It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
'Momentous': Asian Americans laud Anna May Wong's US quarter
More than 60 years after Anna May Wong became the first Asian American woman to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the pioneering actor has coined another first, quite literally.
With quarters bearing her face and manicured hand set to start shipping Monday, per the U.S. Mint, Wong will be the first Asian American to grace U.S. currency. Few could have been more stunned at the honor than her niece and namesake, Anna Wong, who learned about the American Women Quarters honor from the Mint's head legal consul.
“From there, it went into the designs and there were so many talented artists with many different renditions. I actually pulled out a quarter to look at the size to try and imagine how the images would transfer over to real life,” Anna Wong wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
The elder Wong, who fought against stereotypes foisted on her by a white Hollywood, is one of five women being honored this year as part of the program. She was chosen for being “a courageous advocate who championed for increased representation and more multi-dimensional roles for Asian American actors,” Mint Director Ventris Gibson said in a statement.
The other icons chosen include writer Maya Angelou; Dr. Sally Ride, an educator and the first American woman in space; Wilma Mankiller, the first female elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; and Nina Otero-Warren, a trailblazer for New Mexico’s suffrage movement.
Wong's achievement has excited Asian Americans inside and outside of the entertainment industry.
Her niece, whose father was Anna May Wong's brother, will participate in an event with the Mint on Nov. 4 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. One of Wong's movies, “Shanghai Express,” will be screened, followed by a panel discussion.
Arthur Dong, the author of “Hollywood Chinese," said the quarter feels like a validation of not just of Wong's contributions, but of all Asian Americans'. A star on the Walk of Fame is huge, but being on U.S. currency is a whole other stratosphere of renown.
“What it means is that people all across the nation — and my guess is around the world — will see her face and see her name,” Dong said. “If they don’t know anything about her, they will ... be curious and want to learn something about her.”
Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong started acting during the silent film era. While her career trajectory coincided with Hollywood's first Golden Age, things were not so golden for Wong.
She got her first big role in 1922 in “The Toll of the Seat,” according to Dong's book. Two years later, she played a Mongol slave in “The Thief of Bagdad.” For several years, she was stuck receiving offers only for femme fatale or Asian “dragon lady” roles.
She fled to European film sets and stages, but Wong was back in the U.S. by the early 1930s and again cast as characters reliant on tropes that would be hardly be tolerated today. These roles included the untrustworthy daughter of Fu Manchu in “Daughter of the Dragon” and a sex worker in “Shanghai Express.”
She famously lost out on the lead to white actor Luise Rainer in 1937's “The Good Earth," based on the novel about a Chinese farming family. But in 1938, she got to play a more humanized, sympathetic Chinese American doctor in “King of Chinatown.”
The juxtaposition of that film with her other roles is the focus of one day in a monthlong program, “Hollywood Chinese: The First 100 Years,” that Dong is curating at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in November.
“('King of Chinatown') was part of this multi-picture deal at Paramount that gave her more control, more say in the types of films she was going to be participating in,” he said. “For a Chinese American woman to have that kind of multi-picture deal at Paramount, that was quite outstanding.”
By the 1950s, Wong had moved on to television appearances. She was supposed to return to the big screen in the movie adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Flower Drum Song” but had to bow out because of illness. She died on Feb. 2, 1961, a year after receiving her star.
Bing Chen, co-founder of the nonprofit Gold House — focused on elevating representation and empowerment of Asian and Asian American content — called the new quarter “momentous.” He praised Wong as a star “for generations.”
But at the same time, he highlighted how anti-Asian hate incidents and the lack of representation in media still persist.
“In a slate of years when Asian women have faced extensive challenges — from being attacked to objectified on screen to being the least likely group to be promoted to corporate management — this currency reinforces what many of us have known all along: (they're) here and worthy,” Chen said in a statement. “It's impossible to forget, though, as a hyphenated community, that Asian Americans constantly struggle between being successful and being seen.”
Asian American advocacy groups outside of the entertainment world also praised the new quarters. Norman Chen, CEO of The Asian American Foundation, plans to seek the coins out to show to his parents.
“For them to see an Asian American woman on a coin, I think it’d be really powerful for them. It’s a dramatic symbol of how we are so integral to American society yet still seen in stereotypical ways,” he said. “But my parents will look at this they will be pleasantly surprised and proud.”
To sum it up, Chen said, it's a huge step: “Nothing is more American than our money.”
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Terry Tang is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ttangAP
Terry Tang, The Associated Press
Sunday, October 10, 2021
Air India: The iconic maharajah returns home
Soutik Biswas - India correspondent Sat, October 9, 2021 Air India has a fleet of more than 140 planes and employs hundreds of pilots and crew
The story of Air India began at a tiny airfield in Karachi in undivided India on a balmy morning in October 1932 when JRD Tata, the 28-year-old scion of a well-known business family, took off for Bombay in a single-engine plane.
The Puss Moth - one of the two that Tata purchased from England - was beginning a modest weekly mail service.
The plane cruised at 100mph (160km/h), battling headwinds in what was a "bumpy and hot flight". A bird flew into the cabin and had to be killed.
After a refuelling stop - a bullock cart ferried fuel to the airline in Ahmedabad - the plane landed on a mud flat in Bombay (now Mumbai) in the late afternoon. After offloading some of the mail, the second, waiting plane took off with the remainder of its cargo to two cities in southern India.
The planes had to be started up by swinging the propeller by hand, flew without navigational or landing aids, and had no radio communication.
They routinely took off from the mud-flat near the beach in Bombay where the "sea was below what we called our airfield, and during the high tide of the monsoon, the airfield was at the bottom of the sea," Tata recounted later.
When the place got flooded, the airline - two planes, three pilots and three mechanics - moved to a small airfield in the city of Poona (now Pune), 150km to the south-east.
Geneva" poster depicting the company mascot – the Maharaja – relaxing at a ski resort and toasting a large beer with his ski partner while balancing on a broken leg and crutches, designed for Air India, 1965.
"Scarcely anywhere in the world was there an air service operating without support from the government. It could only be done by throwing on the operator the financial risk. Tata Sons were prepared to take the risk," Sir Frederick Tymms, the then chief of civil aviation in the region told a newspaper in 1934.
