A Chinaman's Chance by Eric Liu

Author:Eric Liu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2014-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

I belong to the most ancient empire on this globe. You, by your own statements, belong to the most dependent and ill-treated nation of serfs ever deprived of its liberties. The flag of my country floats over the third greatest navy in the world. Yours is to be seen derisively displayed on the 17th of March in the public streets and triumphantly hoisted on an occasional gin-mill. The ambassadors and consuls of my nation rank at every court in Europe with those of Russia, Germany, England and France. Those of your race may be found cooling their heels in the lobbies of any common council in which the rum-selling interest in politics predominates. The race which I represent is centuries old in every art and science. That of which you are the spokesman apologizes for its present ignorance and mental obscurity with the plea that your learning and literature are lost in the mythical past.

Kearney, notes historian Scott Seligman, “could see no percentage in a face-off.” He dismissed the challenge. But Wong had already let the papers know about it. He soon wrote, and shared with the press, another even more provocative letter challenging Kearney to a duel, adding, with a wink, “I would give him his choice of chopsticks, Irish potatoes or Krupp guns.” Kearney again tried to swat away the irritant, telling a reporter, “The Chinese question is a dead issue, and I don’t propose to spend time in discussing it now. . . . I’m not to be deterred from this work by the low blackguard vaporings of Chin Foo, Ah Coon, Kee-Yah, Hung Fat, Fi Feng or any other representative of Asia’s almond-eyed lepers.”

Wong had referred to China in his first letter as “my country.” But his actions, his status, and the name of his own newspaper belied him: he was American, a Chinese American original—and, in a sense, the original Chinese American. The excellent Seligman biography of Wong, The First Chinese American, indicates that he was the first to use that label in print, and had used it quite intentionally, even reversing the order of the characters in the Chinese name of the paper so that it would read Chinese American and not American Chinese. He possessed, in his feisty letters and his penchant for what today would be called “sound bites,” full command of the English language. He had a thoroughly American instinct for public controversy and publicity stunts. He had deep knowledge of the government, laws, and politics of New York, California, and the United States.

And he had American citizenship. He had been brought to the United States at fourteen by a missionary family in 1861. In 1874, he hustled his way into a court in Grand Rapids, lied about his age, bypassed a two-step paperwork process, and on that very day became one of the first Chinese immigrants to be naturalized as a US citizen. Throughout his life as a citizen, he looked his country in the eye and told it what he saw.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.