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Wang Qingfu comic in the May 26, 1877 edition of Harpers Weekly
If you have never heard of Wang Qingfuqi, the people around you are roughly the same.
Before 2013, before the University of Hong Kong Press published this English biography of Wang Qingfu, he was also little known among Americans except for a few scholars of Asian-American history. Even most Chinese Americans at that time did not know who he was, and the only thing people knew was the fact that he lived in the United States most of his adult life and was an important figure in the Chinese.
Text / Su Sigang
When I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s, textbook American history was primarily about caucasian men. The composition of the American people includes women and many immigrant groups, and textbooks always pass by for their various contributions. However, in the decades since, however, that has changed completely. People have realized that history is originally more magnificent, and textbooks tell them only part of it, and they are beginning to demand a more complete picture.
The history of the Americas is a history of ethnic immigrants, and interest in the past of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other ethnic Americans has soared today. This, in turn, opened up many opportunities for scholars to explore the lives of Americans who until recently failed to gain attention.
Because of this, Wang Qingfu has become a figure that has attracted attention. In the second half of the 19th century, he was probably the most famous Chinese in North America. However, in 1898, with his death, he soon disappeared completely from reality. When I first heard about him and then began to study his life, I quickly realized that the past history was extremely unfair to him.
As can be seen from the data, he is an outstanding person. In his time, Americans were extremely prejudiced against Chinese immigrants, restricting them from immigrating to the United States and denying their American citizenship, while he fought for various rights for the Chinese with extraordinary wisdom and unremitting struggle. I firmly believe that he deserves to be appreciated by more people than just a few scholars.
Tracing Wang Qingfu's work trajectory and life trajectory is a chore, but I enjoy it. As a result of my diligent research, I found tens of thousands of articles about his activities, including hundreds of articles he had written. I also unearthed letters written to him and to others in various archives across the country. What used to make me feel the most "sad" was that I never found a picture of himself that could be determined to be him, only some portraits of him. Fortunately, luck later made me laugh. Wang Qingfu once attended Bucknell University for a year, and once, while looking for information in the university archives, I pulled out a picture of him, which showed him as a young man. That photograph became the key to identifying several other photographs from several other private collections. Today, the world not only knows what Wang Qingfu once did, but also knows what he looks like.
Another obstacle that crossed my mind was how to find information about his later life, and I couldn't do anything about it. I know that in 1898, he returned to China, where he died, and nothing else is known. His life during that period is not recorded in English sources. Fortunately, during a search for Chinese on the Internet, I found a wonderful article about him, written by a historian named Wang Fan, and soon after I learned that he was the grandson of Wang Qingfu. I managed to get in touch with Wang Fan, who generously provided me with several hundred-year-old family letters, all of which were letters written by Wang Qingfu to his son in his later years. To me, these are priceless. Through them, we can know what Wang Qingfu was doing and thinking in his lifetime. In the process of communication, Wang Fan and I established a trans-Pacific friendship, and I hope this friendship can accompany me for the rest of my life!
Wang Qingfu while studying in the United States
I was so lucky because the Chinese publishers chose Lu Xinyu to translate Wang Qingfu's biography into Chinese. Mr. Lo is a veteran translator who already has many translations in his name. However, because many of the vocabulary used in this book are derived from 19th-century documents, some of the expressions are difficult to find today, and I do have concerns that some of the difficulties will be difficult for someone as skilled as others. We agreed: a cooperative response. In some of the special passages of the book, we exchanged views by e-mail, which lasted for a whole year, and I tried my best to answer all his doubts. With this hand in hand, I firmly believe that we get the perfect result. Even if my Chinese limited achievements, I can still feel that his translation is a very faithful reproduction of the original text.