Over the years, the mail service expanded to other cities. A lone passenger was also accommodated. In 1937, two Tata planes began a service between Delhi and Bombay, each plane carrying 3,500 letters and one passenger. Within six years of starting up, the airline owned 15 planes, an equal number of pilots and three dozen engineers. It claimed a punctuality of 99.4%.
"It took Tata pilots some time to get accustomed to a human riding in the seat behind them," the tycoon's biographer, Russi M Lala, noted. "One day a skipper consuming a leg of chicken is reported to have thrown the bone out of the cockpit. It was carried by the wind into the lap of his startled passenger".
An aviation buff - he had flown his first solo flight as a 25 year old - Tata had always wanted to build a global airline. In the early 1940s, he spoke presciently about the impending "air age" and how air travel would become "as widely available as railway and steamer facilities today". By 1946, his fledgling airline was carrying one of every three passengers in India and owned nearly half of the roughly 50 planes operating in the country. American rock group The Doors flew the airline
Two years later, Air India went international. A brand new Lockheed Constellation plane christened the Malabar Princess took off from Bombay on a flight to London. Tata told the BBC that the flight was the "first by an Asian airline to link the East and West by a regular service". By the end of that year Air India was making profits.
Air India quickly gained a worldwide reputation and a well-known brand. By 1968, 75% of its passengers came from foreign countries. George Harrison and The Doors flew on it; and Salvador Dali designed and gifted the airline with a special ashtray.
Tata, a domineering businessman, was punctilious about in-flight service: he once pointed to the colour of tea served on the flight as "indistinguishable" from the colour of coffee; stopped cabin attendants from smoking in the galleys while on duty; and complained that the bacon and tomatoes were often served "stone cold" in the first class breakfast.
He also ticked off his crew for not being properly groomed. "We must know where to draw the line between the odd, the ridiculous and the attractive. Some of your pursers grow sideburns right into their collars! Some have grown drooping moustaches, that make them indistinguishable from Fu Manchu. Some hostesses have buns bigger than their head… please do pay special attention to make-up and appearance" he wrote in a note to one of his managers in 1951. JRD Tata, the founder of the airline, was an aviation buff
In June 1953, Air India was taken over by the government. India's aviation industry had flown into heavy weather: profits were falling, too many aeroplanes had been bought, at least two airlines had shut down. The government proposed merging nearly a dozen airlines - only Air India was the standout operator - in a single state-owned corporation. Tata had mixed feelings about it.
For the next three decades Air India continued to shine. The diminutive maharajah, the airline's world-famous mascot, became one of India's most recognisable symbols. In bright destination-driven promotional posters he appeared as a Brit with a bowler hat and umbrella; a Frenchman with a beret; and a ruddy, alpine climber from Switzerland.
The planes were named after royalty and Himalayan peaks. By the 1970s Air India had 10,000 employees in 54 countries. "[Even in the 1980s) it was a brand to reckon with. It was one of the few Indian organisations at that time with a global footprint. It had an aura of glamour and excitement," noted Jitender Bhargava, a former executive director of Air India and author of the book, The Descent of Air India.
Things began to go downhill from the 1990s. Competition became fiercer. Air India began making heavy losses after merging with the state-owned domestic operator Indian Airlines in 2007. It relied on taxpayer-funded bailouts to stay operational, and became the butt of jokes.
Air India's in-flight service was among the best in the world
The carrier was making a loss of nearly $2.6m (£1.9m) a day and was racked by debts worth more than $8bn. The airline still had some of the best pilots, but its on-time performance plummeted and service deteriorated.
Now, Air India has returned to the Tata Group, India's biggest conglomerate. In an emotional note, Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus and cousin of JRD Tata, said the airline under JRD had "gained the reputation of being one of the most prestigious airlines in the world".
"Tatas will have the opportunity of regaining the image and reputation it enjoyed in earlier years," he said.
Fasten your seat belts.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Disease How disease has fed on China’s progress – shift from nomadic hunters to farming communities sowed the seeds for millennia of sickness
From malarial neolithic settlements on the Yellow River plain to the plague-ravaged Mongols and today’s host-jumping pathogens, disease has long helped to shape China
In 1999, while most people were anticipating what the new millennium might bring, American academic Jared Diamond cast his gaze back 10,000 years to question whether the agricultural revolution that had germinated settled society had really been such a great leap forward.
Writing in Discover Magazine, Diamond contended, “With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.” Significantly, epidemics that “couldn’t take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp” spread only after humans began to grow crops and raise chickens. “Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise of farming; measles and bubonic plague the appearance of large cities.”
Yet for the Chinese, the idea that agriculture was the wellspring of civilisation is seldom, if ever questioned.
From the revolutionaries that settled the Yellow River valley thousands of years ago, Chinese history is often framed with Long March gallantry, leading step by step from paddy field to palatial shopping centre. Chinese civilisation, the story goes, outlasted all its rivals and triumphed over the vagaries of nature, stoically enduring episodes of turmoil to arrive at the current age of abundance. It is a tale of great and ongoing struggle, soaked in blood, sweat and jingoism. Since AD200-250, traditional Chinese medicine has harnessed all aspects of life, from food to sex. (Illustration from G.N. Wright’s 1843 book, China, In a Series of Views, Displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits, of That Ancient Empire.) Photo: Getty Images
But what if it was the millet first planted by China’s neolithic ancestors that sowed the seeds for centuries of untold misery?
Like those of ancient Greece, China’s origin myths were created in hindsight and reflect a preordained greatness to come. Shennong, the god of agriculture, taught the Chinese to farm, while his successor, Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, symbolically battled his rival Chiyou for control of the hazardous Yellow River, from whose surroundings would grow the very idea of China as we know it.
As far back as records go, we know the Yellow River was a capricious mistress. Its lethal capacity to shift course without warning, causing massive floods accompanied by famine and disease, prompted author Philip Ball to remark in The Water Kingdom (2016), “it’s hard to imagine how anyone, let alone millions, endured it routinely”.
The river’s propensity for disaster continued until the modern era. In 1887, as many as 2.5 million people were killed by floods or related diseases such as typhoid. And yet, along its muddy banks in about 7500BC – at roughly the same time the Fertile Crescent was being settled in the Middle East – neolithic societies decided to make a go of it as farmers. By 2070BC, a state had emerged: the mysterious Xia people.
