Lot #10 Letter from one of the first hundred Chinese students sent by his government to acquire military and scientific knowledge by study in America

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Description

Heading:

(Chinese)

Title:

Letter from one of the first hundred Chinese students sent by his government to acquire military and scientific knowledge by study in America

Author:

Zhaoxi, Qi

Place Published:

Imperial Arsenal, Foochow, China

Date Published:

June 22, 1882

Description:

Autograph Letter Signed, 15 pp., approx. 2,300 words.

Revealing letter written by Qi Zhaoxi to an unnamed former schoolfellow in America, upon the former's return to China after a eight-year absence in the United States as part of the official Chinese Educational Mission. After the Civil War ended in America, the Chinese Government sent an Educational Mission of 120 boys to attend high school and college in the United States, expecting they would return with scientific and military knowledge to help China emerge from its Confucian stupor. But when the first students returned to China, the government was so alarmed by their westernized manners, dress and speech (being fairly knowledgeable in English, but having forgotten their native language) that they were abruptly recalled. It is very revealing of his love for the American lifestyle, as well as his nationalist pride, writing disdainfully of the stereotype of “insignificant, trifling Chinee” deemed so inferior to the Westerners; of his acquired prejudices against British businessmen who “on one hand gives us the Bible on the other, Opium and cheat, rather have a Jew than a thousand of those confounded haughty English”; and of his hopes for a modernized China who could defeat their Japanese enemies.

Qi describes their arrival, in San Francisco, where they were “kindly received” by Colonel Frederick Bee, Gold Rush 49er, Pony Express manager, developer of the city of Sausalito, and the Chinese Consul in the city who championed despised Chinatown immigrants. Bee showed the students the city’s sights and arranged the highlight of their stay - a friendly baseball game in Oakland, against San Francisco’s California Club. After first thinking of deliberately losing the game out of politeness, they began to play “with courage” - and won, by a score of 7 to 11. “Thus gain the last victory in America” before they boarded a Pacific steamship, singing American songs in chorus “amidst the multitude of handkerchief waving on the dock”. Some 20 days later, the ship reached Japan, where they visited Yokohama, Tokio and Nagasaki. Admiring Japan’s technological “advancement”, while critical of the “low morals” of the people, they recognized that China’s “nearest neighbor” had “turned into enemies” who hated and “defied” China and must eventually be defeated by a Chinese “Napolian” with western technical know-how. Then they sailed on to their homeland, at the first sight of Shanghai, “hurrying ourselves” to change from western attire into Chinese garments for the first time in many years (“You can imagine how we feel and act in this long gowns and loose trousers.”) In their “travellers eyes”, the junks in the harbor seemed strange, as did the rickshas (“superior kind of wheelbarrows”), which carried them, on landing, to an old college, “citadel of the American Chinee”, where they were “treated not very well” by a native Catholic commissioner who “soon found out we are too much for him” and “gave up his ill-treatment.” There they remained for more than a month until the group was divided, assigned to administrative positions throughout government offices in Tientsin, Shanghai and Foochow, the writer’s destination, home to a secluded Naval base. Qi wrote proudly to his friend, “You may surprise to hear that the trifling Chinese fit out their own navy… not a single foreigner employ in the machine shop, solely about 2000 workmen went on their way as busy as bees,” building a “whole man-of-war” closely modeled on a western warship. The Emperor had been convinced to employ 100 Frenchmen to manage the construction. Of course, the French, like all foreigners, had cheated the Chinese, even selling the workers iced water made from outdated machines they had installed at a profit. Yet the French were “not half as bad as the Englishman.” The returned students recognized that all Chinese manufacturing must be in native hands; otherwise, the Chinese would suffer the fate of the American Indians – Qi had learned his American history well – who had “faded away” before the white because they lacked “mechanical” knowledge. Qi had seen this progressive development firsthand in a “great enterprise” to establish a cotton factory in Shanghai, owned by Cantonese merchants, but under the management of A.W. Danforth, a respected engineer from Illinois, a “liberal minded fellow” who stood up to the “Johnny Bull” Englishmen, who were always out to cheat the Chinese with their contracts full of “imbiguties” and “fine print stratigems”. The British had tried to “bulldoze” Danforth into buying old abandoned machinery, but the American, so mechanically astute as to “criticize the machine from head to foot” had refused, thus safeguarding the interests of his Chinese employers. Apart from this faith in American probity, Qi understood why some of his other fellow students were not warmly welcomed on their return. Having got “the knowledge of English”, they were “haughty” and lazy, having “vanished before the true work.” He himself did not resent the daily military drills and strenuous exercises (including football games) required at Foochow. After all, his “very liberal” supervisors allowed the returned students to wear “foreign cloths”, leaving them “as free as [in] America”. But, visiting his family in Macao, he found they were not so open-minded. Having heard lurid rumors, convinced that the students all “have American wives” and had been insulted by racist Americans “pulling their queues”, his relations feared that their sons and brothers had been “intirely foreignized”. Qi, on the other hand, found his relations “very much heathenized”, having lost much of the Western educational “learnings” they had received in Chinese schools. When questioned about what life had been like in America, Qi “tried all I can to evade the questions.” When they urged him to settle down in China and marry some “small chest” Chinese girl, Qi could not tell them that he longed to return to America to complete his education, only returning to China only when he could render “valuable service” with the scientific knowledge that would be needed in a modernized Chinese nation under a future “Napolian”.

Condition:

Very Good.

Item#:

347114

Headline:

Letter from Chinese student sent to America
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Sale 791: Elite Americana – Travel – Maps – Audubon: A PBA Platinum Auction (#791) 06/29/2023 11:00 AM PDT Closed Starts Ending 06/29/2023 11:00 AM PDT

Lot #10 Letter from one of the first hundred Chinese students sent by his government to acquire military and scientific knowledge by study in America

Sale 791: Elite Americana – Travel – Maps – Audubon: A PBA Platinum Auction (#791) 06/29/2023 11:00 AM PDT Closed
Starts Ending 06/29/2023 11:00 AM PDT