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黃禍：從傅滿州看西方人的東方恐懼
從〇〇七、蝙蝠俠、神鬼奇航到鋼鐵人，
都可以找到最典型的壞蛋：高瘦、禿頭、兩撇鬍子，看起來陰險猙獰，
他是傅滿州，一個名聲響亮不下於福爾摩斯與德古拉爵士的經典角色，
是百年來中國恐懼的代表，化身為一人的黃禍。
●一場世紀末的「黃禍」
清末民初的中國正值一片混亂，內憂外患，饑荒連年，完全無法「禍害」任何人，但西方人卻偏偏在這個時候把中國人看成一種威脅，理由讓人百思不解。但更讓人不解的是，這個「黃禍」思想為什麼會那麼根深蒂固，乃至到了二十一世紀的今日，中國人的形象繼續受到扭曲，屢屢受到散播電腦病毒、製造空氣汙染和操縱匯率者的指控。
●為社會問題尋找替罪羊
相映於黃禍思想，另一種概念在19世紀的英國蔓延。中國城、鴉片窟變成一則流行神話：在狄更斯的筆下，鴉片館不是一個社交場所，而化身為罪惡的淵藪。這個形象影響深遠且深植人心，最終與各種對中國人的看法混合在一起：吃醋（不甘心於英國女人被中國男人娶走）、宗教恐懼（「面目可憎的神像」和「古怪」的出殯儀式）、飲食偏見（吃狗肉、貓肉和老鼠肉是不正常）和尋找替罪羊心理（為船員的大量失業、凌亂的街道和堆積如山的垃圾另找理由）。
●自大眾娛樂誕生的傅滿州
20世紀初一個角色誕生了，他是個比起中國領導人，大多數的西方人更熟悉的人物：傅滿州。這個英國作家羅默筆下的反派角色，其高大的外型、狡詐聰明的特質，百年來被反覆重現：〇〇七系列的反派取材於傅滿州的不同特質，好萊塢電影中需要的東方壞蛋屢屢是傅滿州的變形。羅默當年利用「黃禍」與「中國城」想像所創造的傅滿州形象，成為跨世紀偏見的代表人物，比起抽象概念，這個視覺化的形象更容易傳播久遠。
●為長久以來的偏見驅魔？
直到今日，仍有分析中國威脅論的著作，宛如是現代版的「黃禍論」文本，彷彿百年前對中國人口數量、軍事力量、經濟發展的諸多恐懼從未遠離。本書從小說、舞台劇、電視影集、電影等大眾文化切入，從對中國人的異化想像討論到恐懼東方的擬人化。直到今日，我們在無數影視文化中看見的傅滿州正是「黃禍」概念的凝結化身，是中國恐懼的最佳代表，而本書便是希望為所有冠冕堂皇的論述和娛樂十足的通俗成見「驅魔」。
都可以找到最典型的壞蛋：高瘦、禿頭、兩撇鬍子，看起來陰險猙獰，
他是傅滿州，一個名聲響亮不下於福爾摩斯與德古拉爵士的經典角色，
是百年來中國恐懼的代表，化身為一人的黃禍。
●一場世紀末的「黃禍」
清末民初的中國正值一片混亂，內憂外患，饑荒連年，完全無法「禍害」任何人，但西方人卻偏偏在這個時候把中國人看成一種威脅，理由讓人百思不解。但更讓人不解的是，這個「黃禍」思想為什麼會那麼根深蒂固，乃至到了二十一世紀的今日，中國人的形象繼續受到扭曲，屢屢受到散播電腦病毒、製造空氣汙染和操縱匯率者的指控。
●為社會問題尋找替罪羊
相映於黃禍思想，另一種概念在19世紀的英國蔓延。中國城、鴉片窟變成一則流行神話：在狄更斯的筆下，鴉片館不是一個社交場所，而化身為罪惡的淵藪。這個形象影響深遠且深植人心，最終與各種對中國人的看法混合在一起：吃醋（不甘心於英國女人被中國男人娶走）、宗教恐懼（「面目可憎的神像」和「古怪」的出殯儀式）、飲食偏見（吃狗肉、貓肉和老鼠肉是不正常）和尋找替罪羊心理（為船員的大量失業、凌亂的街道和堆積如山的垃圾另找理由）。
●自大眾娛樂誕生的傅滿州
20世紀初一個角色誕生了，他是個比起中國領導人，大多數的西方人更熟悉的人物：傅滿州。這個英國作家羅默筆下的反派角色，其高大的外型、狡詐聰明的特質，百年來被反覆重現：〇〇七系列的反派取材於傅滿州的不同特質，好萊塢電影中需要的東方壞蛋屢屢是傅滿州的變形。羅默當年利用「黃禍」與「中國城」想像所創造的傅滿州形象，成為跨世紀偏見的代表人物，比起抽象概念，這個視覺化的形象更容易傳播久遠。
●為長久以來的偏見驅魔？
直到今日，仍有分析中國威脅論的著作，宛如是現代版的「黃禍論」文本，彷彿百年前對中國人口數量、軍事力量、經濟發展的諸多恐懼從未遠離。本書從小說、舞台劇、電視影集、電影等大眾文化切入，從對中國人的異化想像討論到恐懼東方的擬人化。直到今日，我們在無數影視文化中看見的傅滿州正是「黃禍」概念的凝結化身，是中國恐懼的最佳代表，而本書便是希望為所有冠冕堂皇的論述和娛樂十足的通俗成見「驅魔」。
- GenresNonfictionHistoryChina
480 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2014
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125 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 13, 2015
Less an overview of Sinophobia in pop culture so much as a look at the history of Fu Manchu. This wasn't as interesting to me as I'd hoped, so I mostly skimmed. Well-written, though, and full of quotes and sources, so if Fu Manchu is what floats your boat, I totally recommend it.
June 21, 2023
As I finished this book, The Specials' "Do Nothing" came up on my play list, its refrain of "Nothing ever change" feeling remarkably apposite to the theme of this book: The racist attitudes of late Victorian and Edwardian Western popular culture were fostered by political and economic interests to justify colonialism and exploitation, and this sadly still pertains.
It's an enlightening blend of history, biography and filmography; informative, detailed but never dry. The end did seem a little rushed though, which is a slight let down as Frayling is an otherwise assured guide. Still a strong 4⭐
As a counter to The Specials' resigned cynicism, I'm playing The Stranglers' bombastically defiant, "Something Better Change" 🎶✊🎶
