October 1, 2019 • 38 mins
Published in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin quickly reached international acclaim, becoming the best-selling novel of the 19th century, and the second-best selling book after the Bible. While this antislavery narrative profoundly affected American attitudes about slavery, the story also had a global reach -- in fact, a Chinese translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin became one of the hottest books of the late Qing Dynasty.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so very much,
fortuning in. My name is Ben and peek Behind the
scenes here we have been knocking out these guests. Episodes
happen when you really have My name is Noel. Still
it remains that way. Um. Yeah, we had a lot
of great guests experiences. We had Daniel Scheffler from everywhere,
(00:49):
and then we had our dear friend Ryan Barish coming
in and talking to us about uh, Jimmy Carter's little
known uncle who was kind of a war badass and
speaking badasses. We are as always joined with our super producer,
Casey Pegram give it up for him. But that's not
the only person in the air with us today, is it, No, no,
(01:11):
not the only badass on the air with us today.
We have Eve's Jeff Code, whose name you've heard a
shout out multiple times around the history of the show,
and she's finally here in the flesh as a human person.
We're so happy to have you. What a warm welcome.
I'm excited to be here. Good. Um, tell us a
little bit about some of the shows that you do
before we dive into this amazing topic. So another history
(01:32):
show that I do is This Day in History Class,
And so that one is kind of a really small, digestible,
little bite size episodes about history, about an event that
happened on that day in history, or a person's birthday
on that day in history. So the topics on that
show basically run the gannet um anything from science, tick wore,
(01:52):
a lot of war, a lot of massive's history for you. Yeah,
but they're fun, little digestible daily nuggets kind of it's
a good way to start your day with the you know,
what happened on this day in history? Yeah? Yeah, and informative.
I mean, just just because a lot of those things
are so like touching and deep and difficult doesn't mean
that they're not They're not important to learn about of course,
and history never really ends. This reminds us, go ahead
(02:17):
and push pause on this podcast, get the to your
podcast platform of choice, and subscribe not only to This
Day in History Class, but also Unpopular Eaves. Could you
tell us a little bit about Unpopular? Yes. Unpopular is
a show that covers a person in history for every
single episode that resisted the status quo in some way
(02:38):
and a lot of people who resisted the status quo
because that was what they were doing, were persecuted for it,
So that is also part of their story. But they
did it and they did what they had to do. Nonetheless,
So whether that what that had to do with dress
reform or whether that had to do with slavery and
racism against people of color all throughout the the kind
of imperialist places in in the globe, just everything. So
(03:03):
some of those people, like one actually who will bring
up today was Chio Jean, who was a revolutionary in China. Uh. Yes,
because we have quite a tale ahead of us today.
This is something that you had told us about off
Air Eaves, and it's I don't know about you know,
but it was it was news to me. It's the
(03:24):
strange story of a book that's familiar to a lot
of our fellow listeners here in the United States and abroad.
In its time, it was a huge success. That book
is Uncle Tom's Cabin. And there's a lot more to
that story than what you actually read printed on the
page there, right, It's a deep, deep history that's behind
(03:47):
Uncle Tom's Cabin. So I guess the reason that I
found well, I always find things like the way that
language and words and books and ideas like that move
across different nations and cultures is just very interesting to me.
Kind of how things morph um so much and take
on different meanings and context across cultures is already very
(04:09):
interesting to me. So I found out that Cho Jean,
who was this kind of feminist in modern terms and
a revolutionary in China, knew about Uncle Tom's Cabin and
read Uncle Tom's Cabin and had included some of Harriet
beecher Stowe, who was the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
in her own poetry, because she wrote poetry as well,
And that just fascinating. It's like, what why was Uncle
(04:32):
Tom's Cabin? What was it doing in China? And how
are they using it in China? Because you would think
of Uncle Tom's Cabin having a very specific beginning from
a very specific point in time and in the cultural context,
because it was about slavery. It was kind of this
you know, fist out against slavery and this ideas of
abolitionism that were instilled in Harriet beecher Stowe. Well, it
(04:54):
kind of it was a pretty big deal of educating
a lot of people that wouldn't have even paid attention
to those lights and kind of having them understand a
little bit more of the perspective of like what slavery
really was about. And I think people kind of give
it some credit for sort of pushing towards, you know,
the war against slavery. Yeah. Yeah, there's that famous but
like not verified a quote about Harriet Beecher still saying
(05:16):
that she was like, oh, look at this is the
little lady that started the Great War like that, which
is not verified. It does. It was so incredibly popular
when it came out. I think they had to leave
the printing presses running like twenty four hours a day
to print all to meet the demand. So absolutely, at
the very least got people kind of hipps to what
(05:39):
was going on and maybe would have kind of not
been paying attention. Number two, uh, number two most popular
book of that century, Yeah to the Bible elands. Yeah.
The Bible is like it's been hogging number one for
a while. And I think it's interesting that it was
the Bible as well, because people have compared Uncle Tom's
Cabinet itself to the Bible because of its story. Ever,
(05:59):
did shin in this kind of martyrdom in the in
the characters, and also to me on something I was
thinking about in that juxtaposition with the Bible at number
one in Uncle Tom's cabinet number two was this idea
of adjusting narratives to fit a certain rhetoric. So that's
what was done with Uncle Tom's cabin But as we
know to this day, that's the thing that's done with
the Bible as well, for sure, I mean, and especially
(06:21):
I think the term Uncle Tom has obviously been kind
of co opted is sort of a negative term of abuse,
and there's all kinds of, you know, charge stuff behind that.
