intellectuals do not know their culture's deep structure, and the more strongly they deny a hypothesis, the more sure one can be that the hypothesis touches on a fundamental culture opposition. Lévi-Strauss (Structural Anthropology, 273) made perhaps the infamous statement that conscious models are often poor explanations of social phenomena because 'they are not intend to explain the phenomena but to perpetuate them." (p. 801)

4. Geoff Wade, "Engaging the South: Ming China and Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century,"Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 51 (2008), pp. 578-638.

It directed me to Alexander Ong Eng Ann, "Contextualising the book-burning episode during the Ming invasion and occupation of Vietnam," in Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen (eds.), Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: The Ming Factor (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2008). I want to read this but no copy found in HKALL.

5. Justin Livingstone, "Ambivalent imperialism: the missionary rhetoric of Robert Boyd,"Literature & Theology, 2009, pp. 1-27.

"Boyd was part of a joing Foreign Mission Committee with the Church of Scotland, which visited Manchuria after the troubles in 1935-36 and again after the war in 1945." (p. 2)

"A 'book' does not just consist of written words, but is surrounded by other elements - the work's materiality, style of presentation, place of publication and introductory notes - that constitute its meaning. Images too routinely operate as powerful components of the 'paratext'. The photograph, as Elizabeth Edwards contends, is not a simple 'truth-revealing' mechanism, but a site of potential manipulation and meaning-manufacture." (p. 10. E. Edwards, Introduction, in his Anthropology and Photography, p. 4)

6. Takashi Sue, "Revelations of a mission paragraphy: Zhu Changwen (1039-1098) and the compilation of local gazetteers in Northern Song China," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 52 (2009), pp. 57-84.

Not an unfamiliar topic for I also worked on a medieval gazetteer 荊州記 a few years ago. And it drew my attention to Joseph R. Dennis's thesis "Writing, publishing, and reading local histories in Ming China" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minesota, 2004).

7. Lisa Lau, "Re-Orientalism: the perpetration and development of Orientalism by orientals,"Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2009), pp. 571-590.

It "discusses the perpetration of Orientalism in the arean of contemporary South Asian literature in English: no longer an Orientalism propagated by Occidentals, but ironically enought, by Orientals, albeit by diasporic Orientals" (p. 571, abstract)

It drew my attention to the concept of "The Third World Cosmopolitans" suggested by the Indian scholar Meenakshi Mukherjee which is used to describe the category of Indian writers "who are globally visible, who are taught in postcolonial classrooms the world over, and who are hailed in the review pages of Western journals as interpreters and authentic voices of the non-Western world [who] hardly ever include a writer from India who does not write in English." (Mukherjee's The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English (OUP, 2000)) (p. 574)

Recent readings III

Jonathan Westaway, "The German community in Manchester, middle-class culture and the development of mountaineering in Britain, 1850-1914," English Historical Review, Vol. CXXIV, No. 508, June 2009, pp 571-604.

Liping Bu, "Public health and modernisation: the first campaigns in China, 1915-1916," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 22, No. 2, August 2009, pp. 1-15.

Vijay Mishra, "Multiculturalism," Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 2009, pp. 1-.

David Bleich, "Globalization, translation, and the university tradition," New Literary History, vol. 39, pp. 497-517.

Michael Bérubé, "The utility of the arts and humanities," Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 23-40.

Paul Morris, Gerry Mc Clelland and Wong Ping Man, "Explaining Curriculum Change: Social Studies in Hong Kong," Comparative Education Reivew, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Feb., 1997), pp. 27-43.

Angela Schottenhammer (AKA Xiao Ting 蕭婷), "A buried past: the tomb inscription (muzhiming) and official biographies of Wang Chuzhi (863-923)," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 52 (2009), pp. 14-56.

Charles Withers, Rebekah Higgitt and Diarmid Finnegan, "Historical geographies of provincial science: themes in the setting and reception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Britain and Ireland, 1831-c.1939," British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 41, No. 3, Sept. 2008, pp. 385-415.

The Story of the First Scottish Printer in Hong Kong: Andrew Shortrede

The English-Chinese Cookery Book by J Dyer Ball

Following the previous post on The Tokiwa Cook Book 常磐西洋料理 (1904) by Mrs G. Binford of Yokohama, I am enjoing another interesting western cook book aiming at the natives by James Dyer Ball, The English-Chinese Cookery Book: containing 200 receipts in English and Chinese, published and printed by the celebrated English bookseller Kelly & Walsh in Hong Kong in 1890.

Ball had widely written a number of handy language textbooks for foreigners in Hong Kong, such as Cantonese Made Easy, How to Speak Cantonese and How to Write Chinese, and to him this spectacular cook book "is a new departure".

This new departure was the result of meeting the local demand as well as the publishing trend at the time. With a graceful Chinese title 西國品味求真, the bilingual cook book aims to Chinese cook in foreigners' houses. In his preface, Ball claims that the foreigners can simply show their cooks the Chinese translation of the English recipes, "and get what he wants, provided the Cook closely follows the instructions given".

To be continued.

China Mail, Hongkong Telegraph, Hongkong Daily Press, and South China Morning Post

"Of these four newspapers, the China Mail edited from Wyndham Street was the earliest, starting as a weekly on February 20, 1845. From February 1, 1867 onwards, it became an evening daily.

The first daily newpspaer in the Colony should be the Hongkong Daily Press, edited also from Wydham Street. It began its publication as a morning post on October, 1857.

For over a decade, the China Mail and the Hongkong Daily Press were the only English newspapers in the Colony after their rivals, the Friend of China and the Hongkong Gazette and the Hongkong Register ceased publication in Hong Kong in 1859 and 1863 respectivaly.

