A Tale of Two Rare Books and Two Different Modern Editions
Before the publication of this eBook, anyone interested in the personal account of the first Chinese traveler to the United States in the late 1840s had to rely on the first modern edition:
Editors of this book (thereafter "the 1985 revised edition") used a privately-owned copy in China, which according to them passed down from the author to his family. One of the editors, Yang, discovered this obscure book in 1980 and, with his co-editors, edited and introduced it to the public in China and beyond. Without the 1985 revised edition, I, like others, would not have known this early Chinese traveler to the West and his interesting encounters, which include his observations of American society and technology, his rescue of 26 Chinese sailors from their abusive captain in New York, and his subsequent legal trouble.
Yet, even with this highly accessible 1985 revised edition, this eBook is worth producing for three reasons:
1) Editors of the 1985 revised edition substantially but silently revised the original text. To be sure, the transcription of the classical text into simplified Chinese, the new paragraphing, and the addition of punctuation are not unique to this edition but are standard practices in the reproduction of classical works in China. However, many of the silent editorial changes are questionable, including the substitution of "offensive" words (e.g. 夷 [barbarian] was changed to 洋 [foreign]); the replacement of variant characters; the “correction” of “wrong” information; and, above all, the change of the author’s name from 林綤㿝 (as printed in his original text) to 林鍼 without any editorial note. This kind of editorial changes may prevent the reader from appreciating the original publication’s historicity and nuances.
2) Besides the extant copy used by the editors of the 1985 revised edition, there is actually another one housed in the New York Public Library. Both are the traveler's original publications but there are significant differences between them. The 1985 revised edition's source, published in around 1867, has more front and end matter supplements, penned by the author's friends and supporters: an illustration, four pieces of complimentary remarks 題記, five forewords 序, twenty complimentary poems 題詩, and five postscripts 跋. By contrast, this eBook’s source, published much earlier in about 1850, does not have any illustrations, complimentary remarks or poems, and it only has two forewords and two postscripts. In fact, one of the forewords in this eBook’s source appears as a postscript in the 1985 revised edition’s counterpart. This may lead us to believe that the original publication had more than one edition, each of which might have different combinations of front and end matter supplements. This also confirms that this eBook’s source predated the 1985 revised edition’s counterpart since the latter includes supplements written and added after the publication of the former.
3) Although the 1985 revised edition has marginal annotations, a name index, and a glossary of proper noun translations to provide contextual information, it lacks any references to American primary sources that provide contemporary accounts of events related to the author’s encounters in the United States. Without these American newspaper and periodical reports, we would not even know that the author was called "Lin King Chew" (and by other transliterated names) in the United States; nor would we know the exact people and institutions his travel book refers to—let alone the wider context of his travel experiences.
This eBook, while building on the 1985 revised edition, takes a different approach. I hope to provide access to the original publication with less editorial mediation but more American context. My eBook, therefore, provides not only a transcription as faithful to the original book as digitally possible, but also pictures of each of its pages. Also included are select American press reports with hyperlinks to relevant parts of the traveler's account.