But I read that it was less to do with
the book itself and more to do with the stage
plays that kind of came out and reinterpreted and re contectualized,
and they had to sell tickets, so they made it
a little more per and kind of gross. Yeah. So
(06:42):
the history of minstrel shows themselves is also another ridiculous,
ridiculous history that's very deep and very just like involved,
and minstrel shows played a big part in popularizing this
narrative of the fool, you know, and Tom was an
easy target in that, even though that's not really what
(07:03):
Uncle Tom was like in the book itself. And so
just because of out of these these means of needing
to make money but also perpetuating dominant narratives of black
people being inferior and white people being superior, that that
was an easy way to do that, and that that
was what sold tickets, you know, that's what brought people
into their seats as well. So for anyone who doesn't
(07:25):
remember this book from school, right, a lot of a
lot of kids read this book in school. We have
the basic plot, right, just the nuts and bolts of
the plot. This comes to us from Smithsonian article about
the real inspiration behind Uncle Tom's cabin. Right. So, the
beecher Stowe story is this, there are two enslaved people
(07:50):
and they're about to be sold off by the slave
owner Kentucky farmers, very much in debt. One of the
characters is named Harry and flees with his mother north
to Canada. The other, the character called Uncle Tom, is
transported down the Mississippi River. He is sold to uh
(08:11):
terrible plantation owner in Louisiana, and he almost gives up,
but he receives these visions that keep him standing steadfast,
and then he encourages two other enslaved people to women
to go north, but he is beaten to death when
he refuses to divulge where they've gone. And then Tom's
(08:34):
original person, the Kentucky farmer in debt, tries to buy
him back, essentially, but the money comes too late, and
then the farmer's son goes back to Kentucky. And because
of the lesson the farmer's son learned, which is a
little bit white saviory if we're being honest, uh, he says, Okay,
(08:55):
I've learned him in a set all of my father's
slaves free. And whenever you see this cabin, think of Tom,
who taught me to be a less crappy person, essentially.
But that narrative, that's like you said, no, that's the book.
That's not the stage play, right, because things in the
(09:16):
book were considered a little too uh dangerous, right, That's right.
And what we're talking about today is a completely different
version of this, again, re contextualized for a Chinese audience,
translated by the incredibly popular Chain Dynasty translator Lynn Shoe.
But even though we know the story as it was
(09:36):
originally published, we don't pay as much attention to the
story about the story, right, So what what's the origin here?
What inspired Beatrice? So where did it come from? So
Harriet Beatristoe was a white American woman and she was
in obviously this was a very turbulent period um, a
period of transition. This was around the time of the
(09:57):
Civil War, at the time of the Amanca pacer and
procle nation. And she was seeing all these people who
were part of the abolitionist movement and was kind of
on the fringes of the north and the South and
saw the slavery, butN also saw the people in the north.
I don't want to make it seem as if it
was such a North south division in terms of there
were only abolitionists in the North, the only terrible slave
(10:18):
owners in the South, like that's not exactly how it was.
But she didn't see, she didn't see both of those
worlds quote unquote, and so she felt compelled to speak
out against the institution of slavery, which she thought was
brutal and objected to. She wasn't the most like go
hard abolitionists or every anything like that, but she was
affected by the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which
(10:39):
was that enslaved people who escaped to the north were
supposed to be sent back. Basically basically said like anybody,
everyone is responsible for doing this exactly, and anybody, even
if you didn't weren't complicit in the actual owning of slaves,
if you were complicit in this fugitive Slave Act in
terms of catching the slaves and sending them back, then
(11:00):
you were also part of this terrible institution. And so
she was affected by that Fugitive Slaved Act, and she
really wanted to draw the sympathy of northerners by showing
them exactly what the horrors of slavery were. And she
also um a thing about her own personal anecdote is
that she had a child who died who was eighteen
months old in eighteen forty nine, and so she sympathized
(11:21):
with mothers who were enslaved because obviously family separation is
a huge part of the history of slavery. And she
also wrote that she was divinely inspired, so the book
was kind of written by the hand of God. In
one edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin So I have to
mention here that one inspiration for her story was Josiah Hanson,
(11:42):
who was a formerly enslaved black man. And so that's
important just because she didn't live through slavery. So you
know that a lot of people who were enslaver, who
were formally enslaved, wrote their own stories but didn't get
as much shine as she did because they were black
and they were formerly enslaved and just had a different
kind of access um and platform. And so along with
(12:04):
Josiah Hinson, who wrote a memoir called the Life of
Josiah Hinson, formerly a slave now an inhabitant of Canada,
has narrated by himself um that was published in early
eighteen forty nine, which is just a couple of years
before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in eighty two. Yeah. Yeah,
And so Uncle Tom's character had a lot of similarities
with the character of Josiah Hinson. And she even wrote
(12:27):
that Hinson inspired the character along with a bunch of
other people, you know, a bunch of other stories of
people who were previously enslaved and who were abolitionists. It's
interesting too, she actually got a lot of flak of
people saying that we're against what she was talking about,
like that this was all made up, this is all
overly emotional. There was no way that this stuff was real.
