Afong Moy: The Museum and Commercialization of Chinese Bodies
By Angela Yon
Afong Moy – Commerical Orientalism
Due to America’s demand of Chinese goods, Captain Obear brought the first known Chinese woman Afong Moy aboard his ship the Washington to the United States as valuable cargo in 1834.
Merchants Francis and Nathaniel G. Carnes with Captain Benjamin Obear acquired Afong Moy from Guangzhou, China as a marketing strategy to exhibit her in order to help sell Chinese decorative merchandise goods to an eager American middle class. She was sold to serve as an advertising accoutrement alongside Chinese wares. The story is not clear due to China’s insulation and the confinement of Chinese women at the time - newspaper accounts and promotional materials explain that Obear reached an agreement with Afong Moy's “distinguished citizen" father in Guangzhou, China "residing in the suburbs of Canton (Guangzhou)." Obear received "large sums of money," from Moy's father to take her out of the country with the promise to bring his daughter home on the captain's next voyage to Guangzhou. The agreement specified Afong Moy would be away from China for about two years. However, there is no historical record that Afong Moy ever returned to China.
The image of the Chinese woman who was hidden from society equated to fantasy notions and exotic ideas from chinoiserie objects into Americans' collective consciousness. In patrician orientalism, the perceived Orient was one of exoticism, dignity, and revered history. The Carnes took advantage of this perception and promoted her beauty with a focus on her visual difference - her bound feet**(text note about bound feet) and clothing to market their goods. They established her as a lady of prominent rank.
The Carneses opened a public exhibition displaying ancient Chinese artifacts alongside Afong Moy with everyday Chinese imports to market them to the middle class. In the accompanying catalogue they featured an exotic personification of Afong Moy. Her fame quickly spread with the US tour not only through her presentations but also in newspaper articles, children’s magazines and even in poems.
EXHIBIT OF PERSONS
Human exhibit appearances were common as amusements and curiosities during the 19th century. Moy's appearances are not especially different in the context of other human
exhibits of the time. In 1810 Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman, one of the "Hottentot Venus," was put on display in Europe. In the US, Moy's contemporaries included Chang and Eng Bunker, known as the Siamese Twins, (Chinese conjoined twins brought to the United States from Thailand in 1829 by a British merchant), Black Hawk, a warrior and leader of the Sauk Tribe, and Joice Heth, an African-American slave woman who was billed as George Washington's wet nurse and hence the oldest living woman.
Saartjie Baartman
P. T. Barnum in 1835 featured the display of an elderly Black woman named Joice Heth, who he claimed was the 161-year-old enslaved former nurse of George Washington, publicizing her as “The Greatest Natural and National Curiosity in the World.” He claimed doctors “examined this Living skeleton and the documents accompanying her, and all invariably pronounce her to be as represented 161 years of age!” This questionable verification was a common strategy later used by Barnum to assure the public of his subject’s authenticity but also to lure audiences to pay admission to view and judge the genuineness of the spectacle for themselves.
imagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joice_Heth#/media/File:Joice_heth_poster.jpeg
Joice Heth
Polygenesis and the “American School” of ethnology was very popular among naturalists, anatomists, and ethnographers with the shared belief: humans were composed of five identified races of humankind - Ethiopian (i.e., African), Native American, Caucasian, Malay, and Mongolian, thus 5 separate species. Polygenesis was most widespread during this period in the 19th century.
The visual ordering and hierarchy of racial identity contributed a profitable piece in commercializing the spectacle. This is noticeable in the descriptions of persons on display such as Afong Moy in the identification of her as "a specimen of oriental magnificence." The description below on the juxtaposition of Chinese women's bound feet and African women's calves in the public's imagination reduces them to body parts. The lioness reduces Afong Moy to an animal. Science and spectacle were interdependent activities.
“Her ladyship has been imported expressly as a 'lioness,' for
exhibition. The feet of the Chinese are fair, are the points of beauty, as the calf
of the leg is with the belles of Africa" -New Hampshire Patriot, November 24,
1834 (Carpenter)
Merchant Philip Hone in his description of Afong Moy’s 1834 appearance described her as a figure on a Chinese decorative object with no intellect:
“Her appearance is exactly the same as the figures on tea chests a large Head, small features and a countenance devoid of expression . . . from want of Education . . . she is deficient in ideas.”