It's an enlightening blend of history, biography and filmography; informative, detailed but never dry. The end did seem a little rushed though, which is a slight let down as Frayling is an otherwise assured guide. Still a strong 4⭐
As a counter to The Specials' resigned cynicism, I'm playing The Stranglers' bombastically defiant, "Something Better Change" 🎶✊🎶
March 30, 2020
In the first four chapters, Frayling presents the backstory of the creation of the character of Fu Manchu, looking at British, and occasionally American, attitudes toward China from the Macartney diplomatic expedition in the late 18th century through the early 20th century and the publication of The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu.
After a short introduction on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, and with many, often wide, digressions, the chapters cover the career of Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward), opium and opium “dens” as seen through literature and the press, images of the Chinese as presented in Victorian music hall songs and monologues, and political and popular attitudes about China and the Chinese, especially as an immigrant presence in England and Wales.
The book constantly returns to the Limehouse district, London's onetime "Chinatown", an area that seems to have loomed large in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination, though in Frayling's description it consisted only of a few blocks where a small number of Chinese actually lived - scarcely a patch on the Chinatown areas of New York and San Francisco.
All this leads up to the fifth chapter, which is largely given over to an elaborate close reading of this paragraph from the first of the Fu Manchu stories, a description much repeated with, at most, slight variation throughout the series:
The final chapter looks at Fu Manchu in film adaptations – where he has always played by white actors in “yellowface”* - parodies, and high culture. Though we get references to the character by Andre Breton and Thomas Pynchon – as well as S. J. Perelman and Alan Moore – Frayling apparently missed this from Anthony Powell’s memoir, To Keep the Ball Rolling:
After a short introduction on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, and with many, often wide, digressions, the chapters cover the career of Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry "Sarsfield" Ward), opium and opium “dens” as seen through literature and the press, images of the Chinese as presented in Victorian music hall songs and monologues, and political and popular attitudes about China and the Chinese, especially as an immigrant presence in England and Wales.
The book constantly returns to the Limehouse district, London's onetime "Chinatown", an area that seems to have loomed large in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination, though in Frayling's description it consisted only of a few blocks where a small number of Chinese actually lived - scarcely a patch on the Chinatown areas of New York and San Francisco.
