THE HISTORY & CONTEXT OF CHINESE

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THE HISTORY & CONTEXT OF CHINESE - WESTERN MARRIAGES!

Wong Sun Yue and Ella May Clemmons; Wong Sun Yue's business was wiped out by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  It was as a refugee from the destruction that he met and married Ella May Clemmons, a wealthy Californian missionary who spoke several Chinese dialects.  Ella worked hard and effectively for the Chinese community, living happily enough with Sun Yue until 1922, when she discovered he had another wife in China.

Although marriage is a very private affair for the individuals who participate in it, it also reflects and connects with many complex factors such as economic development, culture differences, political backgrounds and transition of traditions, in both China and the Western world. As a result, an ordinary marriage between a Chinese person and a Westerner is actually an episode in a sociological grand narrative.

 Charles Yip Quong & Nellie Towers; Charles Yip was a Vancouver businessman and a nephew  of Yip Sang, the dominant figure in Vancouver's Chinatown in the 1890s-1900s.  Nellie Towers was a teacher from Nova Scotia.The two married in  Boston in1900 and moved to Vancouver in 1900.  There, Nellie, an accomplished linguist, served as a midwife to much of the local Chinese population and as an articulate advocate for Chinese Canadian rights.

The marriages occurring between the people of China and those from other countries at the period of time from 1840 – 1949 were the result of free choice on both sides. Compared with the prevailing marriages arranged by parents in China at that time, they could be regarded as the earliest models of free marriages. The Chinese people who married foreigners at that time were those who had the chance to make contact with foreigners. Besides this factor, they usually had special experiences and statuses which dissociated them from mainstream Chinese culture, and, consequently, these transnational marriages were tolerated by public opinion of society in general.

There were four types of intercultural marriage between Chinese and foreigners in modern China.

1.The first type of intercultural marriage between Chinese and foreigners in this period was the overseas marriage of Chinese diplomatic envoys and Chinese students who were studying abroad.

Between the Late Qing dynasty and the First World War, following several defeats in wars with Western countries, the Qing government tried to seek a way to save its regime, and sending students to study abroad formed a major component of its plan. Many Chinese students that went abroad to Europe and the USA married Western women.

Chinese educational mission students Source: http://www.360doc.com/Chinese educational mission students sent by Qing government before they went to America in Qing dynasty.

Those students dispatched abroad were mostly male. When they reached western countries, as the first batch of Chinese to make contact with western land at that time, which entailed a totally different culture, society, set of customs and conceptualization for male and female compared to China, they experienced an unprecedented ideological shock. Chinese students abroad were attracted by the liveliness and romance of the Western female. One of the first Chinese students studying abroad to marry a Western wife was Yung Wing (Wing probably was the first Chinese to go to study in the USA during the Qing dynasty, and he obtained a degree from Yale University), who studied in the USA, and married an American woman, Miss Kellogg, of Hartford, who died in 1886.

Picture source: Rozenberg Quarterly; Dr Yung Wing

Mary Kellogg, wife of Dr. Yung Wing, at her wedding in 1875. Source: www.120chinesestudents.org

Another case was Kai Ho, who married a British woman. Kai Ho (1859–1914) was a Hong Kong Chinese barrister, physician and essayist in Colonial Hong Kong. He played a key role in the relationship between the Hong Kong Chinese community and the British colonial government. He is mostly remembered as one of the main supporters and teachers of student Sun Yat-sen. He married his British wife, Alice Walkden, in England in 1881 and returned to Hong Kong after his studies. Alice gave birth to a daughter, but died of typhoid fever in Hong Kong in 1884. He later established Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital in her memory.