So she, in response to that, in eighteen fifty three,
(12:50):
released this companion piece called A Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin Facts and Documents, upon which the original story is founded,
together with collaborative statements verifying the true of the work
by Harriet Beecher stuff. So it was like a response
directly to that. Yeah, and she had to do that
because of all the pro slavery advocates, and not all
of these people were necessarily, you know, barn stormers about it.
(13:14):
There were a lot of kind of milk toasts centrists
you know, who are like, hey, can we compromise on this?
And they put out all these newspaper articles. I think
that inspired Beecher Stowe to respond, and they said stuff
like a few facts from Mrs Stowe and Uncle Tom Mania,
Well I got something for you. Yeah. I think a
lot of the people to just felt that slavery was justified,
(13:36):
like there was nothing wrong with it. So if you
imagine somebody having that perspective and viewpoint that like slaveries, Okay,
what's wrong with there? What are you talking about? Why
are you making it seem so horrible? They like what
they're getting there have a good lot, Um, then there
is no reason for you to write a novel like
this trying to awaken the consciousness of the people to
what was so bad about slavery? Right. But if it's
(13:57):
that's that's the inherent uh disconnect, right, that's the logical fallacy.
There they're saying, there's nothing wrong with this, so stop
talking about you know, classic double things like this isn't
a problem. But if it is, no one must know
about it exactly. Yeah, something else is going on deeper there, right,
for sure. So Harriet Beetristow polished Uncle Tom's Cabin in
(14:25):
an abolitionist newspaper called The National Era, and she did
that in eighteen fifty one, and then the next year,
eighteen fifty two, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book four,
and so it was basically an immediate hit. Um. It
wasn't one of those things that was kind of the
slow burn up to the popularity of it. It was,
you know, in its first five years in print, it
sold more than five hundred thousand copies. It was the
(14:47):
best selling novel of the nineteenth century. And it inspired
this part is funny to me. It inspired a bunch
of Uncle Tom branded merchandise um in Britain, like Uncle
Tom's shrinkable woolen stockings that reminds me of the passion
of the Christ. They had like little nail necklaces that
you can get it, like gas stations that always made
me cringe. Shrinking I don't know what the shrinkable part means,
(15:09):
is like a shrinky dink situation woolen stockings, But there
were a bunch of things like that too, like I
imagine mugs. But the thing that's funny about it to
me is because precisely because of that whole the way
that Uncle Tom the phrase is viewed now Uncle Tom
merchandise is a totally different thing now in this context,
and it was then. It just makes me imagine of
(15:30):
like imagine a store, an antique store in Savannah that
just has a ton of racist memorabilia. Absolutely and just
just for this isn't a term that I hear thrown
around much anymore, but can just to catch people up,
what is the negative connotation of that term? Okay, so
the negative connotation of Uncle Tom is kind of a
person being a quote unquote good negro, like somebody who's submissive,
(15:52):
somebody who is compliant and willing to do basically anything.
And like we said earlier that the character himself, he
wasn't that way. People viewed him as a martyr then,
and he is more of a hero, you know, he's
a protagonist and he's a positive hero. But the term
Uncle Tom because of the minstrel shows in the way
(16:13):
that the white people who were producing these minstrel shows
portrayed Uncle Tom's character as this fool, as a person
who was an oh, just bumbling about the stage. Basically
they were, and I guess in there as successful in
making creating that character for Uncle Tom, for sure. And
(16:33):
it's interesting, like the first place I ever heard of
Uncle Tom's Cabin was in the musical The King and
I there's a play within the play where some of
the characters put on a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin
for the King of Siam Um just obviously in Asia.
And today we're talking about the way Uncle's Tom's Cabin
made its way to China and was hugely popular. And
(16:54):
also another version of that kind of like re contextualization
and sort of like changing the narrative to fit the
goals of the you know, the culture kind of or
even finding um, finding analogs, it's not changing the narrative
for seeing the universal via the specific, absolutely, And I
just think it's such an interesting story as as far
(17:14):
as like how this translation took root and what ended
up happening with it. So we threw out some of
these astonishing statistics right about the publication of Uncle Tom's
Cabin in the US, for sure, and we implied some
of the we alluded to rather some of the global
statistics you mentioned. The merchandise was very popular in Britain, right.
(17:37):
I think over over one point five million copies of
Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold in just a few years
after publication in Britain. This was a global phenomenon, and
people weren't as worried about copyright laws, you know what
I mean. So someone could just get a copy of
this and make their own thing. They also had the
(17:58):
agency to change it if they hunted, right, and they did.
Whatever do you mean? Yeah, And so the novel definitely
did really well outside of the United States, um, as
you said in Britain, but it also did really well
in France, and it did really well in Russia. And
it's interesting too because in addition to China, which we'll
(18:18):
get you in a second. It was also translated into
German and pretty much immediately, and by eighteen fifty two
there were already thirteen different German additions. So it wasn't
just popular in other places, it was super popular in
other places besides the United States. Um after in fact,
actor it was published in Germany and I'm going to
butcher this German word, so please forgive me. But there
(18:39):
was a new genre of slave narrative emerging called Sclavinckton.