Through reading a lot of Wang Qingfu's articles and the books he has read, carefully studying the evaluation of him in his lifetime and after his death, the people who adored and criticized him, exploring the path he had traveled with several of his descendants, and flipping through his letters, I often couldn't help but laugh secretly, and the feelings of admiration and appreciation would arise spontaneously. During my commitment to the above events, I seemed to have lived with Wang Qingfu for many months. In fact, he was already ancient more than half a century before I was born. It is almost certain that if not, such a passionate and colorful person would have been more than happy to associate with.
Photo of Wang Qingfu
I did a lot of research to write this book. I must admit that I have never heard of Wang Qingfu before. His name appeared on a list of the most famous Chinese-Americans, so I was fortunate enough to know about it for the first time. The list is listed almost exclusively of 20th-century figures, many of whom are still fairly active today. Wang Qingfu was given the title of "early civil rights activist who threw himself into the rebellion against the Chinese Exclusion Act." I used to think that in the 19th century, the Chinese community was more or less in a timid and rat-like squat posture, did not make any resistance to the aforementioned hateful and devastating bill, and was willing to go against the grain, and few Chinese Americans became famous resistance fighters in the United States. Therefore, I am determined to learn more about this Mr. Wang and his achievements.
Later, I found that students who studied the history and politics of the United States and Asia had not forgotten Wang Qingfu, and in different academic journals, I had the privilege of seeing sporadic accounts of his involvement in certain things. For example, Chen Guowei examines the before and after of Wang Qingfu's appearance in New York; Zhang Qingsong discusses Wang Qingfu's political activities and briefly introduces his religious beliefs; Xu Xuan analyzes wang Qingfu's articles for various publications, and so on.
However, no one has conducted horizontal and vertical research on Wang Qingfu's life. There are some clues about his early experiences, but his later experiences in China are blank. What is deeply disturbing is that scholars have widely accepted what Wang Qingfu himself said about his own superficial things. Wang Qingfu always speaks without a cover, and from time to time he pulls out a small lie, which means that scholars have intentionally or unintentionally put on many details related to the facts!
Wang Qingfu left behind a huge number of signed articles behind him—mostly in English, which he mastered when he was doing academic research—and now they have become literary and historical materials, as well as tens of thousands of newspaper articles documenting his deeds. Bringing together these articles, we can see the rough outline of his involvement in public activities. In sharp contrast, written information about the character of others is relatively scarce. The small number of autographed letters he wrote to his son remained in the hands of his descendants for hundreds of years (I believe no scholar has known about them before), and through these letters people were able to get a glimpse of his character. However, items such as diaries and notes have disappeared, very few photographs of him have been confirmed to be true, and even fewer literary and historical documents have been written about his life in China.
In any case, based on the available information, it is clear that most of the things about Wang Qingfu are indeed eye-catching. He is passionate, comprehensible, extremely intelligent, and his analysis of problems is to the point. His writing is sharp and clear-cut, and writing in a non-native language is no easy feat. Not only is he arrogant, but he's also particularly confident, and he's just right about how to draw people's attention to himself, and it's all instinctive, and his weird behavior has also brought him more public attention. His high-profile behavior, exports, and witty language are the object of imitation. The gimmicks and novel scenes he created on his own made him the subject of numerous reports in newspapers and magazines. As a political activist, he had lofty faith in his pursuits and was tirelessly obsessed with his cause. Among them, the commitment to Chinese obtaining full people's livelihood rights and political rights in the United States has become his most important and ultimate pursuit.
The Chinese-American writer Xiao Wan'an's assessment of him is unforgettable: he is an "extremely intelligent person who is good at digging up news and stirring up public opinion." These are true portrayals of him, but they are far from summing up his life. In the United States in the second half of the 19th century, Wang Qingfu belonged to a very small minority in the Chinese because he could write articles in English and give lectures in English. Undoubtedly, he is the most frequent Chinese among the wide variety of newspaper articles. He spoke out for the views and aspirations of his Chinese compatriots, spreading the Chinese to the increasingly prejudiced American public. Compared to most of his fellow citizens living in the Chinatown community, he was different from them in many important ways, and in fact, he felt above them.