Yu Geng, an excellent tribute student during the Guangxu Period and his French wife Louisa Pierson Source: http://www.ourjg.com/

During the two Opium Wars, China had been sending students to study overseas. After the Sino -Japanese War, China continued to send students to Western countries, and more to Japan. More Chinese students also married foreigners. At the transition between Qing and the Republic of China, especially after the loss of the Sino-Japanese War in 1984, China began to learn from Japan. Many young men went there including Yang Erhe, Wu Dingchang, Jiang Baili, Fang Zong’ao, Yin Rugeng, Guo Muoruo, Tian Han, Tao Jingsun, Su Buqing and Lu Xun whose two bothers both married Japanese women.
When they returned from abroad, students made reference to the Western countries, and initiated “Natural Feet Movement” and “Natural Breast Movement” for Chinese women.One famous scholar Hu Shi went to study in the USA, where he became acquainted with Miss Williams in America, and later wrote in his diary that “Since I have known my friend Miss Williams, I have greatly changed my opinion on females and social relations between males and females.”

Lai Mayi and Empress Dowager CiXi –the left first is wife of Chen Jitong, He had been councillor of legation in Germany, France, Belgium and Denmark, and deputy envoy of legation in France, living in Paris and elsewhere in Europe for nearly 20 years. He was one of the first modern Chinese people to venture into the greater world.

Historical records show that many famous Chinese men including scholars and scientists who had studied and worked in Western countries married Western women and, according to these, more Chinese men married Western women than the converse.
Chinese male intellectuals who married Western wives, were: Dr. Xu Zhongnian (1904-1981, French linguist, writer); Wang Linyi (Sculptor); Zhang Fengju (1895-1996), a great Translator and Professor in Peking University, and Chang Shuhong (1904-1994), Chinese painter.

2. Foreigners in China marrying Chinese, including intercultural marriages in 租界 zū jiè  (foreign concessions).

The earliest formal interracial marriage between a local Chinese individual and a Westerner in modern China occurred in March 1862. An American Huaer (Frederick Townsend Ward) married Yang Zhangmei, daughter of Comprador Yang in Shanghai.
The second representative case of interracial marriage was between the American F.L. Hawks Pott, principal of Saint John’s University and Huang Su’e. They married in 1888. Huang Su’e was the daughter of Huang Guangcai, a Chinese priest of the Church of England, who later became the chief principal of Shanghai St. Mary’s Hall.
The most famous interracial marriage in Shanghai was between the Jewish merchant  Silas Hardoon and Luo Jialin, in the Autumn of 1886. Luo Jialin herself was mixed race and was born in Jiumudi, Shanghai (between Street Luxiangyuan and Street Dajing). Her father Louis Luo was French while her mother, Shen, was from Minxian, Fujian Province.

Picture source: english.cri.cn; Luo Jialing (left) used to sell flowers along the streets in Shanghai until she married Silas Hardoon (right), the wealthy Jewish businessman.

The third representative case was that of Cheng Xiuqi. In 1903, it was reported in the newpaper, Zhong Wai Daily, that a female missionary from Norway was doing missionary work round HuoZhou, Shanxi Province. She went on to marry Cheng Xiuqi, one of her believers, based on free courtship and changed her name to Yu Ying.
In the modern leased territories where Chinese and foreigners lived together, there were some interracial marriages, a few of which were formal but many were informal (not registered but existed as de facto-marriages).
According to the population records of the American consulate in Shanghai, during the three decades from 1879 to 1909, there were 34 cases of interracial marriages between American husbands and Asian wives, among whom were 8 Japanese women and the rest comprised 26 Chinese women. There was no case of a Western wife married to an Asian husband.