We don’t know much about Xia society but evidence suggests bean curd, fruits such as oranges and peaches, and animal husbandry were established means of food production for the pioneer Chinese state. But living in settlements meant the Xia – followed by the Shang and Zhou dynasties – unearthed “snakes” and “dragons” from the Yellow River plain, or what Mary Dobson in Murderous Contagion (2014) dubs “ancient maladies” like malaria and schistosomiasis.
The latter is caused by parasitic flatworms that “became a significant human infection in river valleys such as the Euphrates, the Nile in Egypt and the Yellow (Huang He) River in China, when people began to settle, farm and irrigate the land”.
Living in proximity to domesticated animals put people in range of other invisible enemies, as Yuval Noah Harari outlines in Sapiens (2011): “Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution.”
Evidence for this can be found in the 3,000-year-old Chinese character jia, meaning “home” and “family”, which is represented by a pig in a house. A typical Shang dynasty household would have lived cheek-by-jowl with their livestock, oblivious to the dangers this arrangement posed. A 1907 illustration in Paris’ Le Petit Journal shows cholera victims in China and government officials being mobbed by starving people. Photo: Getty Images A host of “lifestyle diseases” afflicted the Chinese, too. From sunrise to sunset, toiling farmers were weakened by “slipped discs, arthritis and hernias”, writes Harari, ailments unknown to hunter-gatherers who “spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease”. Nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples, such as the Xiongnu, Toba, Khitan and Mongols – to name but a few “barbarian” peoples given to pillaging China – would know little of such maladies.
As the Chinese had committed themselves to the land, they couldn’t abandon their pastures and ride off into the sunset, as their enemies invariably did. So while rationalist culture and philosophical debate evolved in the open city of Athens, on the other side of the world, the Chinese began to wall themselves in, a mode of defence that was well under way by the latter half the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-256BC).
Every siheyuan, or quadrangle courtyard house, would have its “garden” or social space located inside; every village, town and city would be ringed with rammed earth or stone. Even the imperial frontier would be demarcated by the Great Wall, the earliest version of which dates back to 300BC and the Zhao State, according to wall historian William Lindesay. Only in the 20th century did China begin to demolish its city ramparts.
These barriers helped slow the progress of China’s external enemies, but made the enemy within harder to contain. As Harari writes, “most people in agricultural and industrial societies lived in dense, unhygienic permanent settlements – ideal hotbeds of disease”. Thus China was forced to fight a protracted campaign on two fronts, against invading steppe peoples and the baibing (100 diseases): both microbe and marauding Mongols could become a potential regime changer if left unchecked. The shift from nomadic hunters to settled farming communities sowed the seeds for millennia of disease. Photo: Getty Images
To confront wily tribes, China was able to make war, Diamond writes: “Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life […] a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter.” So the Chinese played the numbers game, unaware the imperial granaries hid a Malthusian trap – unchecked population growth versus a static food supply.
As early as 1300BC, Anyang, in Henan province, was the biggest city in the world. By the Tang dynasty (AD618-907) Chang’an (modern Xian) was home to more than a million people. Han China (202BC-AD220) was more populous than its Western contemporary, the Roman Empire.
Running low on space, farmers “crept over the face of China like a skin rash”, as travel writer Bruce Chatwin put it, settling further and further from their Yellow River homeland, and often within range of steppe nomads or southern barbarians – the Baiyue, meaning 100 yue, or peoples. Though famine, disease and war occasionally levelled the population, a period of peace or a new innovation, such as the introduction of counter-cyclical New World crops like corn and potatoes during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), saw numbers rise over time.
Just as Europeans sent their excess population to the colonies of the New World, the Chinese, too, were forced to “colonise” fresh pastures. They sailed across the straits to Taiwan, intruded on the Tibetan plateau, crept northeast into Manchuria and southwest into the tribal lands of Yunnan and Guizhou, displacing indigenous peoples and forging the ethnic and political tensions of today. But unlike Europeans, who took lethal germs to the Americas, the Chinese often found themselves contracting new indigenous diseases, especially in the tropical south.
The Mawangdui medical texts demonstrate the Han aristocrats’ obsession with preserving health, avoiding disease, and living life to the fullestRuth Rogaski, scholar
Agriculture may not have brought a better life for the average Zhou, but it did bring surplus, which as Diamond points out, fed a class society. China’s pampered elites congregated in great urban centres – Chang’an, Luoyang and, later, Beijing – from where they sought to manage their expansive realm. They imposed strict rules on their subjects, such as the nightly imperial curfew.
But these security measures only helped make Chinese settlements hotbeds for “crowd diseases” such as smallpox and measles. Besides the poisoning and assassinations that were the stuff of court politics, disease remained an emperor’s biggest threat. By the time of the Han dynasty, the literate Chinese had amassed the greatest canon of medical texts in the world.
“Among the earliest extant medical texts are those recovered from the Mawangdui tomb (sealed 168BC) in present-day Hunan,” writes scholar Ruth Rogaski in her 2014 book Hygienic Modernity. “The Mawangdui medical texts demonstrate the Han aristocrats’ obsession with preserving health, avoiding disease, and living life to the fullest.” The text reads like the advice of a modern health guru, describing, “sexual practices, dietetic regimens, movements and medicines designed to nurture vital forces and ensure the proper flow of qi within the body”.
The Han period, now considered an early “scientific golden era”, also produced a number of famous doctors. Some are revered to this day, such as Hua Tuo, the first to use a general anaesthetic.
The Chinese gave fantastically descriptive names to the “pestilent qi” that afflicted them: “toad fever”, for example, caused the abdomen to swell, and “crab fever” caused small red bumps on the throat. In a 1922 illustration from Myths and Legends of China, by Edward T.C. Lerner, plague-disseminating umbrellas are defeated by the wave of a magic fan. Photo: Getty Images
With a vocabulary born of Taoism, which advocates harmony with the natural order of the cosmos, traditional Chinese medicine brought together myriad means of “guarding life” (weisheng) and “nurturing life” (yansheng), including meditation and martial arts, sex and sexual abstinence, tea and food, cosmology and herbology. All aspects of life were marshalled to the cause of weisheng zhi dao, the way of guarding life.
Medical quests are a recurring theme in Chinese history, most famously perhaps the unifying emperor Qin Shihuang’s hunt for the elixir of immortality, which saw him order a sea expedition to mythical Penglai Mountain to find a 1,000-year-old magician who held the secrets of longevity. The ship never returned and Qin died two years later, after swallowing mercury pills given to him by the court doctor.
