When the bells of the nineteenth century rang, the Qing Dynasty continued to plunder the people's fat and people's anointing with harsh governments at home, and isolated itself from the progressive trend of the industrial revolution in a closed posture externally.
However, what is less known is that before the British robbers woke up the dreams of the Qing rulers with their cannons, a girl from the countryside of Guangdong had already stepped out of the country and crossed the ocean to set foot on the land of the United States.
Who the hell is this girl? How did she leave the backward and closed Qing Dynasty and travel thousands of miles to reach the other side of the ocean? What happened to her? Please listen to the author's details.
The Kahn brothers' wishful thinking
The Kahn brothers were luxury merchants from the United States, who initially imported French luxury goods and sold them to american upper class people at high prices, but the overly expensive prices often discouraged the middle class, which was the main consumer group.
In order to expand profits, the Kahn brothers set their sights on crafts produced by Qing dynasty craftsmen, including folding fans, snuff bottles, chessboards, silk boxes and other crafts that were often beautifully made enough to satisfy the vanity of middle-class consumers, and at a fairly low price.
After stepping onto Chinese soil through the Guangzhou port, they met a plainly dressed and beautiful-looking girl in the countryside.
This girl is in the cardamom age, although she was born in poverty, but her skin is like gelatin, when she smiles, her eyebrows flow with the shyness and gentleness of oriental women, and the three-inch golden lotus that is tightly bound by the foot wrap makes her walk sexy and unique.
Such a living, oriental style and price-for-money "goods" may be more useful than those exquisite Chinese crafts.
The Kahn brothers' keen business acumen made them quickly realize this, so they immediately went to the girl's parents and asked to buy her.
The Kahn brothers snapped the wishful thinking that the girl could become a gold medal carrier under careful packaging, attracting more orders for crafts by showing consumers the real Chinese cultural customs.
The poor masses who were struggling on the line of life and death at that time were not uncommon for a food vendor to sell their daughters, and these backgrounds undoubtedly provided favorable conditions for the Kahn brothers' criminal behavior of buying and selling people.
In the end, the Kahn brothers successfully bought the girl named "Mei Afang" at a low price and brought her back to the United States, and Mei Afang became the first Chinese woman on record to immigrate to the United States.
The American Wanderings of a Qing Dynasty Girl
Mei Afang left her homeland and crossed the ocean to a strange country, she originally thought that she could get rid of poverty and live a new life, but what awaited her was another tragic experience full of suffering, humiliation and helplessness.
After disembarking in New York, the ignorant girl immediately began her career as a "cargo carrier" under the enslavement of the Kahn brothers.
The American people, who were confined to the American continent, began to look up at the vast world with curiosity, yearning for the mysterious country on the eastern end of the horizon, tirelessly inquiring about ancient China from documents and navigators' accounts.
Although Americans are so keen on imagination that they describe oriental women as graceful and colorful, no American has ever seen a living Chinese girl.
This situation provided an excellent opportunity for the exhibition of the Kahn brothers, who fabricated a distinguished title of "daughter of the prince of the Qing Dynasty" for Mei Afang, and then used furniture and calligraphy and paintings purchased from China to arrange the exhibition hall in Chinese style, and carefully dressed Mei Afang and placed it in the exhibition hall.
The presence of the "Lady of the Orient" caused a sensation in New York City, and the crowd of people who came to visit was endless, almost breaking the threshold of the exhibition hall.
In order to prevent Mei Afang from escaping, the Kahn brothers set up a solid barbed wire fence outside the exhibition hall to enclose her like an animal.
In order to satisfy the curiosity of the visitors thoroughly, the Kahn brothers also stipulated that for only 50 cents, visitors could approach Mei to look at and stroke her body.
In the process of approaching, Mei Afang's particularly eye-catching three-inch golden lotus surprised the visitors, and they were amazed and sighed at the strangeness of the oriental woman.
Some people rudely asked the girl to take off her shoes, hoping to carefully observe the specific morphological structure of the wrapped feet.
Some people also asked Mei Afang to get up and step to watch the effect of walking, and the girl numbly repeated people's requests, and tears were already ripples in her eyes.
Mei Afang's "carrying goods" was successful, the Kahn brothers set off a "Chinese fever" in New York, New York ladies competed to imitate Mei Afang's style of dressing, and gentlemen exchanged Chinese handicrafts as the basic etiquette.
Under the rush of everyone, Chinese handicrafts were swept away, and the Kahn brothers made a lot of money. Since then, they have continued to bring girls to major cities in the United States for "traveling exhibitions."
Everywhere she went, Mei Wasfang was ruthlessly manipulated by shameless businessmen, exercising her mission as a display object to satisfy people's curiosity.
But the freshness of the consumer quickly disappeared, the exhibition began to become a doorwitness, and the Kahn brothers saw that Mei Afang's value had been squeezed out, so they ruthlessly abandoned it and transferred it to circus owner Barnum.
Although everyone has changed, the capitalists' goal of speculation and profit and the cruel nature of exploiting surplus value will not change. Barnum also treated Mayafang as a slave without dignity, doing everything in his power to exploit her economic value.
Under Barnum, Mei Afang's status was reduced from an oriental noblewoman to a circus actress, and she was forced to participate frequently in performance projects and exhibitions within the circus.
What is even more indignant is that in order to make Mei Afang regain attention, Barnum also faked the indecent news of the Siamese actors in the circus proposing to Mei Afang, which caused a sensation as soon as the news was published, and the sharp increase in traffic made Barnum get a considerable income from her.
Mei's last public appearance was in 1850, thirteen years after she left her hometown, when the girl was still tirelessly hosting the circus audience.
After that, Mei Afang did not know the end, and some people speculated that Mei Afang had been abandoned by the circus and died on the street in poverty and illness; There are also kind people who wish her to marry Chinese laborers in Chinatown and live a stable life.