Nevertheless, he devoted himself to the aforementioned affairs with great resignation. He cut off his braids before most Chinese, wore as little traditional Chinese clothing as possible, and became a naturalized American citizen. Not only that, but he is also very good at interacting with Americans. In the United States, Chinese that can achieve this level are certainly rare.
In the last decades of the 19th century, Americans' impression of Chinese deteriorated markedly and dramatically, as did some politically Chinese among their compatriots. Wang Qingfu believes that the main reason for this worrying situation is the lack of understanding between China and the United States, and he blames the main responsibility on american missionaries in China. He believes that it was the contemptuous, self-serving missionaries who brought back to the United States reports of depravity Chinese that incited the spark of racism.
He wanted the Americans to see Chinese exactly the same as he saw in his own eyes. He has spent decades giving countless lectures across the United States and writing articles published in Harpers Weekly, Metropolis, North American Review, and prestigious publications such as The New York Sun and The New York Herald, with the aim of debunking the clichés that have led to the legalization of anti-China proposals. These proposals included the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was approved in 1882, and the Keeley Act, which was approved a decade later, which extended the validity of the Chinese Exclusion Act and made the restrictions more onerous.
He always emphasized in his articles and lectures that there were commonalities between Chinese and Americans, and that he always explained differences sympathetically. Americans believe in Christianity, and with the help of Christianity, he will propagate the basic ideas that make up Buddhism and Confucius in a way that Americans are familiar with. Americans find Chinese lifestyle mysterious, and to dispel this notion, he wrote articles to guide Americans through Chinatown, such as a careful introduction to the kitchens in Chinese restaurants, detailing how laundresses run laundromats, Chinese how to play cards, make tea, get a haircut, make beds, and so on. He also introduced the "chowder" to Americans — he was the first to do so with the help of the media — and explained what Chinese ate and what they didn't eat, and rats and suckling dogs must appear on the list of things Chinese not to eat.
Wang Qingfu is a loyal believer in the CONCEPT of democracy in the United States, and anti-China prejudice cannot frighten him at all. Chinese in American society, which was ostracized to the point of being inferior, was considered inevitable, but Wang Qingfu did not accept this concept. He was convinced of the ideas of justice, equality, and liberation, and he constantly stirred the nerves of Americans to put the concept of democracy into action, because on the one hand, Americans willfully believe in democracy, on the other hand, whenever they encounter Chinese, they will completely forget the concept of democracy. Wang founded the first Chinese Electoral Association in the United States; he helped define concepts during American debates on the "Chinese question"; through various speeches and articles, he constantly pressured the repeal of the restrictive provisions of the abhorrent Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted the citizenship rights of Chinese; and he also attended a hearing on a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives— perhaps the first time Chinese testified in the U.S. Congress. Through the above activities, Wang Qingfu has left many people far behind, the first is the Chinese who immigrated to the United States after him and are subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the other is the Chinese who are already in the United States and refuse to naturalize or cannot be naturalized.
Wang Qingfu was the first user of the English word "Chinese American", the name he gave to two newspapers he founded himself. In addition, and more importantly, he believes that the meaning of the word can be accurately defined as a Chinese compatriot in the United States. A pioneer of what he called the "Chinese Americanization Movement," he was convinced that cultural adaptability must lead to the acquisition of political rights, and he demanded that his compatriots cut their braids, accept American clothing and lifestyle, throw away opium and gambling, and learn English. However, in his ongoing efforts to eliminate the shortcomings of Chinatowns across the United States, he has touched the interests of powerful underground forces, often subject to verbal and personal attacks by some of his compatriots. He advocates acceptance of American assimilation, and his claims are not even fully agreed upon by the majority of law-abiding Chinese, who are either not interested in accepting the American way of life or are incapable of doing so.