The legend lingered for a millennia and, in 1220, Genghis Khan, having already conquered much of northern China and Eurasia, summoned Taoist master Qiu Chuji from Shandong to his royal camp in present-day Uzbekistan to ask him for the medicine of immortality. Although Qiu did not have the elixir the Great Khan sought, Rogaski writes, “The Daoist master [offered]a regimen that could strengthen the body’s resistance to illness.”
The advice included “a diet harmonised with the seasons” as well as “quiet meditation” and warned against the “dangers of sex”. That pearl of wisdom was conveniently ignored by a man for whom harems, concubines and the rape of enemy wives was the norm. According to an international genetic study published in 2003, the Great Khan may have as many as 16 million descendants living today in the lands of the former Mongol empire.
But 50 years later, the Mongol Yuan dynasty would be in trouble. The Mongols adapted poorly to sedentary life, preferring to live in tents rather than the palaces of Dadu (Beijing). Despite Kublai Khan’s Confucian pretensions, he continued to banquet like a Mongol, but without hunting he grew from the “well-formed” figure Marco Polo met to an obese ruler afflicted by severe rheumatism and gout. The Mongol aristocrats squabbled, their mastery of siege warfare no apprenticeship for Chinese statecraft and they were resented by the majority Han Chinese.
But what really plagued Yuan China was, well, plague. We don’t know if the virulent strain of bubonic plague that ravaged China in the 1330s was the Black Death that crept into Europe in the 1340s and killed two-thirds of the population, though a similarly horrific mortality rate in China suggests it was.
Fourteenth century Europeans often called it “the pestilence from the East”. Given the timing of the disease, it was likely introduced to China via Himalayan horsemen, then travelled down the recently opened Silk Road. Hubei province lost 90 per cent of its population, according to historian Jonathan Fenby. Plague and other epidemics saw the population decline under the Mongols from an estimated 110 million to 85 million by the time they lost power, in 1368, after a series of popular uprisings against China’s ancient foes: nomads and disease. The early Ming dynasty that followed was a prosperous period epitomised by the voyages of Admiral Zheng He, who famously sailed the South China Sea and Indian Ocean projecting Chinese state power to the known world. But as during any stable epoch, the population spiked, a rise accompanied by frequent outbreaks of measles and smallpox. Plague inspectors in Hong Kong in August 1890; the disease broke out in Western district and continued sporadically until the 1920s. Photo: Getty Images
“In 1407, 78,400 died from epidemics in Jiangsu and Fujian provinces alone,” writes Louise Levathes in When China Ruled the Seas (1994). And so Zheng’s fourth expedition had clandestine motives, namely to collect medicinal herbs and cures from the markets of Sumatra, Malacca and Ceylon, and take them back to China to help heal the sick.
When the Portuguese sailed into the same ports less than a century later, they heard stories of the great Chinese fleet that had preceded them. When they arrived in South China, in 1513, the Celestial Kingdom appeared to live up to its lofty reputation. Accounts from the time credit the Chinese with being civil and clean. Adventurer Galeote Pereira wrote, “They feed with two sticks, refraining from touching their meat with their hands, even as we do with forks, for which respect, they less do need any tablecloths. Neither is the nation only civil at meat, but also in conversation and in courtesy they seem to exceed all.”
Such praise helped provoke a mania for chinoiserie in 17th century Europe. Commodities such as fine tea, porcelain and silks helped engender an imagined oriental heaven, free from the suffering of disease-ridden Europe.
When Europeans finally did intrude on China, in the wake of British gunboats at the conclusion of the first opium war, in 1842, their elevated opinion of the Chinese had turned to arrogant contempt. They regarded the Qing empire as being home to godless heathens, dirty and diseased, and “in need of foreign salvation and administration”, as Beijing-based historian Jeremiah Jenne explains the pretext for carving up China. Superstition was so rife in China that fighters in the 1899-1901 Boxer Rebellion relied on amulets for protection. Photo: Getty Images The imperial interlopers established sheltered communities, often on islands, away from the “natives” who spat and smoked opium, much of which was imported by Europeans. Accounts at the time express revulsion for the smells and “miasmas” endemic to China’s overcrowded cities. Cholera outbreaks were frequent and misery was a virtue to be endured.
The Chinese appeared so burdened by history as to be blind to the light of modernity – slaves to injudicious Manchu overlords and superstitious beyond comprehension. When sick, they prayed at the Medicine King Temple or drank bitter herbal concoctions. They believed sacred amulets could protect the wearer from harm, as evidenced during the catastrophic Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, when northern Chinese peasants rose up against Christian missionaries and Western merchants, leading to their wholesale massacre and the sacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace by British and French soldiers.
Feeding the prejudice, two outbreaks of plague in late-Qing China rocked the world. What the Chinese called the “rat epidemic” emerged in 1855 in Yunnan province, where the Han Chinese had been moving in great numbers to mine tin. Ethnic tensions between minority peoples, especially Hui Muslims, and the newly arrived Han, erupted into rebellion. The Qing government sent troops to quash the revolt and they returned infected with the disease. Within weeks, it had killed 60,000 people in Guangzhou, then in 1894, it spread to Hong Kong, Britain’s new global entrepôt.
“From Hong Kong steamships carried the plague bacilli to all the major seaports in the world,” writes Carol Benedict in her 1996 book, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China. “In most cases, the disease did not spread further inland, but in India plague claimed some 6,000,000 victims between 1898 and 1908.” Swiss-French scientist Alexandre Yersin. Photo: Institut Pasteur
Plague would periodically resurface in Hong Kong and India until the 1940s. During what is now dubbed the “third plague pandemic”, in the 19th century, Europeans, North Americans and the Japanese were generating new mechanisms to combat illness. This scientific revolution was to liberate mankind from the virulent by-products of settled civilisation. No more leech therapy or bloodletting.
The pioneering work of bacteriologists such as Frenchman Louis Pasteur (1822-95) and German Robert Koch (1843-1910) were giving name and form to human “curses”, not as qi or miasmas, but as germs. By identifying the enemy, humans would learn how to fight it.