I tried, I could spell it really well. We're famous
for a butchery of foreign words. So you did a
great job, thank you, um. And but those were slave stories,
and so the condition of enslaved people in America was
compared to those the conditions of workers in Germany. And
(19:02):
also at that time, German immigration to the States was increasing,
and so that comparison of German immigrants to African American
helped define immigrants high status, and the Germans replaced that
issue of race with the issue of class to make
it fit their own narrative. And they sometimes even suggested
that enslaved black people in the in America were treated
better than German servants were, and so a similar idea
(19:25):
to that was also present in China. You know, the
idea that, as we spoke of earlier, how popular Uncle
Tom's Cabin was in America, the way that Harriet Beecher
Stowe positioned Uncle Tom's it was kind of like a
soft way of advocating for anti slavery sentiments. And so
the ideas that surrounded how that moved that idea moved
(19:47):
in America were also translated to China, and so at
the time there was a lot of turbulence in China.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was translated in nineteen o one in China,
and it was published and I'm going to attempt Chinese
here as hey knu ye ten lu, and that meant
black slaves appealed to heaven. And that was by Lean Shoe,
(20:08):
a translator, and also boy Ye, and they worked together
on translating this novel. Lynn Shoe is really interesting character.
He was super popular during the Qing dynasty. He translated
things like Charles Dickens and Washington Irving and he did
like up a hundred and eighty full length books and
everything from like short stories to essays into Chinese between
(20:28):
eighteen nineteen twenty UM and then of course, one of
his more famous ones as this translation of Uncle Thoma's Cabin.
It's interesting though, he had like twenty assistance and he
didn't speak any of foreign languages at all. He only
spoke Chinese. And he did this thing called tandem translation,
which is super popular, where you would get what would
be considered a lower class citizen who could speak another language,
(20:49):
because to be able to write in Chinese like he could,
he had to be in the highest echelon of society.
That was a very highly educated, privileged position. This was
also this first translation was classical Chinese, so it's going
to be a more elevated tone, right, Maybe I guess
the two would be that it lends itself to slightly
(21:10):
more poetic description what's need. So what we would do
for tandem translation is he would have the English speaker
read him the story translating from English to Chinese, and
then he would hear it and do his own translation,
like in his head on the fly. So there's the
poetic license all these different things. And so I just
want to say that to point out the irony in
this is that because I do not read Chinese, I
(21:33):
have to work off of the translations of a translation
of a translation. Um, so you can just imagine, you know,
in playing telephone and thinking about translations, how much is
already lost in just what is not able to be
said succinctly and accurately in a different language as compared
to the next. On top of that, Lean she took
(21:53):
his own personal liberties in telling the story like Uckle
Tom's Cabin. Yeah, Like, I think he actually made a
different character, kind of the hero. He did, so he
made George Harris kind of the hero. And George Harris
had this story of you know, being here fighting against
slavery and slave owners, fleeing to Canada, and then going
(22:16):
to Liberia to help found Liberia. And it's interesting because
later this idea of Liberia becomes kind of symbol in
the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin to Chinese people, and
that it is this idea of self reliance. And so
whereas Liberia, the whole plot of Harris going to Liberia
(22:40):
in America was looked down upon in terms of this
idea of bringing the kind of back to Africa. Taking
all the black Africans who were brought from Africa to
America back to Africa was something that was an idea
that was going around at the time. So it was
looked down upon in the book at that time. But
later in China, liberia operated as this symbol of self
(23:04):
reliance and liberation and freedom, and we know that this
garnered attention in the US as well. Right in the
book Racial Reconstruction, Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion by ed Lee Wong,
there's this there's this fascinating note where people begin comparing
(23:24):
the different versions of Uncle Tom's cabin or a Black
Slaves Appeal to Heaven with other things like the Turkish version, right,
and the Persian version, and they start noticing some of
these differences. Right, So we said the protagonist changes, the
interpretation of Liberia changes. What are some other notable divergences
(23:49):
of plot or tone. So I will note about people
knowing about all these different translations in the United States,
people did write about them, so they were aware that
Chinese translations were happening. But it's funny because they weren't
mentioning the anti imperialist dances that were in those translations.
They were just saying, look at all these translations, everybody
loves Harriet feature Still's Uncle Tom's caven Um and wasn't
(24:12):
mentioning them, So that just made me think of that.
But there's also a quote that I like by critic
Leslie Fiedler, and he once said, for better or worse,
it was Mrs Stowe who invented American blacks for the
imagination of the whole world. So I think that can
be a very grand statement, like it's kind of it
can seem like kind of an overstatement, but it does
get to that essence of how much of an international
(24:35):
impact Uncle Tom's Cabin had. And so basically where most
of the differences the divergences came in Uncle Tom's Cabin
as translation as a black slaves appeal to Heaven, which
is just one translation of the name itself, but that's
pretty much how all the other translations go, whether that's
a black slaves prior to Heaven, Yeah, but it's all
(24:55):
along those same lines. Is that it had this anti imperialist,
anti us, anti white, if you would call it, and
kind of a pro we have this unified consciousness of
being a quote unquote yellow race or a quote unquote
yellow people informing this kind of collective consciousness around the
(25:16):
fact that whatever was done was in service of proving
that point of that we're going to be slaves pretty soon,
just like you know, the African Americans in the United
States if we don't do something about the way that
this white encroachment and US policies, US policies. The Opium
Wars had just finished, and so there was a lot
of carving up of China and just like hands in
(25:37):
China and the twenty one Demands and just all of
this imperialists and international and white you know, domination and
cultural changes that were happening. And and and I will
say that the other thing about the novel that change
was the inclusion of Christianity. So that was a big thing.