It can be said that Wang Qingfu, like most overseas Chinese, has a deep affection for China, and he also has high hopes for China's future. He was one of Sun Yat-sen's earliest supporters, and we can almost certainly know him. He favored the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of a republic, a perception he formed long before Sun Yat-sen. He even hatched an unlikely plan: to create a revolutionary society in Chicago Chinese and launch an armed assault on the mainland through the South China Sea Islands. However, he did not live to 1911 and failed to witness the overthrow of the Qing regime by Sun Yat-sen and his compatriots in reality.
Wang Qingfu spent his life fighting for the rights of the Chinese in the United States for the livelihood of the people, and finally failed--the anti-China political forces at that time were too strong, and he alone was doomed to achieve nothing. Nevertheless, the lectures he gave, the articles he wrote, and the various activities he engaged in undoubtedly helped the American public change its attitude toward Chinese. He used to try passionately, diligently, and continuously. The willingness of the "Chinese Yankees" to passively accept second-class citizenship and will not resist has become an inherent concept of the world. And he dared to try, breaking this stereotype with facts. In the Chinese in the United States, Wang Qingfu was a leader and a brave fighter, and although he was defeated in battle, he deserved both titles.
Wang Qingfu's leadership style is not only reflected in the academic aspect, but also in the political aspect. His critique of racial discrimination is a no-brainer, and in his time, no Chinese-American writer can match him in terms of eloquence. When describing the American Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that people should be judged on their "inner character," and as early as 70 years ago, Wang Qingfu publicly said: "It is enough to examine the character and physique of all those who apply to become American citizens." ”
Wang Qingfu also interacted with Chinese and Americans, and in the end, his relationship with the outside world was not very harmonious. In the United States, although the Chinese who followed him were willing to accept his leadership, many refused to accept his views and hated him to the bone. Some open-minded white Americans are particularly fond of him, and he can socialize with them freely, and he will immediately turn his face when he encounters white racists who discriminate against Chinese. He was a maverick throughout his life, and in his dealings with Chinese and Americans, he often felt the same ideas and serious differences coexisting in symbiosis. After living in the United States for so many years, he changed not only his appearance, not only cut off his braids and put on American clothing, but also accepted the ideas and laws of the United States from the depths of his heart. He had acquiesced to his new identity during his lifetime—he was the first to adopt and define the term "Chinese American" and the first "Chinese American" to live up to his name.
Wang Qingfu's life is relatively unclear, so it is particularly worth excavating in order to share with the world, and his many contributions to future generations are also worthy of understanding and appreciation by more people. I admire Wang Qingfu and his achievements in life. I would especially like to see that, with the advent of this book, there will be no more admirers like me.
(This article is excerpted from Su Sigang's book Out of the Empire: The Story of Wang Qingfu, authorized by Houlang Shanghai Culture Publishing House.) ）
| of Humanities and Social Sciences Translated book | Non-fiction
Out of the Empire: The Story of Wang Qingfu
[Beauty] by Su Sigang
Translated by Lu Xinyu
Houlang Shanghai Culture Publishing House
March 2022
This book tells the wonderful life of Wang Qingfu, a Chinese civil rights activist in the United States, who fought tirelessly for equal rights for his compatriots. At the end of the 19th century, the U.S. economy declined, unemployment was high, some Americans blamed this on Chinese laborers, the Chinese exclusion force gradually rose, and the U.S. Congress finally passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. In order to defend the rights and interests of the Chinese people, Wang Qingfu published articles in major newspapers and periodicals in the United States, gave speeches everywhere, openly debated with anti-China figures, actively promoted traditional Chinese culture, and corrected the prejudice of American society against the Chinese. He was a pioneer of the Chinese affirmative action movement in the United States and was known as the "Martin Luther King Jr. of the Chinese".
Scott D. Seligman is an American writer and historian who studied history at Princeton University with a master's degree from Harvard University. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese and has lived in China for eight years. His major works include "Tang Dou", "Mei's Three Xiongs", "Chinese Business Etiquette" and so on.
Duty Editor | Little Fairy
Duty Editor-in-Chief | Zhang Ying
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