The association of Afong Moy with an inert image on a tea chest was very common. Most Americans envisioned the Chinese from illustrations on their tea chests, china ware, fans, lacquer, or wallpaper.
image
commode attributed to Pierre Langlois 1763
Men in the audience tended to obsess on her small feet, as “anatomical fascination, moral disgust, or erotic pleasure.” Women were intrigued with her feet, but the superficial Chinese home furnishings and decorative objects also drew them. Men and women both intently consumed her performance but for very different reasons.
One writer was positively enamored by Afong Moy:
“At length her ladyship . . . presented herself in the rich costume of a Chinese lady—an outward mantle of blue silk, sumptuously embroidered, and yellow silk pantalets from beneath the ample folds of which peeped her tiny little feet, not over four inches in length. . . . Her head has a profusion of jet black hair, combed upward from her fine forehead and brunette temples, and filled on the top with bouquets of artificial flowers and large gold pins, which dress we suppose will be henceforward quite the ton. . . . Her features are pleasing, her forehead high and protuberant, and her face round and full with languishing black eyes placed with the peculiar obliquity of the outer angle, which characterizes the Mongolian variety of the human race. . . . She then walked without seeming difficulty to her cushioned chair . . . and there sat in . . . quiet repose for us to gaze at.”
“It was odd “to find a mainstream newspaper in the 1830s offering this much graphic description of a young female form. Of course, he could justify his suspiciously thorough physical description by pointing out that the extreme rarity of a Chinese person in America—and a lady, no less— demanded that extreme attention be paid to detail. Despite his scientific-seeming insight that the ‘peculiar obliquity’ of her eyes ‘characterizes the Mongolian variety of the human race,’ his interest in the Chinese Lady was almost certainly erotic in nature. Yet by camouflaging his mildly pornographic description in the garb of ethnographic observation, he could elude moral censorship.”
Afong Moy functioned simultaneously as entertainment and enlightenment. The audience visually consumed her for their own thoughts and wants. They equated her presence to the Chinese decorative objects they bought for their purpose and possessions.
CHINESE MUSEUM - CHANGING PERCEPTIONS
Following the lucrative success of the Carnes and Obear’s exhibition of Afong Moy with her images and catalog publications to sell Chinese goods, trader Nathaniel Dunn published Ten Thousand Chinese Things in 1838 to accompany the opening of his Chinese Museum in Philadelphia. In 1845 John R. Peters printed a descriptive catalog for his Boston Chinese Museum. The fact that the Boston Chinese Museum’s opening occurred shortly after the 1844 Treaty of Wangshia signing**(add note America gained the right to trade in Chinese ports, and secured profitable additional legal rights inside China) by members of the treaty’s mission indicate its political agenda to promote trade with China. The museum contributed imaginary narrative fantasies and aggrandizement of China to promote Chinese commodification under the guise of cultural education.
image - cover of guide book
The objects shown in the museum similarly projected the same notion of royalty and prestige fantasy that Afong Moy exhibited in her presentations. The refreshed market of Chinese goods catered to the interests of American middle-class consumers. With the new treaty, providing access to objects and wares to a much larger population was now possible than in the past.
Over 400 paintings in oil and watercolors filled the walls of the galleries, portraits of famous Canton merchants, floral paintings, and scrolls of Buddhist deities. The message projected the idea, “the Chinese had achieved a high level of cultural, if not artistic, production that clearly raised them above the primitive.” The museum contained porcelain, musical instruments, everyday material goods, and life-size wax sculptures of Chinese figures robed in imperial dress. The owners also included humans, two Cantonese men, Le-Kaw-hing and T'sow-Chaoong. They dressed in "native costume" and served as interpreters, played instruments, sang and demonstrated calligraphy.