All this leads up to the fifth chapter, which is largely given over to an elaborate close reading of this paragraph from the first of the Fu Manchu stories, a description much repeated with, at most, slight variation throughout the series:
Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government-- which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.The close of the fifth chapter looks at the character who speaks that description, Wayland Smith; Frayling takes pains to make him seem more than a pale echo of Sherlock Holmes.
The final chapter looks at Fu Manchu in film adaptations – where he has always played by white actors in “yellowface”* - parodies, and high culture. Though we get references to the character by Andre Breton and Thomas Pynchon – as well as S. J. Perelman and Alan Moore – Frayling apparently missed this from Anthony Powell’s memoir, To Keep the Ball Rolling:
Elizabeth Bowen rarely wore spectacles and perhaps did not see very clearly without them, the possible explanation of her next remark. ‘Some people complain of cockroaches in the basements of these Regent Park houses,’ she said. ‘Your parents do, but they say their cook doesn’t mind a bit. She just stamps on them. I never seem to see any here.’ In one of the Dr Fu Manchu stories (I quote from memory) the sinister Chinese doctor, by the use of hypnotism, causes the wallpaper of a room to appear to be writhing with huge beetles. That was just how Elizabeth Bowen’s kitchen floor looked at that moment.*Frayling traces the use of “yellow” as a designation of natives of the East Asia to racial theories of the early 19th century, but does not get to the bottom of why this particular hue was chosen – earlier descriptions use ‘white’ or occasionally ‘grey’.
July 5, 2024
In Edward Said's Orientalism, he described The Orient as 'since antiquity, a place of romantic, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences’ for the feverish European imagination. This was critical for the west, to have an other onto which to project fears, fantasies and distortions.
In this book, we see public school anti-Chinese racism in the 1950s, imitating pidgin English, 'Confucius he says...', Chinese burns, whispers, Biggles flying in the Orient, Rupert Bear's drawings of the mysterious Chinese conjurer. Flash Gordon and the inscrutable Ming the Merciless. Then later, Sean Connery and Dr No. I met a Flash Gordon enthusiast in a Marylebone pub recently, so this is alive and well!
Said utilised 19th century high-European literature and histories of figures, such as Bonaparte in Egypt, with a focus on the Middle East. His book has become associated with China, but did not explore this in detail.
Which takes us to Frayling, Dr Fu Manchu and this book! :) Here, we have a sort of history from below. Taking the idea that popular literature and visual culture tell us about attitudes towards Chineseness. But also a longer history. The Opium Wars cumulating in the British burning of the Old Summer Palace; the auction houses and private collections of our upper-classes flooded with curios, chinoiserie, a fascination and craze for the orient, with ashes in its mouth.
He begins by discussing having lunch with Said who supported the importance of the visual: ‘when you see an American Indian with feathers and paint across his face he looks terrifying, and it doesn’t matter whether you have read about him in Fenimore Cooper or not… it fixes the image in your mind forever’. (Okay also obviously jealous that was his lunch companion).
He links this into the Hong Kong handover and the arrival of Chinese troops, 'latter-day heirs to Genghis Khan's cavalry, at the gates - faceless, incomprehensible, overwhelming, like Chairman Mao's 'human sea': pent-up energy which went back a very long way.’ The BBC presenter described 'robotic faces' and 'fixed smiles.' I was watching election coverage last night and the BBC presenters hushed descriptions of the ‘Muslim’ demographics of seats voting for pro-Palestine candidates showed these prejudices were not left behind in 1997.
I really liked the way he tied in the imagery around the dragon. ‘In Chinese folk-lore, the dragon is a wise, peaceable and helpful creature, a symbol of good luck, but he has become on book jackets threatening, fire-breathing and warlike, to be challenged - by the likes of St George.’ This imagery is tied up with current western fantasies of war with China. Little British boats and American aircraft carriers to provide the MacArthur like cumulation of squandered and ebbing power. *they* are the ones who pollute, who are wrecking the climate; there's a fascinating lack of western introspection.
On Sax Rohmer: this quote from his book about sums it up:
'And the fine drizzling rain fell upon all alike, pattering upon the hood of the taxi-cab, trickling down the front windows... Sometimes a yellow face showed close to one of the streaming windows; sometimes a black-eyed, pallid face, but never a face wholly sane and healthy. This was an underworld where squalor and vice went hand in hand through the beautiless streets, a melting-pot of the world's outcasts; this was the shadowland, which last night had swallowed up Nayland Smith.