With people dying in such large numbers in Asia, the race was on to identify the source of the plague. It was won by Swiss-born bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, working in a straw hut in Hong Kong. According to Dobson, he “procured cadavers of plague victims to study by bribing English sailors who had the job of disposing of bodies”. In 1894, Yersin identified Yersinia pestis, as the lethal bacteria is now known in his honour.
Japanese scientist Masanori Ogata, working in Taiwan, would suggest rat fleas carried the bacteria, a link proved in 1898 by Frenchman Paul-Louis Simond, working in India. The knowledge that killing flea-infested rats slowed the disease’s spread was critical towards overcoming it.
When plague re-emerged in China in 1910 – this time pneumonic plague, born of trade in marmot fur in Manchuria – and spread along its nascent railway network, taking more than 60,000 lives, it spurred new health care innovations. Malaysian-born, English-trained Chinese doctor Wu Lien-teh introduced quarantine, isolation, limits on travel and face masks to bring the outbreak under control by the following year, according to historian Paul French. The straw hut “laboratory” in Hong Kong where Yersin identified the Yersinia pestis bacteria, which causes bubonic plague and was named for him. Photo: Institut Pasteur
Wu was a brilliant doctor who helped contain a potential pandemic, as well as equipping us with means to hamper future outbreaks. But racialising disease was infectious and prejudices accompanied the measures to curb disease.
As Dobson writes of plague outbreaks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “across the world, ports and cities struggled to contain the disease and the situation was, in many ways, reminiscent of older outbreaks, while also linked to newer issues of imperialism and race […] Blame was attached to certain groups – often, in this case, to immigrants, such as the Chinese …”
In 1882, the draconian Chinese Exclusion Act had wrote Sinophobia into law in the United States, while in Britain, in 1912, a struggling writer using the pseudonym Sax Rohmer and trading on racial stereotypes invented Fu Manchu, an opium-sickened criminal mastermind bent on world domination who would embody “Yellow Peril” for decades to come. Meanwhile, reformers in China were trading a vision of an ill nation to further their political objectives. The term “Asia’s sick man”, which recently saw three Wall Street Journal correspondents ejected from Beijing, might have been first applied by late-19th century political philosopher Liang Qichao, who translated Western medical texts as a call to arms against China’s antiquated culture. The lines blurred between individual health and that of the country, as Rogaski writes in Hygienic Modernity: “By creating an ideal West that ‘stresses scientific principles in all aspects of life,’ he creates a deficient China that is mired in superstition and disease.”
Liang would inspire generations of revolutionary reformers, including Sun Yat-sen, the political agitator who became the first president of the republic, in 1912; and writer Lu Xun, who studied medicine in Japan before taking up the pen to heal China’s “spiritual sickness”. Wu Lien-teh, a Malaysia-born Chinese doctor introduced quarantine, isolation, limits on travel and face masks to bring the 1910 outbreak of plague in China under control. Photo: Handout
After the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, in 1949, the quest for scientific modernity would assume the guise of imperial China’s medical quests, collectivised under socialism. Yet progress was hampered by trouble at the top.
“Mao was almost completely ignorant of modern medicine,” wrote the Great Helmsman’s personal doctor, Li Zhisui, in his 1994 memoir The Private Life of Chairman Mao. “His thinking remained prescientific.” Li’s book tells of how Mao washed his teeth with green tea, believed smoking was a breathing exercise, abused sleeping pills and slept with a harem of young women, his “elixir for a long life”.
Mao might have been ignorant of science but he was well versed in history. Li chronicles Mao’s admiration of some of China’s great tyrants, believing everything under heaven had to be conquered, including nature, as expressed by the ancestors who had first sought to restrain the Yellow River. As Mao’s rule became more despotic, it derailed China’s efforts to modernise, medically or otherwise.
In 1958, Mao introduced the “four pests campaign”, when killing rodents, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows assumed a nationwide patriotic fervour. Yet millions of people would die, not from insect bites or rodent-borne disease but from famine as the Great Leap Forward, designed to pole-vault the country forward, failed spectacularly. Even as peasants perished in the fields, provincial cadres reported record yields, unwilling to challenge Mao’s decree. While China has come a long way since Mao’s time, the chairman casts a long shadow.
“Balance” is a concept embedded in some of China’s earliest efforts to combat disease, from the Taoist recognition of cosmic harmony to Han-era doctors who prescribed diets by the seasons. But China’s development of the past four decades has been utterly unbalanced. Cutthroat capitalism driven by utopian Marxism is now leading the country to the precipice. When the sacred threshold between the natural and human world is breached, hostile forces are unleashed – exemplified by a stressed pathogen that jumps hosts.
It’s happened before, when neolithic farmers unearthed parasitic worms from the Yellow River flood plains and when miners settled Yunnan to be greeted by the plague.
The Chinese have been shaped by their history and environment to be at once stoical and versatile. But if the world’s oldest surviving civilisation cannot adopt a more harmonious form, one akin to that propagated by Taoist sages three millennia ago, “the disease and despotism, that curse our existence” will continue to plague China.
Monday, March 23, 2020
What's the purpose of the phrase 'Chinese virus'?
Mike Bebernes Editor, Yahoo News 360•March 21, 20 “The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
Trump defends calling COVID-19 the 'Chinese virus' of bias against Chinese-Americans
MASK OF FU MANCHU 1932 BORIS KARLOFF, MYRNA LOY
What’s happening
In the past few days, President Trump and some of his fellow conservatives have changed the way they refer to the virus that has caused nearly 10,000 deaths around the world. For more than two months, Trump used the word “coronavirus.” On Monday, he began calling it the “Chinese virus” on Twitter and in public briefings. Other GOP lawmakers and conservative media figures have pivoted their language as well, with some preferring “Wuhan virus,” referring to the area of China where the outbreak originated.
The change in word choice has raised accusations of racism. Trump defended himself Wednesday, saying, “It comes from China. I want to be accurate.” The White House accused the president’s critics of “fake media outrage.”
Trump is correct that the virus is believed to come from China. But using the phrase goes against modern best practices to avoid location-based names for infectious diseases. Not only are they often inaccurate — Spanish flu started in Kansas and Ebola was chosen by scientists using an incorrect map — but they can also stigmatize people from the region the virus is named after. “It’s really important we be careful in the language we use lest it lead to the profiling of individuals associated with the virus,” a World Health Organization official said.