As I said, Harriet Beecher Stolle said that the novel
was divinely inspired, written by a God's hand, or however
(26:00):
she said it. But lean shot took out a lot
of the Christianity that was involved in the story itself
because that didn't fit. That didn't we don't need that
to prove our point. But that's literally Uncle Tom's character.
He's devoutly Christian in the book. Right. Well, it was
first self for them, it was a protest novel, so
I didn't really have to be about literature, what's about art?
You know that later it wasn't even really looked at
(26:23):
as an artistic work at the time. It really did
just function in a political means, and so it wasn't
until like the nineteen eighties when people started to recognize
it and value it a little bit more as an
artistic work, as a good work of literature, even though
it's not like the greatest work. That's pretty poorly written.
(26:47):
I mean, that's the criticism I've seen a lot. It's
not a super page turn if I'm being honest, it's
and it's yeah, it's but it is the first American
novel translated into Chinese. That's another accolade we can on there.
So it's fascinating to see this because taking this to
(27:09):
the modern context, just as a quick aside, we see
something very similar happening with US produced feature films now
because the market in China is so huge. There's so
many people that a film could be at an utter
failure here in the US, but then it can make
(27:29):
all the money back and more in China. The problem
is one of narrative and cultural interpretation. So the authorities
in the Chinese government will take films that appear in
one version in the US, like the Avengers are literally
insert any blockbuster film here and then there will be
a different version that shows in China. One of the
(27:53):
weirdest examples of this. One of the most apparent would
be the Pacific Rim series. Uh, you know, giant robots
fighting giant Kaiju monsters, right, because it did so well
in the Chinese market, the sequel Pacific Rim something or other.
They don't call it just number two. It is heavily,
like heavily leans into themes that would be considered by
(28:15):
the authorities more appropriate for a native Chinese audience. And
the question then is at what point are we telling
two different stories? So to take it back to Uncle
Tom's cabin or a black slaves appeal to heaven. At
what point does Lends Shoes story become something fundamentally different
from Beecher Stows. So yeah, At the time, the situation
(28:37):
in the US with Chinese immigrants and laborers was very
interesting because it was in the eighteen eighties eight two
to be specific, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed,
and so the Chinese Exclusion Act was a federal law.
There were a lot of other laws already but this
was a federal law that banned Chinese labors from immigrating
to the US. And so that came at a time
(28:58):
when white people, specifically in the Western United States, but
people were you know, and this was the time of
the Goal Rush as well, so there was a lot
of competition, and Chinese immigrants were coming to the US
looking for gold but also taking a lot of low
wage jobs, and so companies were paying people low wage jobs,
and the white people who were working with these companies
(29:19):
saw that and that was driving their costs down, and
they were viewing this as quote unquote an invasion of
Chinese people into the United States because they were coming in,
they were willing to work for these low wages, and
they already had all of these ideas about what Chinese
people were and what Eastern Asians were to them, which
was kind of this this inferior people who were primitive,
(29:42):
who had special powers, who you know, they just I mean,
go back and look at some of the propaganda are
furing that time, you know, yeah, control it's crazy. So
that's what the sentiment around Chinese people was in the
late eighteen hundreds going into the nineteen hundred. I think
the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three. Yeah,
(30:06):
so it was a long time it was set to begin.
It was set to go on for ten years in
the beginning, then it was renewed, and then it went
on until nineteen forty three when it was repealed. So
there was all this competition, what they thought was competition
from these people who they felt was invading. And I
just want to point out here too that that is
not isolated, like that sentiment is still present today in
(30:28):
the United States, um about feelings about Eastern Asians and
about Chinese people in this anti Chinese sentiment. So those
sentiments extended even beyond Chinese people to the Eastern world.
It shifted to the Japanese a little bit later. There
was this idea of general Yellow peril, which was a
(30:49):
xenophobic fear of this made up danger that Eastern Asians
posed to the Western world. They were seen as the other.
And so back in China, we were nearing the end
of the Ching dynasty which ended in nineteen twelve, and
so Emperor guang Shu was ruling at the time, though
Empress Dowager, so she was the one who was really
(31:11):
in charge. And so, as you said earlier, Lynch, you
translated a lot of books, and also he has expressed
in other books that anti imperialist sentiment as well. But
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a big one, and it was
only the second foreign novel he translated, and he really
showed the character of Western societies and showed that there
(31:33):
was good literature outside of China. So that's kind of
an initial impact that it had on people, just presenting
this idea of slavery in this kind of writing and
literature to people in China who weren't necessarily familiar with
this kind of work. So even though it was sort
of tailored a little bit to be more appealing or
(31:53):
to kind of like push forth this agenda, it did
still accomplish something pretty powerful. Yeah, it did. It was
in terms of power, I mean, Land show himself that
work and his work influence other people to translate many,
many more foreign work, so that's important, you know. And
he also influenced the development of modern fiction in China.
(32:16):
And yeah, so it's really interesting to think about this
guy who who didn't know foreign languages, is that influential?
This is something I was going to save it. Frost fair,
but this is something that still happens today. There is
a famous uh roomy translator professor I think, working out
of Chattanooga named Coleman Barks. He doesn't read, nor speak
(32:38):
Farsi nor Arabic of any sort. What he does is
probably similar to Lynn Shoes Lynn Shoes process in some ways.
It's it's just fascinating though when you think about it,
a translator who doesn't speak the language they translate, you know,
it gives us. It gives us these um these dramatic reinterpretations.