The mantle of dusk had closed about the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination. Aliens of every shade of colour were in the glare of the lamps upon the main road about us now, emerging from burrow-like alleys. In the short space of the drive we had passed from the light world of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.'
What the flip.
In this book, we see public school anti-Chinese racism in the 1950s, imitating pidgin English, 'Confucius he says...', Chinese burns, whispers, Biggles flying in the Orient, Rupert Bear's drawings of the mysterious Chinese conjurer. Flash Gordon and the inscrutable Ming the Merciless. Then later, Sean Connery and Dr No. I met a Flash Gordon enthusiast in a Marylebone pub recently, so this is alive and well!
Said utilised 19th century high-European literature and histories of figures, such as Bonaparte in Egypt, with a focus on the Middle East. His book has become associated with China, but did not explore this in detail.
Which takes us to Frayling, Dr Fu Manchu and this book! :) Here, we have a sort of history from below. Taking the idea that popular literature and visual culture tell us about attitudes towards Chineseness. But also a longer history. The Opium Wars cumulating in the British burning of the Old Summer Palace; the auction houses and private collections of our upper-classes flooded with curios, chinoiserie, a fascination and craze for the orient, with ashes in its mouth.
He begins by discussing having lunch with Said who supported the importance of the visual: ‘when you see an American Indian with feathers and paint across his face he looks terrifying, and it doesn’t matter whether you have read about him in Fenimore Cooper or not… it fixes the image in your mind forever’. (Okay also obviously jealous that was his lunch companion).
He links this into the Hong Kong handover and the arrival of Chinese troops, 'latter-day heirs to Genghis Khan's cavalry, at the gates - faceless, incomprehensible, overwhelming, like Chairman Mao's 'human sea': pent-up energy which went back a very long way.’ The BBC presenter described 'robotic faces' and 'fixed smiles.' I was watching election coverage last night and the BBC presenters hushed descriptions of the ‘Muslim’ demographics of seats voting for pro-Palestine candidates showed these prejudices were not left behind in 1997.
I really liked the way he tied in the imagery around the dragon. ‘In Chinese folk-lore, the dragon is a wise, peaceable and helpful creature, a symbol of good luck, but he has become on book jackets threatening, fire-breathing and warlike, to be challenged - by the likes of St George.’ This imagery is tied up with current western fantasies of war with China. Little British boats and American aircraft carriers to provide the MacArthur like cumulation of squandered and ebbing power. *they* are the ones who pollute, who are wrecking the climate; there's a fascinating lack of western introspection.
On Sax Rohmer: this quote from his book about sums it up:
'And the fine drizzling rain fell upon all alike, pattering upon the hood of the taxi-cab, trickling down the front windows... Sometimes a yellow face showed close to one of the streaming windows; sometimes a black-eyed, pallid face, but never a face wholly sane and healthy. This was an underworld where squalor and vice went hand in hand through the beautiless streets, a melting-pot of the world's outcasts; this was the shadowland, which last night had swallowed up Nayland Smith.
The mantle of dusk had closed about the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination. Aliens of every shade of colour were in the glare of the lamps upon the main road about us now, emerging from burrow-like alleys. In the short space of the drive we had passed from the light world of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.'
What the flip.
August 22, 2020
An entertaining, wide-ranging history of Fu Manchu, his creator Sax Rohmer, and the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment, particularly as it blossomed in the U.K. in the wake of both popular Oriental styles and the Opium Wars. Frayling shows both anti-Chinese stereotypes and Sax Rohmer's career as having some grounding in the Edwardian music halls, which I did not expect to learn! More about Fu Manchu in popular culture than in literature, but I think there were already books covering that. A bit of a specialized sideline, but also relevant to fears about Asian cultures, particularly China, that still exist today, so while the info about Rohmer's life might not interest everyone, it's still a good read and a window into a resilient corner of pop culture.
June 10, 2015
Chinatown! Opium dens! Pigtails! If you enjoy Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels, you'll enjoy this exploration of his ideas and Sinophobia in early 20th century London.
May 11, 2020
What was the perception of China in the West in the 19th/early 20th century? And how did popular culture inform those views?
This book primarily uses the life, work and preoccupations of 'Fu Manchu' author Sax Rohmer as a focus for such a study. In a somewhat high-minded preface, the author explains that he is attempting to complement Edward Said's Orientalism: continuing the analysis of perceptions of the East, but here specifically in the framework of *popular* culture.