There have been numerous reports of racism against Asians in the U.S. and abroad, including hate crimes, as the outbreak has escalated. Health experts say this prejudice could hinder efforts to combat the pandemic.
Why there’s debate Trump and his allies argue that the term “Chinese virus” is necessary to ensure that China’s government is held accountable for the missteps it took in the early stages of the outbreak that allowed the virus to spread to other parts of the world. The president’s critics say he’s looking to redirect blame for the impact the virus is having in the U.S. amid accusations that the administration has mismanaged the crisis and put American lives at risk.
Others say the vocabulary shift is an attempt to change the debate to one about the president’s language choice rather than his performance. Trump has faced regular allegations of racism since referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” in the first address of his presidential campaign. Combating those accusations — and using them as an opportunity to rail against politically correct culture — is something the president and his supporters have ample practice at, and may even see a political advantage in.
Some historians say the phrase “Chinese virus” is part of a long history of blaming foreigners, particularly Asians, for epidemics. Perspectives
It’s an attempt to distract from mismanagement of the crisis
“The White House [would] clearly rather have a National Conversation about political correctness run amok than talk about the shocking and continuing malfeasance of the WH’s response that will result in unnecessary deaths.” — MSNBC host Chris Hayes
It’s important to be truthful about where the virus started
“While some here say that’s a racist term, it’s actually just an accurate term of where it started, and them not being transparent about how it started really hurt literally the rest of the planet.” — Brian Kilmeade, Fox News MASK OF FU MANCHU 1932 BORIS KARLOFF Trump and his allies are more comfortable in debates about rhetoric
“Controversies like these are a perfect example of what Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager, called ‘flooding the zone with sh*t’ — distracting us from what matters with copious flushes of what doesn’t. And raw sewage is this president’s natural habitat, the medium in which he fights most effectively. His opponents are willingly lured into the sewers.” — Graeme Wood, Atlantic
It’s fair to blame the Chinese government, but not to stigmatize the country’s citizens
“If the present instances are unfair to the Chinese people, who have suffered massively from the outbreak, a better name would be ‘Xi’s disease.’” — Editorial, National Review
Trump sees political advantage in ‘culture war’ debates
“There is no word in the world more recognizable right now than ‘coronavirus.’ From his infamous ‘both sides’ remarks about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., to his labeling of Haiti and African nations as ‘sh*thole countries’ to referring to Mexicans as ‘rapists’ and ‘drug dealers,’ Trump’s frequent displays of racism are deliberate.” — Kurt Bardella, NBC News It provides a chance to make the left look excessively PC
“Do I think he should be calling it the Chinese virus? No. But I think it’s a losing argument for the left to make because I think the vast majority of Americans are going to say, ‘Who cares?’” — Dan Abrams, The View
The virus offers an opportunity to needle Trump’s biggest geopolitical rival
“China is a regular punching bag for a president who lays blame for all sorts of global ills at China’s door; he has already sparked a trade war with China, plunging any semblance of bilateralism to historic lows. Countless Republicans seem to see the coronavirus — uh, Wuhan virus — as another Team Trump layup that they’re not gonna miss.” — Daniel King, Mother Jones Fear of disease has always been tied to fear of foreigners
“The language of disease has always been linked to our discourse around immigration. I think it’s pretty clear that our fears about immigrants and outsiders have always been bolstered by fears about disease and contamination.” — Historian Natalia Molin to Vox MASK OF FU MANCHU 1932
BORIS KARLOFF
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
President Donald Trump drew backlash Monday night after posting a tweet using the phrase "Chinese Virus."
After giving an address Monday afternoon in which he said the country may be headed toward recession and urged social distancing, he later tweeted his confidence in and support for various sectors while including the offensive remark.
"The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!" he wrote.
Many officials, including the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have criticized the phrase as inaccurate and potentially harmful in promoting racist associations between the virus and those from China.
The comments prompted massive backlash from many social media users, including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said the tweet was misplacing blame and could put more Asian Americans in danger.
If you’re looking for someone to pin this crisis on, try the guy who made up a phony Google website or promised testing kits that he STILL hasn’t delivered.
Our Asian-American communities — people YOU serve — are already suffering. They don’t need you fueling more bigotry. https://t.co/jjcO7treC2 — Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) March 17, 2020
And I hate bringing more attention to the fact that he said Chinese virus... but I’d like us to continue to look out for our Asian brothers and sisters who are experiencing attacks against them because people are assuming they have the virus because they are Chinese https://t.co/NPvwUKn95Q — aj rafael (@ajRAFAEL) March 17, 2020
Trump just tweeted “Chinese virus” Say hello to 25 years of Asian American kids taking hell for no sin of their own. He knows exactly what he’s doing. This guy is a nightmare. A pig. — Nate McMurray for Congress 2020 (@Nate_McMurray) March 17, 2020
Mr. President: This is not acceptable. Calling it the "Chinese virus" only instigates blame, racism, and hatred against Asians - here and abroad. We need leadership that speaks clearly against racism; Leadership that brings the nation and world together. Not further divides. https://t.co/wPTcnoO5QU — Eugene Cho (@EugeneCho) March 17, 2020
Chinese officials condemned Trump's comments, saying his tweet smeared China.
"The U.S. should first take care of its own matters," said Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry.
Trump has previously referred to COVID-19 as a "foreign virus," and he has also retweeted a supporter who used the term "China Virus." His newest reference comes days after CDC Director Robert Redfield agreed at a House hearing that it was "absolutely wrong and inappropriate" to use labels like "Chinese coronavirus," as the virus had expanded beyond China to other parts of the world. There were roughly 3,500 confirmed cases of the illness in the U.S. as of Monday night.
Many others have condemned the practice of identifying the illness by location or ethnicity, including the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, which called on its fellow legislators to "help us prevent hysteria, ignorant attacks, and racist assaults that have been fueled by misinformation pertaining to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)" by sharing only confirmed and verifiable information.
While some, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., publicly condemned the racism tied to the pandemic, others, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have continued to use the offensive language, pointing to outlets that have used similar wording.
The Asian American Journalists Association released guidelines for responsible reporting in February to curb "fueling xenophobia and racism that have already emerged since the outbreak."
Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., previously told NBC News that it's possible that several GOP legislators have continued to use the rhetoric to distract from Trump's handling of the pandemic. She said it's likely that officials are using China or Asian Americans as scapegoats "versus actually dealing with the problem at hand."