Qian Xiuling and her Belgian Man,1933; source: http://news.sina.com.cn/

According to Bruner, John King Fairbank, and Richard J. Smith, one of the necessary conditions of high-class life for Westerners in China was to have a Chinese woman. This kind of woman was actually a walking commodity, which could be bought or sold by any foreign merchants. “At that time, the price for a foreigner to have a Chinese concubine was about 40 silver dollars” according to Herder. Powell, an American who lived in Shanghai temporarily, described the situation of formal or informal interracial marriages in Shanghai as “Shanghai could be considered as a city of men”. Nine out of ten foreigners in Shanghai were bachelors, and therefore many friendly relationships developed and resulted in numerous international marriages, which even the American Marine Corps quartered at Shanghai took part in. “Once I asked a chaplain of the Marine Corps whether these marriages were happy or not. He answered ‘just like other marriages’.
According to Bruner, foreign businessmen could easily buy Chinese women in China, and therefore many of them were registered single on the household registration form.
Yet, in general, there were not many interracial marriages between the Chinese and the Westerners in modern Shanghai. According to Xiong, it was estimated that after being opened as a commercial port between 1843 and 1949, there were no more than 100 cases of formal marriage between the Chinese and Westerners in Shanghai over 106 years.
For a long time, English settlers in Shanghai resolutely were opposed to marriage with the Chinese. In 1908, the English envoy in China sent out a confidential document, harshly condemning marriages with the Chinese and threatening to expel the violators of this rule from the English circle forever.
The community of English residents in Shanghai had a harsher restriction upon English women as they believed it was treacherous for noble English women to marry humble Chinese men. One English man wrote in his letter to his sister that “if you dared to have an affair with Asian men in Shanghai, you would never stay here well.” In the middle of the 1930s, the Department of the Far East under the English Foreign Ministry tried its best to persuade those English women who had an intention to marry Chinese men not to do so. In the official book, it warned that marrying Chinese men may cause loss of British nationality, which meant that those British women who married Chinese men would no longer be protected by British law in China.

Source: Tart McEvoy papers, Society of Australian Genealogists; Australian wife Margaret and her Chinese husband Quong Tart and their three eldest children, 1894.

Compared with the upper-class British residents, the restrictions upon the lower classes on marriage were looser, and there were some instances of marriage between lower-class British and Chinese. In 1927, policeman Parker in Shanghai Municipal Council applied to marry a Chinese woman. After the committee’s examination, the woman’s parents were believed to have high status, and the marriage was permitted. However this policeman lost any prospect of future promotion. In 1934, relevant departments in Shanghai issued martial certificates to 6 Chinese women all of whom had British husbands.
In Shanghai, intercultural marriages were between Western men and Chinese women, while in America such marriages were between Chinese men and Western women. Although the trends seemed diametric opposites, they reflected the same truth that if the migrants only took a tiny proportion in comparison with the natives it was men who first broke through interracial marriage restrictions. It mirrored the situation at the end of the Qing Dynasty when it was mostly Chinese men, especially those who had experience of staying in Western countries, who married western wives.

3. Chinese labor workers who were sent to Western countries on a large scale in modern China.

At the demise of the federal dynasties in Chinese history, the common people and the fallen nobles of the previous dynasties started to drift abroad to Southeast Asia to escape the conflict. Due to its geological closeness, Southeast Asia became the migration destination and shelter of Chinese migrants. The drifting population would come to Southeast Asia despite the long distance to strive to make a living, this period was called “Sailing to Southeast Asia” in Chinese history.

Chinatown in America of 19th Century; Source: http://www.boonlong.com/

In the 1840s and 1850s, a large amount of Chinese migrants began to travel to the American West to seek gold, where they also assisted in building railways. Chinese migrants first appeared in 1848 when they found gold in California prompting others to join the Gold Rush.
According to historical records, in February, 1848, that is, two months after the discovery of gold mines in California, two Chinese men and a woman sailed across the Pacific Ocean from Canton to San Francisco in California in the ship, the American Eagle, becoming the earliest Chinese migrants to land and stay at “Gold Mountain”.
In 1865, the number of Chinese migrants amounted to 50,000, 90% of whom were young men. They then came to the “Gold Mountain” to build railways instead of seeking gold. Many Chinese men could not find Chinese wives in the USA at that time, so it prompted some of them to find local wives; many of them married African American women.

Lotty Barbery Kubska & family, 1924 (or Lotty Kopski), born in Germany , Remarried in 1911 to George Der Wing, restaurant owner in Chicago (came to US in 1879, born in Seung/Shung Keow Village, Sun Ning.  Also a remarriage: 1st marriage to Wong Shee in 1895; she died.