Image - museum
https://cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/digital/collection/p13110coll5/id/915/
The museum was well received and attracted many visitors. The museum relocated to New York CIty and after fifteen months, P.T. Barnum, the famed promoter of difference, took over the museum in April 1850. He installed a Chinese lady, Pwan-Ye-Koo with bound two-and-a-half- inch feet in the "Chinese Family.” The act drew crowds and went on tour, while the museum later closed. This act held its own controversy on the origins of the performers, as it was with Joice Heth. Barnum had reported the family arrived on the vessel Ianthe from Guangzhou in April 1850, however none of the family members were on the Ianthe’s passenger list. It was reported that Pwan-Ye-Koo was born in New York City and the child of a Chinese father and Caucasian mother and reported in the newspapers. An observer also overheard Pwan-Ye-Koo speaking in a “low Yankee slang.” Furthermore, Soo-Chune, who was a musician with the family, had actually arrived in Boston six years before 1850 and worked as a musical performer alongside T’sow Chaoong at the Boston Chinese Museum under the name of Le-Kaw-hing. This may all be very plausible. Chinese and Chinese Americans in the 1850s had limited options for employment, but the theatrical arts were open to them. Both Chinese and American-born men and women presented their racial differences and lived and worked under terrible conditions.
Image Living Chinese family
https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.09360/
Barnum knew the Chinese Family attraction would work, as he had already profited from the commercial market for Orientalist exhibitions a few years earlier. In 1847 the presence of the Chinese junk Keying from Hong Kong arrived in the port of New York that welcomed visitors for twenty-five cents to view Chinese objects in glass cases filled with specimens of “almost everything produced or used in the Chinese empire.” The Keying fostered commercial orientalism. Barnum jumped on the opportunity to bring Afong Moy back to the public eye, thirteen years after her initial arrival. However, for Afong Moy’s return, Barnum promoted her identity much differently than in the 1830s.The Keying’s public promotional pamphlet described the Chinese people as “false and faithless, trifling and shameless.”
From this period until the early 1850s, Afong Moy performed under contract with Barnum. She shared the exhibition space with another Barnum performer, Charles Stratton, known as Tom Thumb, the famed American dwarf for several years. Their promotional pamphlet widely strays from the 1830s portrayal of Afong Moy and the Chinese with connections of enlightenment, royalty and prestige. Instead the description claimed “’her appetite for fancy goods, finery, and gold had induced her to escape China with her ‘advisors’ for the riches of America.’ According to the account, the potential for wealth, as well as a desire for fame in America, meant more to her than family, religion, or country. In this explanation, the volition to leave China came from Afong Moy herself, rather than from the American merchants. In this way, it absolved Americans from any wrongdoing.”
The pamphlet also described Afong Moy as
“vain, conceited, prideful, and shallow. She “reads little or nothing, as a very limited degree of education is bestowed on women in China, a few accomplishments making up the sum total of their intellectual training.”
The commentary reinforced stereotypes of China and the Chinese. This unfavorable depiction of Afong Moy differs from the admirable depiction of Tom Thumb with his large personas of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. The text describes Tom Thumb with worthy qualities of politeness, humor and wit. This intentional comparison with Tom Thumb seemingly mocked Afong Moy and furthered the affirmation of the West’s superiority over the backward inferiority of China and the East. (Davis)
The perception of Afong Moy with the Chinese took a negative turn not only because of P.T. Barnum’s management, but also due to the aftereffects of the Opium War and the increasing competitive labor climate in the country. While the United States did not participate in the Opium War (1839-1842, 1856-1860), the press monitored and reported the events. Before the war, Americans perceived China as a powerful nation and long-standing civilization. However, the newspapers reported quite the opposite about China in the coverage of the Opium War battles. The smaller, but technologically progressive British military advanced themselves successfully in naval conflicts against the outdated Chinese military. As a consequence, the British demanded and forced China to open four additional treaty ports and cede Hong Kong and smaller islands to Britain. The press influenced Americans to lower their opinions on China. Americans now perceived the West as the stronger, dominant power over the rearward Eastern Orient. Around the same time, the number of Chinese immigrants looking for economic opportunities along the West Coast increased in the late 1840s due to possible discovery of California gold and the rise of the contract labor system. The Chinese labor populations were steadily increasing and American resentment started to form over job competition. This popular derogatory poem typified the new sentiment of mockery towards the Chinese in 1845:
“Mandarins with yellow buttons, handing you conserves of snails; Smart young men about Canton in Nankeen tights and peacocks' tails. With many rare and dreadful dainties, kitten cutlets, puppy pies; Birds nest soup which (so convenient!) every bush around supplies.” (Haddon)
With these new perceptions on China, the public attitudes toward Afong Moy had declined. Afong Moy and the Chinese no longer represented prestige, but illogical, undemocratic, and backward ideas. Disdainful and mocking opinions with negative characterizations in the press about her and the Chinese became more common. To Americans, the stark differences Afong Moy now exhibited about the East and West proved not a novel curiosity, but demonstrative of America’s advanced superiority over China’s ancient inferiority.