Along with the virus' spread, there has been an increase in racist incidents and discrimination targeting Asian Americans. Two Hmong guests endured harassment and were later barred from staying at first a Super 8 and then a Days Inn in Indiana. In California, an Asian teen was bullied, assaulted and sent to the emergency room over fears surrounding the pandemic.
De Blasio held a media roundtable Wednesday to condemn coronavirus-related discrimination against Asian communities in New York.
"Right now, we've seen particularly troubling instances of discrimination directed at Asian communities, particularly in Chinese communities," he said. "This is unacceptable."
OF COURSE HE DOES
Trump defends using term 'Chinese virus,' calling it a response to China blaming US military for coronavirus
President Donald Trump defended his use of the term "Chinese virus" during a press briefing Tuesday.
Trump said he decided "to call it where it came from" rather than argue with the Chinese government, a representative of which recently said without evidence that the US military might have brought the virus to China.
"We urge the US to immediately correct its mistake and stop making unwarranted accusations on China," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
President Donald Trump defended his use of the term "Chinese virus" during a press conference on Tuesday, calling it a response to a Chinese government spokesman's "false" accusation that the US military might have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, the Chinese city where it first appeared.
"China was putting out information, which was false, that our military gave this to them," the president said.
"Rather than have an argument, I said I have to call it where it came from, and it did come from China. So I think it's a very accurate term," Trump added, referring to the term "Chinese virus," which he has used in some recent tweets.
During the press briefing, the president called China "the source" of the virus.
A biker passes by a wall of paintings of old shops in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province, March 4, 2020 Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
While the coronavirus, which causes the illness COVID-19, first appeared in central China, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been deeply critical of assertions that the virus originated in China.
"Some US political figures have recently been connecting the coronavirus with China. We express strong indignation and objection to such stigmatization," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a briefing Tuesday. "We urge the US to immediately correct its mistake and stop making unwarranted accusations on China."
Facing criticism, the Chinese government has been trying to shift the blame beyond its borders, to the US in particular.
Last week, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, suggested on Twitter that "it might be the US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan."
Demanding transparency from the US, he said the "US owe us an explanation!"
The US Department of State summoned the Chinese ambassador to protest the spokesman's remarks, and the Department of Defense issued a statement strongly condemning the Chinese government's decision to "promulgate false and absurd conspiracy theories about the origin of COVID-19 blaming U.S. service members. "
"Our military did not give it to anybody," Trump said Tuesday.
Critics have accused Trump of xenophobia and scapegoating through his use of the term "Chinese virus." Some have argued that he is creating an unnecessary stigma. "I think saying our military gave it to them creates a stigma," Trump countered during the briefing Tuesday afternoon.
China’s State-Run (REDUNDANT) Press Appears to Chastise Trump for Labeling Coronavirus ‘Chinese Virus’
Lindsey Ellefson and Lawrence Yee, The Wrap•March 17, 2020
Xinhua News, China’s state-run press, appeared to chastise President Trump after he referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese Virus” in a tweet Monday night.
“Racism is not the right tool to cover your own incompetence,” Xinhua responded in a tweet, which didn’t link to any other news story and include any other context. Racism is not the right tool to cover your own incompetence pic.twitter.com/LmGDyPsULt — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) March 17, 2020
The virus, which is now a global pandemic, originated in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization has mandated that “the name of the disease could not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people. It also needed to relate to the disease and be pronounceable. This choice will help guard against the use of other names that might be inaccurate or stigmatizing.”
Also Chinese and Asian Americans have reported being subjected to harassment and even violence as the pandemic spreads. Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency during a White House press conference just last Friday. In late February, Trump downplayed the risk, saying the virus would “within a couple days [it is] going to be down to close to zero.”
Trump’s “Chinese Virus” label is consistent with his practice of disparaging foreigners. Axios says such language employed by the Trump administration “subtly frames other national security issues as problems created by foreigners.”
Trump’s handling of the crisis has been widely criticized. For instance, Meghan McCain went off on him during Monday’s episode of “The View,” hitting him hard for his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The mixed messaging coming out of the White House right now is not only irresponsible but it’s downright dangerous,” the co-host said.
McCain also criticized GOP Rep. Devin Nunes for encouraging people to go out to eat Sunday, which directly contradicts recommendations from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Americans practice social distancing. She criticized Trump as someone who “can’t even handle not shaking hands,” a reference to his numerous handshakes at a press conference Friday where he announced the designation of coronavirus as a national emergency. That, too, is in contrast to advice from experts, who largely suggest minimizing contact to avoid spreading the virusRead original story China’s State-Run Press Appears to Chastise Trump for Labeling Coronavirus ‘Chinese Virus’ At TheWrap
As face masks fly off the shelves amid rising fears over the COVID-19 illness, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health have just issued a helpful guide about which types of beards and mustaches will make those masks less effective, and which will be OK.
Bottom line: Most beards, and a few mustaches, prevent the mask from making a complete seal against the skin.
Full beards are out, of course, along with any kinds of stubble.
So too are those “mutton chop” whiskers that were all the rage in the Victorian era, along with the so-called “Imperial” mini-beard — a kind of “soul patch” in the days of the Russian czars — and the Three Musketeers-style “French Fork” beard.
The long, droopy “Fu Manchu” mustache is a no-no as well.
On the positive side, all sorts of mustaches may be ready to make a comeback. The toothbrush mustache has been social death since about 1941, but the CDC says it’s just fine. Ditto the old-fashioned, bushy walrus mustache, the pencil mustache immortalized by Jimmy Buffett, and the dashing one worn by Zorro. And while the Fu Manchu is out, the CDC says you’ll be fine if you turn the long ends upward. That will turn the beard into a “Dali,” named after the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and it won’t interfere with your mask.
Masks have been selling out since fears about the coronavirus began spiraling over the weekend, and they rank No. 1 among the bestselling household products on Amazon AMZN, +0.35% . Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, said Tuesday the center expects coronavirus to spread more widely in the U.S. and that Americans should prepare themselves for a possible pandemic.