(33:01):
There's a ton of room for error, but it also
can give us a unique sort of thematic fingerprint because
we're we're hearing this through the mind of several people,
and in there when they're writing towards a goal, which
Lynchu certainly is. I think it's a sincere goal. I
don't think it's like crassly manipulative. We we can see
(33:22):
that they're they're honing in on the focus. I really
want to read their version of this now and then
maybe go back and read the original and see what's different.
When I learned to read Chinese, and I have I
have Harry Potter books and Chinese at home that I
got when I was in China, because I was like,
these covers are awesome and how could I not have
(33:42):
Harry Potter and Chinese are the titles like wildly different,
sort of like the I can't read them because I'm
not I don't know kanji. I don't know kanji. I'm
trying to learn. But the cover, the cover art itself
is they look the like Harry and Haggard look more
Chinese and they do British, you know, on the covers,
and they're just so fluid and flowy and blue and magical.
(34:03):
They look so magical. And I'm already a fan if
you can't tell, I'm a fan of Harry Potter, but
I'm already a fan of the the U. S r
Um And so I got those and I was just like,
one day, I'm going to learn to read Chinese. I'm
gonna figure it out and learn to speak Mandarin. You know,
I'm gonna figure it out. But anyway, Um, I think,
to what you were saying, Ben, that was an aside.
I think to what you were saying, been about that
(34:25):
translation of a translation also makes me think that it
just makes the world feeld a little bit smaller because
I don't know another language, and language is a huge
barrier for me when I travel somewhere or even am
in America and I'm in a place that's a community
for people who don't speak the English language, and I'm
an outsider, and I have guilt around that, and so
(34:47):
you know, knowing that you can still communicate with people
beyond language barriers. I think it's some some kind of
inspiration in the translations of the translations thatly and She
was doing. I that's well put. As someone who's also
slow learning Mandarin, that that is well played. I've got
a couple of the books you mentioned and speaking side notes.
You probably already know this Eaves, but there are tons
(35:11):
of unofficial other Harry Potter books written by and for
the Chinese market. They're not they're not approved by j K.
I don't know what happens, but I know there's there
are allegedly tons of them. So if when you and
I get our Mandarin down, we might never have to
stop reading. Here. I got a few of those titles
(35:32):
right here. If you're interested in what it's called. Harry
Potter and the Leopard, Walk Up to Dragon, Harry Potter
and the Chinese porcelain doll stone. Uh, Harry, Harry Potter
and the Big funnel. Wait is that mentor it's like
it's a symbol for imperialism even deeper rip off check?
(35:54):
Or this is from Russia. Tanya Groder and the Magical
Double Bass and it's yeah on the covers like a
Harry Potter asked young lady writing on a flying double
bass and holding like, uh, it's like a magic stone
in her hands. And you can you can learn more
of that. Uh, there's a Mental Floss article. Let's I'm
finding Harry Potter and Calcutta Indian version and Harry Potter
(36:17):
and the water repelling Pearl. What a repelling? Yeah, what
a quality? Well here check out the art. See it's
he's the pearl I think is down there repelling. That's
quite a pearl. That that may not be the best
example of cover art out of these dot offs, but
these titles are great. They're so good. You can totally
(36:38):
find that article and Mental Floss and man, this has
been really educational on so many levels and really fun
to have this conversation and to have you on the show. Eaves,
thank you so much for joining us. Yes, thank you
very much. For your time to Eves. Uh for everybody
who is rushing to check out your shows Unpopular and
this state in History class? Where where should they go
(37:00):
find you? So they're all on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter,
and so you can look up Unpopular um on all
of those platforms, and you can also look at this
day in History class on all of those social media things.
And while you are on the internet, if you have
not had a chance to do so yet, why not
check out our show We're We're a lousy on the Internet.
(37:23):
We're all over the place. You can find us on Facebook,
you can find us on Instagram, you can find us
on Twitter. You can hang out with our favorite part
of the show, your fellow listeners on our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians. And if you feel like hanging out with
me and Ben individually, you can find me on Instagram
at how Now Noel Brown. And you can see my
various adventures and misadventures here and abroad at Ben Bullen
(37:45):
on Instagram. You can hear my terrible attempt at one
liners at Ben bull and hs W on Twitter. Hughes,
thanks again to you, Eves for being here with us today.
Thanks to our super producer Casey Pegram. Thanks to Christopher
Haciots always here in our hearts. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland
The Quister for once again not showing up. But I
feel like our time is running out. Yeah yeah, yeah,
(38:08):
we are overdue. But it's uh, it's one of those
kind of live in the moment, embraced the now sort
of things. We never know when Jonathan Strickland ak the
Quister will show up. That's why you can hear is
speeding up a little on our outros exactly we're trying
to get past that point. Thanks also to Alex Williams,
who composed the stone cold hit that you hear at
(38:29):
the beginning of every episode of Ridiculous History. Thanks to
Gaye Lousia, Thanks to Ryan Bearish, thanks to Lynn Shoe
and Hey Old Brown. Thanks to you. Thanks to you too, man.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
(38:50):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so very much,
fortuning in. My name is Ben and peek Behind the
scenes here we have been knocking out these guests. Episodes
happen when you really have My name is Noel. Still
it remains that way. Um. Yeah, we had a lot
of great guests experiences. We had Daniel Scheffler from everywhere,
(00:49):
and then we had our dear friend Ryan Barish coming
in and talking to us about uh, Jimmy Carter's little
known uncle who was kind of a war badass and
speaking badasses. We are as always joined with our super producer,
Casey Pegram give it up for him. But that's not
the only person in the air with us today, is it, No, no,
(01:11):
not the only badass on the air with us today.