The core theme is "the yellow peril": the 19th century paranoia that China presented an existential threat to the very foundations of Western civilization. What real-world form this threat would take was never really clear; instead, it was largely a phantom conjured up by romance writers like Rohmer.
I see the yellow peril as a kind of ur-fear - a basic fear of 'otherness', perhaps stoked by the West's unconscious guilt about its terrible actions during the imperial era and a feeling that some kind of retribution was surely inevitable. It was a key component of the British imperial zeitgeist and echoes down to the present day, as the author highlights when discussing the 1997 handover of Hong Kong in the first chapter.
The book has lots of great detail about Victorian/Edwardian era Britain: opium dens; music hall; anarchists on the streets of London (seen off by a young Winston Churchill wielding a shotgun - really!). It was the period of high romance for Britain, the apogee of its dark, twisted imperial adventure. And Rohmer read the popular imagination perfectly: feeding it precisely what it wanted with his overwrought tales of insidious oriental evil infiltrating the morally righteous West.
I found the first half of the book by far the stronger. An excellent slice of social history that conveys the popular vision of the East as perceived from the dark streets and reading parlours of 19th century Britain. Key other Victorian luminaries feature - Wilde, De Quincey, Conan Doyle - and we follow Rohmer's very Victorian trajectory from civil servant (working alongside P.G. Wodehouse) to music hall songwriter, to writer of pulp mysteries.
The second half was less satisfying: crammed with much tedious detail about the Fu Manchu books themselves, and the later film and TV treatments. I felt the author didn't really know where to take his analysis in this later, post-war, post-Empire period and the book kind of peters out without any concluding analysis. It would have been interesting to link back to discuss present-day fears over China and how much these echo the original 'yellow peril' anxieties.
Overall, a very well written and researched book. Read it for the compelling first half that gives a fascinating window on a problematic but darkly romantic period.
This book primarily uses the life, work and preoccupations of 'Fu Manchu' author Sax Rohmer as a focus for such a study. In a somewhat high-minded preface, the author explains that he is attempting to complement Edward Said's Orientalism: continuing the analysis of perceptions of the East, but here specifically in the framework of *popular* culture.
The core theme is "the yellow peril": the 19th century paranoia that China presented an existential threat to the very foundations of Western civilization. What real-world form this threat would take was never really clear; instead, it was largely a phantom conjured up by romance writers like Rohmer.
I see the yellow peril as a kind of ur-fear - a basic fear of 'otherness', perhaps stoked by the West's unconscious guilt about its terrible actions during the imperial era and a feeling that some kind of retribution was surely inevitable. It was a key component of the British imperial zeitgeist and echoes down to the present day, as the author highlights when discussing the 1997 handover of Hong Kong in the first chapter.
The book has lots of great detail about Victorian/Edwardian era Britain: opium dens; music hall; anarchists on the streets of London (seen off by a young Winston Churchill wielding a shotgun - really!). It was the period of high romance for Britain, the apogee of its dark, twisted imperial adventure. And Rohmer read the popular imagination perfectly: feeding it precisely what it wanted with his overwrought tales of insidious oriental evil infiltrating the morally righteous West.
I found the first half of the book by far the stronger. An excellent slice of social history that conveys the popular vision of the East as perceived from the dark streets and reading parlours of 19th century Britain. Key other Victorian luminaries feature - Wilde, De Quincey, Conan Doyle - and we follow Rohmer's very Victorian trajectory from civil servant (working alongside P.G. Wodehouse) to music hall songwriter, to writer of pulp mysteries.
The second half was less satisfying: crammed with much tedious detail about the Fu Manchu books themselves, and the later film and TV treatments. I felt the author didn't really know where to take his analysis in this later, post-war, post-Empire period and the book kind of peters out without any concluding analysis. It would have been interesting to link back to discuss present-day fears over China and how much these echo the original 'yellow peril' anxieties.
Overall, a very well written and researched book. Read it for the compelling first half that gives a fascinating window on a problematic but darkly romantic period.
September 24, 2022
4 stars for some of the content, 3 stars for presentation of same - to me it seemed regrettably unfocused.
January 17, 2025
A solid, well researched dissection on how popular culture influenced the way in which the west views China
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April 24, 2015809.93358 F847 2014
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews