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A different lens on 1911
By Ni Tao |
November 11, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ITALIAN historian Benedetto Croce once said "all history is contemporary history." His argument represents the historical outlook that understanding of past events is invariably influenced, colored and distorted by beliefs held by future generations.
To some extent, what Croce summed up as the essence of history still resonates to this day. Most of us who know something about the Roman Empire may be baffled by or even laugh off the assertion that the length of Cleopatra's nose could decide the fate of Caesar and his empire.
But that's how history is. If single events are taken out of the specific context in which they occurred and then studied under a modern magnifier, we often are confused by the seeming absurdities and contrasts.
Clarifying the confusion is as much a job of historians as of esteemed journalists like Liu Heung Shing, a Pulitzer-winning former AP photo journalist. A widely published author, Liu has presented us with his new work "China in Revolution: The Road to 1911," a collection of pictures taken of Chinese society from 1856 to 1928. The book makes for timely read as the centenary of the 1911 Revolution, which ended several thousand years of imperial rule, passed not long ago, and historical reflection, in the form of seminars, films and poems, is still in vogue.
However, a common problem with literature on this subject is that most of what we have is written documentation, while graphic materials, especially those of sound quality, are few and far between. Generally speaking, photos convey far more information than words and vividly depict what life was like in the past.
Hence the high-resolution photos included in Liu's books, shot mostly by foreign missionaries, diplomats, merchants and travelers, are especially precious in this regard.
Yet here comes a tricky issue. When we look at pictures taken by Westerners of China during its "century of humiliation," we tend to read too much into them, out of anger at how they demonstrate Western stereotypes about China; at how outlandish and benighted Chinese people were perceived to be in Western eyes; at how Chinese civilization, with its custom of binding feet and keeping concubines, became the "others" alien to everything modern civilization stands for.
Indeed, by thinking so we are living in the shadow of 1840, when China was forced out of isolation by British gunboats in the First Opium War (1840-42). But this mentality is also a result of long-time exposure to textbook dogma. Memories of the dark past are kept alive by the conviction that China was insulted and vilified at the hands of Westerners.
Surely it was in military, political and economic terms. Western vilification of China and its people used to fall neatly into two categories, one is the knee-jerk impression of an impoverished, decadent nation whose people smoked opium and men wore funny braids; the other is deep-seated fear of Chinese, who, though largely illiterate, could grow into millions of Dr Fu Manchus, a sinister character and crime genius in Sax Rohmer's novels that fed Western imagination and worries of the "yellow peril."
Less mainstream
There may be a third category, which is not so mainstream, yet perhaps closer to historical facts. And we somehow manage to get a glimpse of it from Liu's book.
Readers of his book will be amazed to see pictures of Westerners riding in Chinese sedan chairs and mingling with menial laborers or peasants. They appear peaceful, placid and their expressions betray no perceptible colonial arrogance.
In fact, reassessing the role of "foreign devils" is also part of Liu's purpose in editing the book, to dissuade Chinese nowadays from either looking up at the West or looking down on it - a conflicting legacy of Western subjugation of China. The right attitude, he has said in previous interviews with Chinese media, is to see the West "at eye level."
For this reason, he has traveled extensively across the world in search of Western archive photos of the old China. As he told my colleague Yao Minji, young Chinese scholars "look more deeply into what imperialism brought to China during that period." Suffering is only a part of their studies.
Such a more balanced - or revisionist, as some might call it - approach to history might greatly complement Chinese history education today if widely adopted in school curriculum. Chinese grow up being fed only one side of the story, or simply the conclusions of historical incidents, while most of us are ignorant of their details, and worse, of the context in which they unfolded.
A consequence is that many are poised to judge the right or wrong of our ancestors based on values imported from the West and subscribe, sometimes more fervently than Westerners, to the view that every stupid Chinese oddity can be explained by the country's unenlightened people and backward culture.