It was not until June 15, 1881 that a third newpspaper the Hongkong Telegraph, and evening daily, edited from 6 Pedder's Hill made its appearance.

On November 6, 1903, the morning daily, the South China Morning Post edited from 15-17 Connaught Road and since 1907 from Des Voeux Road was also in print.

Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the British colony of Hong Kong had altogether four English newspapers."

Lam Man-sum, “Hong Kong and China's reform and revolutionary movements: an analytical study of the reports of four Hong Kong English newspapers, 1895-1912” (Unpublished MPhil dissertation, University of Hong Kong, 1984), p. 1.

Recent reading IV, with excerpts

Elizabeth Rosen, "Somalis don't climb mountains: the commercializatio of Mount Everest," Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2007, pp. 147-168.

What is it about the city that might make a person more inclined toward extreme and adventure sport? For one thing, the city is a place of enforced anonymity where it is difficult to stand out becuase of the sheer numbers of people. We use certain codes to identify others; one of these is the work someone engages in, but more and more, it is not their work, but their play which identifies and separates people from one another. (Turner and Ash 14)

A hobby such as mountain climbing identifies the hobbyist as unique and perhaps as a whole host of other things as well: brave, crazy, strong, "macho." Such identification can potentially be very helpful in an urban environment where "impression management" may be at work. "Impression management" is a theory which supposes that people are always fostering impressions of themselves and are concerned with their appearances because "it is on the basis of appearances that persons will formulate their definitions of the situation" (Karp, Stone, and Yoels 102). That is, we attempt to appear to be that which will "win recognition and approval from others" (102). This on-going process of defining one's public persona, evaluating others', and deciphering the resultant relationships which develop is even more necessary in an urban money culture that iterates the need to (e)valuate things (Karp, Stone, and Yoels 30). (151)

Daniel Black, "Wearing out racial discourse: Tokyo street fashion and race as style," Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009, pp. 239-256.

"a more comprehensive consideration of these media forms shows that the utilization of racialized features in the design of these characters is actually quite varied, different racial features being associated with a variety of styles and genres...rather than suggesting a singular idealization of one set of racial attributes, then, such a use of racialized bodies figures a set of varied racial significances that make their related physical features appropriate in particular circumstances for creating differing styles." (248)

"In discussing the popularity of foreign models in Japanese advertising, Millie R. Creighton argues that, in addition to the perception that white foreigners are the standard of attractiveness and the bodies for which fashionable clothes are designed, gaijin also are considered to have bodies more appropriate for certain kinds of behavior. Sexuality, individualism, and self-indulgence (all useful qualities when encoruaging consumption) can be represented by gaijin, who are associated with such qualities, rather than Japanese, in whom such behavior has traditionally been frowned upon. In addition, kissing and nudity - (248) considered inappropriate public behavior in Japan - are associated with foreign models ("Imaging the Other in Japanese Advertising Campaigns" 142-45 [in Occidentalism: Images of the West])." (p. 249)

Joseph Bosco, "Young people's ghost stories in Hong Kong," Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 40, No. 5, 2007, pp. 785-807.

"An anthropologist who must remain nameless) once said that even intellectuals do not know their culture's deep structure, and the more strongly they deny a hypothesis, the more sure one can be that the hypothesis touches on a fundamental culture opposition. Lévi-Strauss (Structural Anthropology, 273) made perhaps the infamous statement that conscious models are often poor explanations of social phenomena because 'they are not intend to explain the phenomena but to perpetuate them." (p. 801)

Geoff Wade, "Engaging the South: Ming China and Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 51 (2008), pp. 578-638.

It directed me to Alexander Ong Eng Ann, "Contextualising the book-burning episode during the Ming invasion and occupation of Vietnam," in Geoff Wade and Sun Laichen (eds.), Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: The Ming Factor (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2008). I want to read this but no copy found in HKALL.

Justin Livingstone, "Ambivalent imperialism: the missionary rhetoric of Robert Boyd,"Literature & Theology, 2009, pp. 1-27.

"Boyd was part of a joing Foreign Mission Committee with the Church of Scotland, which visited Manchuria after the troubles in 1935-36 and again after the war in 1945." (p. 2)

"A 'book' does not just consist of written words, but is surrounded by other elements - the work's materiality, style of presentation, place of publication and introductory notes - that constitute its meaning. Images too routinely operate as powerful components of the 'paratext'. The photograph, as Elizabeth Edwards contends, is not a simple 'truth-revealing' mechanism, but a site of potential manipulation and meaning-manufacture." (p. 10. E. Edwards, Introduction, in his Anthropology and Photography, p. 4)

Takashi Sue, "Revelations of a mission paragraphy: Zhu Changwen (1039-1098) and the compilation of local gazetteers in Northern Song China," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 52 (2009), pp. 57-84.

Not an unfamiliar topic for I also worked on a medieval gazetteer 荊州記 a few years ago. And it drew my attention to Joseph R. Dennis's thesis "Writing, publishing, and reading local histories in Ming China" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minesota, 2004).

Lisa Lau, "Re-Orientalism: the perpetration and development of Orientalism by orientals," Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (2009), pp. 571-590.

It "discusses the perpetration of Orientalism in the arean of contemporary South Asian literature in English: no longer an Orientalism propagated by Occidentals, but ironically enought, by Orientals, albeit by diasporic Orientals" (p. 571, abstract)

It drew my attention to the concept of "The Third World Cosmopolitans" suggested by the Indian scholar Meenakshi Mukherjee which is used to describe the category of Indian writers "who are globally visible, who are taught in postcolonial classrooms the world over, and who are hailed in the review pages of Western journals as interpreters and authentic voices of the non-Western world [who] hardly ever include a writer from India who does not write in English." (Mukherjee's The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English (OUP, 2000)) (p. 574)