We have Eve's Jeff Code, whose name you've heard a
shout out multiple times around the history of the show,
and she's finally here in the flesh as a human person.
We're so happy to have you. What a warm welcome.
I'm excited to be here. Good. Um, tell us a
little bit about some of the shows that you do
before we dive into this amazing topic. So another history
(01:32):
show that I do is This Day in History Class,
And so that one is kind of a really small, digestible,
little bite size episodes about history, about an event that
happened on that day in history, or a person's birthday
on that day in history. So the topics on that
show basically run the gannet um anything from science, tick wore,
(01:52):
a lot of war, a lot of massive's history for you. Yeah,
but they're fun, little digestible daily nuggets kind of it's
a good way to start your day with the you know,
what happened on this day in history? Yeah? Yeah, and informative.
I mean, just just because a lot of those things
are so like touching and deep and difficult doesn't mean
that they're not They're not important to learn about of course,
and history never really ends. This reminds us, go ahead
(02:17):
and push pause on this podcast, get the to your
podcast platform of choice, and subscribe not only to This
Day in History Class, but also Unpopular Eaves. Could you
tell us a little bit about Unpopular? Yes. Unpopular is
a show that covers a person in history for every
single episode that resisted the status quo in some way
(02:38):
and a lot of people who resisted the status quo
because that was what they were doing, were persecuted for it,
So that is also part of their story. But they
did it and they did what they had to do. Nonetheless,
So whether that what that had to do with dress
reform or whether that had to do with slavery and
racism against people of color all throughout the the kind
of imperialist places in in the globe, just everything. So
(03:03):
some of those people, like one actually who will bring
up today was Chio Jean, who was a revolutionary in China. Uh. Yes,
because we have quite a tale ahead of us today.
This is something that you had told us about off
Air Eaves, and it's I don't know about you know,
but it was it was news to me. It's the
(03:24):
strange story of a book that's familiar to a lot
of our fellow listeners here in the United States and abroad.
In its time, it was a huge success. That book
is Uncle Tom's Cabin. And there's a lot more to
that story than what you actually read printed on the
page there, right, It's a deep, deep history that's behind
(03:47):
Uncle Tom's Cabin. So I guess the reason that I
found well, I always find things like the way that
language and words and books and ideas like that move
across different nations and cultures is just very interesting to me.
Kind of how things morph um so much and take
on different meanings and context across cultures is already very
(04:09):
interesting to me. So I found out that Cho Jean,
who was this kind of feminist in modern terms and
a revolutionary in China, knew about Uncle Tom's Cabin and
read Uncle Tom's Cabin and had included some of Harriet
beecher Stowe, who was the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
in her own poetry, because she wrote poetry as well,
And that just fascinating. It's like, what why was Uncle
(04:32):
Tom's Cabin? What was it doing in China? And how
are they using it in China? Because you would think
of Uncle Tom's Cabin having a very specific beginning from
a very specific point in time and in the cultural context,
because it was about slavery. It was kind of this
you know, fist out against slavery and this ideas of
abolitionism that were instilled in Harriet beecher Stowe. Well, it
(04:54):
kind of it was a pretty big deal of educating
a lot of people that wouldn't have even paid attention
to those lights and kind of having them understand a
little bit more of the perspective of like what slavery
really was about. And I think people kind of give
it some credit for sort of pushing towards, you know,
the war against slavery. Yeah. Yeah, there's that famous but
like not verified a quote about Harriet Beecher still saying
(05:16):
that she was like, oh, look at this is the
little lady that started the Great War like that, which
is not verified. It does. It was so incredibly popular
when it came out. I think they had to leave
the printing presses running like twenty four hours a day
to print all to meet the demand. So absolutely, at
the very least got people kind of hipps to what
(05:39):
was going on and maybe would have kind of not
been paying attention. Number two, uh, number two most popular
book of that century, Yeah to the Bible elands. Yeah.
The Bible is like it's been hogging number one for
a while. And I think it's interesting that it was
the Bible as well, because people have compared Uncle Tom's
Cabinet itself to the Bible because of its story. Ever,
(05:59):
did shin in this kind of martyrdom in the in
the characters, and also to me on something I was
thinking about in that juxtaposition with the Bible at number
one in Uncle Tom's cabinet number two was this idea
of adjusting narratives to fit a certain rhetoric. So that's
what was done with Uncle Tom's cabin But as we
know to this day, that's the thing that's done with
the Bible as well, for sure, I mean, and especially
(06:21):
I think the term Uncle Tom has obviously been kind
of co opted is sort of a negative term of abuse,
and there's all kinds of, you know, charge stuff behind that.