image https://thomasnastcartoons.com/tag/opium-wars/
RACIAL AND PHYSICAL DIFFERENCE
“Barnum’s shows exhibits combined the fetishism of racial difference and physical abnormality.”
Barnum commonly illustrated his subjects’ racial inferiority through the juxtaposition of performers. By doing so, he promoted racist and othering ideas onto the masses, as already constructed in printed discourse on racialized bodies of the period. Barnum exhibited his performers as objects to be commodified by the audience; he did not view them as persons, but specimens without any intellectual ability who fit his fabricated racial categorizations for profit.
This view changed with the presentation of two Chinese performers, Chang (Chang Yu Sing, Chang Woo Gow) the Giant and Che Mah, the Chinese Dwarf, in the early 1880s. Typical performances of Chang illustrated what Robert Bogdan has identified as the aggrandized mode. This aggrandizement emphasized the performer’s cultural or intellectual achievements rather than the physical abnormality.
A Barnum advertisement described Chang as "the Chinese Giant, not the ogre of Fairy Tales, but [a]Gentleman, Scholar and Linguist-the tallest man in the world."
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/76320548/
A refined and wise Chinese person did not fit the popular American perception of the Chinese in the 1880s, and would have appeared threatening. In 1882 Congress passed the Exclusion Act, prohibiting immigration of Chinese laborers and the immediate years leading up to it, anti-Chinese sentiment and violence were rampant. To tarnish Chang’s image of kindness and intelligence, Barnum promoted him juxtaposed to another performer, Che Mah, the Chinese Dwarf.
Che Mah “is cunning, crafty and a diplomat, whose tact and ingenuity have been a source of great annoyance and bloodshed to his government. In Western China, on account of his diminutive physique and superior erudition, he became an oracle and was WORSHIPED AND SET UP AS A GOD! whose commands became law among his fellow men. Recognizing the threat represented by Che Mah's power, the emperor declared him a rebel and sent an army against him.”
Barnum labeled Che Mah as a cunning, untrusting and dangerous Chinese man. The message of Che Mah with the Chinese reinforced the current anti-Chinese sentiment: the Chinese could not be trusted and with any agency, they will become dangerous. While the years following 1881, the circus still promoted Chang’s intellectual traits, it stressed more dominantly his race and physical differences. At an 1884 Ethnological Congress he was exhibited as "The Goliath of His Race and the Tallest Giant Alive" and led the circus opening with the Ethnological Congress into the big top.
Chang also led the inaugural procession for the Barnum Circus in 1886, as seen in the Barnum Budget or Tent Topics of The Season of 1886 route book
https://digital.library.illinoisstate.edu/digital/collection/p15990coll5/id/14606/rec/5
Barnum sensationalized and reduced his performers/objects to their race and body, deliberately strengthening notions of white supremacy to the audience. Chang commanded top dollar of the time from Barnum for his performances, at $500 a month. Chang recognized his valuable attraction in circuses and exhibitions and it is most likely he was aware of Barnum’s tactics. However, it did not deter him from the industry. Even at retirement, he returned to the circus as a guest in London, as reported in the Gleanings at Olympia During the Winter Season of 1889-90, in London, England, with P. T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth route book:
#/media/File:1845_ChineseMuseum_cover_guidebook_Boston.png){kind=link}
https://digital.library.illinoisstate.edu/digital/collection/p15990coll5/id/5328/rec/10
The negative perception of the Chinese increasingly grew more widespread within America’s popular culture in the concluding half of 19th century well into the 20th century, not only projected through the circus, but in all forms of entertainment and media of the time.