Human trafficking is one of the most pressing issues of our time, impacting diverse communities in multifaceted ways in every country across the globe. Despite this level of priority and complexity, the popular discourse around human trafficking remains focused on a single narrative. This focus has narrowed our understanding of the issue and stifled our ability to combat it. This paper seeks to analyze the rhetoric on human trafficking in the United States as both cultural myth and propaganda. Through the review of both documentary and fictional media representations of the human trafficking narrative, we create a composite “perfect victim” over three distinct eras. As with any persistent cultural myth, the details of this narrative shift with evolving cultural fears while the ultimate moral of the story remains the same. By unpacking these details, we can better understand the cultural fears of each era and explore why each story captivated the media. Also explored are the advocacy groups which promulgate these narratives,and with them their legislative agendas, which have consistently done more to hinder female migration and further criminalize “sexual immorality” than end exploitation. BEYOND TRAFFICKING AND SLAVERY 'White slavery': the origins of the anti-trafficking movement A nineteenth century drive to protect the morality of white women created the concept of ‘human trafficking’, and its legacies live on in border control systems and slavery-based campaigning. Laura Lammasniemi
In the Grip of a White Slave Trader by the National Vigilance Association, 1911. Provided by author.Anti-white slavery associations, such as International Bureau for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, stemmed from anti-white slavery organisations in England and were also active in continental Europe. Their campaigns resulted in the Agreement for the Suppression of the ‘White Slave Traffic’ 1904 (the 1904 Agreement) and later, the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic 1910.
Are The Famous Five Heroes ?. Elu Valentine Elbow Park School
October 7, 2009. The Persons Case. The Famous Five refers to five
women from Alberta: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney,
Henrietta Muir Edwards and Irene Parley.
EMILY MURPHY WROTE AN ANTI DRUG ANTI WHITE SLAVE TRADE
BOOK THE BLACK CANDLE, NOTE THE CHINESE OPIUM PIPE
A COMMON TROPE TO COVER DRUG USE IN THOSE DAYS
Anti-Chinese Policies Probably no immigrant group has been as heavily managed as the Chinese. Sought out as cheap contract labour, they were recruited to meet finite economic and infrastructural goals. While some Chinese arrivals saw themselves as — temporary immigrants who would return to their country of origin once they’d amassed some money — many more were in for the long haul. This was not part of Ottawa’s plan and so steps were taken to limit immigration and thus encourage return migration.
The was the main instrument used by Ottawa to regulate Chinese arrivals down to 1923. Some 81,000 people found the wherewithal to pay this fee before it was abolished, even though it rose from $50 in 1885 to $500 in 1903. In this respect, the Head Tax initiative was a failed attempt to stop Chinese immigration. It was, however, a money-maker: It is reckoned that the Head Tax pulled in $22 million for Ottawa, which equates to more than $300 million in 2015 dollars. Not everyone in the Euro-Canadian community supported the Head Tax, though for reasons that we might now consider discomfiting. A group of Euro-Canadian women argued that reducing the Head Tax would attract more immigrants, some of whom could be employed as houseboys and cooks. The Lib-Lab Member of the BC legislature, Ralph Smith, supported this idea and one local newspaper chided him that he was worried that “his gallant wife should have to roast her comely face over the kitchen fire every day because the Chinese Head Tax makes it impossible for him to get a Chinese cook.”[7] The rate of Chinese immigration varied because of the tax and global events and, like much human movement during World War I, numbers fell. After the war, immigration resumed. By this time, however, there was growing fear among the White community of the opium trade and allegations that young Euro-Canadian women were being lured into the sex trade, what was called at the time “White slavery.” Emily Murphy — a leading figure in first wave feminism, the suffrage movement, and counted among the Famous Five — wrote a series of highly popular pieces on the drug trade and its connections with Chinatown. The Black Candle (as it appeared in book form) was one of several diatribes against the Chinese community, one that catalyzed a revision of immigration legislation.
The 1923 Chinese Immigration Act terminated legal Chinese immigration and remained on the books until 1947. This complete ban on arrivals from a specified country was uniquely and exclusively applied to the Chinese. Prejudice might stand in the way of other groups but no others were treated this way in law. What immigration occurred between 1923-1947 was illegal and much of it involved reuniting spouses and family members. The 1923 Act, introduced on the 1st of July and thus coinciding with Dominion Day, was commemorated in the Chinese community as Humiliation Day in the years that followed. (For more on this topic, see Section 5.12.)
Limits on immigration is one thing; limits on immigrants is another. Chinese populations were contained (sometimes by choice but usually by civic regulations) to small urban areas — Chinatowns. They were forbidden, in Vancouver, from purchasing homes and opening stores outside of a few blocks of the city core. Like members of some other ethnic/racial/visible groups, they were also forbidden for years from attending post-secondary institutions and specifically from pursuing degrees through the University of British Columbia School of Pharmacy, a restriction that echoed associations between the Chinese community and drug trafficking. Many of these constraints would survive into the 1970s and early 1980s.
MODERNIST ISLAMOPHOBIA BEGAN WITH THE MYTH OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE WHICH FINDS ECHO'S TODAY IN WAR ON CHRISTIANITY CONSPIRACY THEORIES IT WAS THE REASON THOMAS JEFFERSON WENT TO WAR WITH THE BARBARY PIRATES DESPITE HIS AVOWED PRINCIPLE OF NON INTERVENTION BY AMERICA OR ITS NAVY
In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and 52 of his comrades were captured at sea by the Barbary corsairs. Their captors - fanatical Islamic slave traders - had declared war on the whole of Christendom. Thousands of Europeans had been snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Sale in Morocco to be sold to the highest bidder. Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco, who bragged that his white slaves enabled him to hold all of Europe to ransom. The sultan was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built entirely by Christian slave labour. Thomas Pellow was selected to be a personal slave of the sultan and he would witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of the imperial Moroccan court, as well as experience of daily terror. For 23 years, he would dream of his home, his family and freedom. He was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his told. Drawn from unpublished letters and manuscripts written by slaves and by the padres and ambassadors sent to free them, this shocking and extraordinary story reveals a disturbing and forgotten chapter of our history.
MEANWHILE THE IMAGE OF WHITE SLAVERY REMAINS IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION AS HETEROSEXUAL MALE SEX FANTASY THE EXACT SAME IMAGERY THAT HAS EXCITED ANTI WHITE SLAVE TRADE ABOLITIONISTS AS WELL
https://andyoucallyourselfascientist.com/2016/12/01/the-mask-of-fu-manchu-1932/
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