And in (additional) honor of the Giants' World Series win...

[Jonathan Lighter]

Paul, only a minority of American adults a century ago could boast even a
high-school diploma. (My grandfather, born in 1884, was the first member of
his family to have one, and he was very proud of it.)  I imagine that a
higher proportion of the population in, say, 1905, was consciously aware
that there had been *something* called an Opium War than today, because the
new prominence of  China in American consciousness resulting from the Boxer
Rebellion meant that newspapers and magazines would be more likely to allude
to it. I doubt they cared very much. As DAD said, that was an "English"
problem, and before 1914 not many Americans cared much for the English
anyway. (Except for Kipling amnd Shakespeare, they were snooty, snobbish,
and superior, with no sense of humor.)  I doubt that baseball fans, as a
group, had any notion of what the Opium Wars were all about.

I might add to the list of stereotypes that a very high proportion of
Chinese were thought to be near-sighted because of their "slanty" eyes.
Except for Tong assassins ("hatchetmen") and 19th C. railway labor, the
Chinese were also thought to be short and fairly puny (now there's a
possible source of "Chinese home run"). Chinese crimelords were also
believed to kidnap white women for the white-slave traffic.  Chinese women,
on the other hand, were meek and completely passive.  Their vaginas were
said to be horizontal.  Perhaps because Chinese men traditionally wore a
queue (pigtail), the Chinese were also sometimes said to have had real
tails.

As I said before, Charlie Chan was a giant step forward.

JL





On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu>wrote:

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> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: And in (additional) honor of the Giants' World Series
> win...
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> I got that but I thought that the notion that the Chinese were opium
> dealers was the strangest of the stereotypes, because I presume that
> most Americans in the early 20th century heard of the Opium Wars.
>
> Paul
>
> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I said stereotype.
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
> >wrot=
> > e:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> >> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: And in (additional) honor of the Giants' World
> Series
> >> win...
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> > ------
> >>
> >> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> >> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > The popular American stereotype of the Chinese in the early 20th C.
> was
> >> not
> >> > that they were "cheap," but that they were inscrutable, violent,
> probab=
> > ly
> >> > unassimilable, often sinister, users and purveyors of opium, eaters of
> >> dogs,
> >> > cats, and rats, atheistic, extremely prolific, and occasionally
> possess=
> > ed
> >> of
> >> > odd but profound wisdom unattainable by anybody else. =C2 (Thus Earl
> D.
> >> > Biggers' Charlie Chan, inspired by a real detective, was a giant step
> >> > forward in ethnic understanding.)
> >>
> >> Purveyors of opium? The Chinese fought, and lost, two wars to try to
> >> stop British opium trafficking.
> >>
> >> Paul
>
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>



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