Liu's book, which covers the life of not just mandarins, generals and the gentry, but also of plain folks, tells us that Western-centric perspective on China is wrong, that the masses shaped history as much as the luminaries did. Ironically it took an American to say that so clearly and forcefully.
To some extent, what Croce summed up as the essence of history still resonates to this day. Most of us who know something about the Roman Empire may be baffled by or even laugh off the assertion that the length of Cleopatra's nose could decide the fate of Caesar and his empire.
But that's how history is. If single events are taken out of the specific context in which they occurred and then studied under a modern magnifier, we often are confused by the seeming absurdities and contrasts.
Clarifying the confusion is as much a job of historians as of esteemed journalists like Liu Heung Shing, a Pulitzer-winning former AP photo journalist. A widely published author, Liu has presented us with his new work "China in Revolution: The Road to 1911," a collection of pictures taken of Chinese society from 1856 to 1928. The book makes for timely read as the centenary of the 1911 Revolution, which ended several thousand years of imperial rule, passed not long ago, and historical reflection, in the form of seminars, films and poems, is still in vogue.
However, a common problem with literature on this subject is that most of what we have is written documentation, while graphic materials, especially those of sound quality, are few and far between. Generally speaking, photos convey far more information than words and vividly depict what life was like in the past.
Hence the high-resolution photos included in Liu's books, shot mostly by foreign missionaries, diplomats, merchants and travelers, are especially precious in this regard.
Yet here comes a tricky issue. When we look at pictures taken by Westerners of China during its "century of humiliation," we tend to read too much into them, out of anger at how they demonstrate Western stereotypes about China; at how outlandish and benighted Chinese people were perceived to be in Western eyes; at how Chinese civilization, with its custom of binding feet and keeping concubines, became the "others" alien to everything modern civilization stands for.
Indeed, by thinking so we are living in the shadow of 1840, when China was forced out of isolation by British gunboats in the First Opium War (1840-42). But this mentality is also a result of long-time exposure to textbook dogma. Memories of the dark past are kept alive by the conviction that China was insulted and vilified at the hands of Westerners.
Surely it was in military, political and economic terms. Western vilification of China and its people used to fall neatly into two categories, one is the knee-jerk impression of an impoverished, decadent nation whose people smoked opium and men wore funny braids; the other is deep-seated fear of Chinese, who, though largely illiterate, could grow into millions of Dr Fu Manchus, a sinister character and crime genius in Sax Rohmer's novels that fed Western imagination and worries of the "yellow peril."
Less mainstream
There may be a third category, which is not so mainstream, yet perhaps closer to historical facts. And we somehow manage to get a glimpse of it from Liu's book.
Readers of his book will be amazed to see pictures of Westerners riding in Chinese sedan chairs and mingling with menial laborers or peasants. They appear peaceful, placid and their expressions betray no perceptible colonial arrogance.
In fact, reassessing the role of "foreign devils" is also part of Liu's purpose in editing the book, to dissuade Chinese nowadays from either looking up at the West or looking down on it - a conflicting legacy of Western subjugation of China. The right attitude, he has said in previous interviews with Chinese media, is to see the West "at eye level."
For this reason, he has traveled extensively across the world in search of Western archive photos of the old China. As he told my colleague Yao Minji, young Chinese scholars "look more deeply into what imperialism brought to China during that period." Suffering is only a part of their studies.
Such a more balanced - or revisionist, as some might call it - approach to history might greatly complement Chinese history education today if widely adopted in school curriculum. Chinese grow up being fed only one side of the story, or simply the conclusions of historical incidents, while most of us are ignorant of their details, and worse, of the context in which they unfolded.
A consequence is that many are poised to judge the right or wrong of our ancestors based on values imported from the West and subscribe, sometimes more fervently than Westerners, to the view that every stupid Chinese oddity can be explained by the country's unenlightened people and backward culture.
Liu's book, which covers the life of not just mandarins, generals and the gentry, but also of plain folks, tells us that Western-centric perspective on China is wrong, that the masses shaped history as much as the luminaries did. Ironically it took an American to say that so clearly and forcefully.
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