A similar movement of Chinese laborers happened in Europe, albeit with some differences. In 1914, World War I had taken place, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of European laborers. Consequently, during the War, a great number of Chinese laborers were sent to Europe to supplement the work force of these countries. In respect of France some margin studies found that many Chinese male laborers married French women at that time. Dr. Xu Guoqi showed that many French women married Chinese laborers during the First World War. During the War, 140,000 Chinese laborers came to Europe to help the Allied war effort, 96,000 of them were allocated to the British army, and 37,000 were dispatched to France. Many French men had died at war, so the French women welcomed Chinese men, and more than 3,000 Chinese laborers married French women at that time.

With regard to Russia, as early as the 1860s, it had speeded up developing its territories in the Far East, and built cities, roads, ports, railways and communication lines, in the process recruiting many foreign laborers, of which Chinese labors made up the greatest number. From 1891 onwards, Russia recruited Chinese laborers to build the Siberian Railway. Russia suffered great losses in the War, and lacked laborers as a result, so it continued its policy of recruiting the Chinese.
At that time, there were 230,000 Chinese labor workers in Russia, who participated in the revolution to “protect soviet” as Chinese labor troops. Many Chinese labor workers in Russia at the time married Russian women, and this became commonplace.

Besides those working as laborers, the Chinese also did business in Western countries. For example, in America, in 1870, the Chinese prospered in business although Chinese vegetable vendors still sold their goods on the San Francisco streets carrying a horizontal stick on their shoulders. The laundries in downtown areas were mainly occupied by Chinese laundrettes. Many Chinese began to work in industries of quantity production, mainly in the four industries of shoemaking, fur textile, tobacco, and clothes-making. Until 1870, the number of Chinese workers amounted to half of the total numbers working in the key four industries in this city. Their employers were mostly Chinese as well. Until the 1970s, there were about 5000 Chinese businessmen in San Francisco. Among them many achieved great success in their business, surprising the Westerners around them and changing their perception of them. In Australia, many Chinese men also came to settle there for business reasons. These Chinese stayed there because of their businesses, and some of them married local people.

4.Intercultural marriages and migration caused by the Chinese Civil War.

Civil wars create refugees who flee across international borders to safer havens. The Chinese Civil War (CCW), from 1945 to 1949, was fought between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It was one of the bloodiest and most violent wars in the modern world, and 6 million soldiers and civilians were killed. The end of the CCW produced a large wave of refugees from China to Western countries, such as the USA. Of all the Chinese migrants that moved to foreign countries, the refugees created by the CCW were the greatest in number. It was a very intense and sudden event in modern Chinese history. These departing groups were quite different from the peasant laborers who had pioneered the initial Chinese migration to the USA. These refugees included members of the intelligentsia, the upper classes, and families of wealth. There were also a number of Chinese students studying in the USA who were afraid of returning to China because of the changes in the political system. Many of them were subsequently granted immigrant status. These sudden and numerous fleeing Chinese people became the protagonists of CWIM in this period. These groups of Chinese people had opportunities to marry Americans, resulting in some CWIMs during this period.

Historic changes occurred through the opening-up of China at the end of the 19th century. The opening-up was the result of the advances made by Western powers in terms of guns and boats, and it brought closer contacts between the Chinese and Westerners for the first time after thousands of years. From the perspective of and the two nations, various battles between the two sides were mostly temporarily ended with compromises and concessions by the Chinese. It could be said that the Chinese endured much abuse and hardship during these years. It was against this major background that the earliest transnational marriages between Chinese and Westerners took place. Were they better or happier than any other types of marriages?
As stated by Mary Kibera (the author of ‘Love and conflict in marriage’)  “It is clear that in life there is no perfect marriage because perfect people do not exist and consequently, neither do perfect spouses.”

Information sources
english.cri.cn
www.cinarc.org
rozenbergquarterly.com