But I read that it was less to do with
the book itself and more to do with the stage
plays that kind of came out and reinterpreted and re contectualized,
and they had to sell tickets, so they made it
a little more per and kind of gross. Yeah. So
(06:42):
the history of minstrel shows themselves is also another ridiculous,
ridiculous history that's very deep and very just like involved,
and minstrel shows played a big part in popularizing this
narrative of the fool, you know, and Tom was an
easy target in that, even though that's not really what
(07:03):
Uncle Tom was like in the book itself. And so
just because of out of these these means of needing
to make money but also perpetuating dominant narratives of black
people being inferior and white people being superior, that that
was an easy way to do that, and that that
was what sold tickets, you know, that's what brought people
into their seats as well. So for anyone who doesn't
(07:25):
remember this book from school, right, a lot of a
lot of kids read this book in school. We have
the basic plot, right, just the nuts and bolts of
the plot. This comes to us from Smithsonian article about
the real inspiration behind Uncle Tom's cabin. Right. So, the
beecher Stowe story is this, there are two enslaved people
(07:50):
and they're about to be sold off by the slave
owner Kentucky farmers, very much in debt. One of the
characters is named Harry and flees with his mother north
to Canada. The other, the character called Uncle Tom, is
transported down the Mississippi River. He is sold to uh
(08:11):
terrible plantation owner in Louisiana, and he almost gives up,
but he receives these visions that keep him standing steadfast,
and then he encourages two other enslaved people to women
to go north, but he is beaten to death when
he refuses to divulge where they've gone. And then Tom's
(08:34):
original person, the Kentucky farmer in debt, tries to buy
him back, essentially, but the money comes too late, and
then the farmer's son goes back to Kentucky. And because
of the lesson the farmer's son learned, which is a
little bit white saviory if we're being honest, uh, he says, Okay,
(08:55):
I've learned him in a set all of my father's
slaves free. And whenever you see this cabin, think of Tom,
who taught me to be a less crappy person, essentially.
But that narrative, that's like you said, no, that's the book.
That's not the stage play, right, because things in the
(09:16):
book were considered a little too uh dangerous, right, That's right.
And what we're talking about today is a completely different
version of this, again, re contextualized for a Chinese audience,
translated by the incredibly popular Chain Dynasty translator Lynn Shoe.
But even though we know the story as it was
(09:36):
originally published, we don't pay as much attention to the
story about the story, right, So what what's the origin here?
What inspired Beatrice? So where did it come from? So
Harriet Beatristoe was a white American woman and she was
in obviously this was a very turbulent period um, a
period of transition. This was around the time of the
(09:57):
Civil War, at the time of the Amanca pacer and
procle nation. And she was seeing all these people who
were part of the abolitionist movement and was kind of
on the fringes of the north and the South and
saw the slavery, butN also saw the people in the north.
I don't want to make it seem as if it
was such a North south division in terms of there
were only abolitionists in the North, the only terrible slave
(10:18):
owners in the South, like that's not exactly how it was.
But she didn't see, she didn't see both of those
worlds quote unquote, and so she felt compelled to speak
out against the institution of slavery, which she thought was
brutal and objected to. She wasn't the most like go
hard abolitionists or every anything like that, but she was
affected by the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which
(10:39):
was that enslaved people who escaped to the north were
supposed to be sent back. Basically basically said like anybody,
everyone is responsible for doing this exactly, and anybody, even
if you didn't weren't complicit in the actual owning of slaves,
if you were complicit in this fugitive Slave Act in
terms of catching the slaves and sending them back, then
(11:00):
you were also part of this terrible institution. And so
she was affected by that Fugitive Slaved Act, and she
really wanted to draw the sympathy of northerners by showing
them exactly what the horrors of slavery were. And she
also um a thing about her own personal anecdote is
that she had a child who died who was eighteen
months old in eighteen forty nine, and so she sympathized
(11:21):
with mothers who were enslaved because obviously family separation is
a huge part of the history of slavery. And she
also wrote that she was divinely inspired, so the book
was kind of written by the hand of God. In
one edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin So I have to
mention here that one inspiration for her story was Josiah Hanson,
(11:42):
who was a formerly enslaved black man. And so that's
important just because she didn't live through slavery. So you
know that a lot of people who were enslaver, who
were formally enslaved, wrote their own stories but didn't get
as much shine as she did because they were black
and they were formerly enslaved and just had a different
kind of access um and platform. And so along with
(12:04):
Josiah Hinson, who wrote a memoir called the Life of
Josiah Hinson, formerly a slave now an inhabitant of Canada,
has narrated by himself um that was published in early
eighteen forty nine, which is just a couple of years
before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in eighty two. Yeah. Yeah,
And so Uncle Tom's character had a lot of similarities
with the character of Josiah Hinson. And she even wrote
(12:27):
that Hinson inspired the character along with a bunch of
other people, you know, a bunch of other stories of
people who were previously enslaved and who were abolitionists. It's
interesting too, she actually got a lot of flak of
people saying that we're against what she was talking about,
like that this was all made up, this is all
overly emotional. There was no way that this stuff was real.
So she, in response to that, in eighteen fifty three,
(12:50):
released this companion piece called A Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin Facts and Documents, upon which the original story is founded,
together with collaborative statements verifying the true of the work
by Harriet Beecher stuff. So it was like a response
directly to that. Yeah, and she had to do that
because of all the pro slavery advocates, and not all
of these people were necessarily, you know, barn stormers about it.
(13:14):
There were a lot of kind of milk toasts centrists
you know, who are like, hey, can we compromise on this?
And they put out all these newspaper articles. I think
that inspired Beecher Stowe to respond, and they said stuff
like a few facts from Mrs Stowe and Uncle Tom Mania,
Well I got something for you. Yeah. I think a
lot of the people to just felt that slavery was justified,
(13:36):
like there was nothing wrong with it. So if you
imagine somebody having that perspective and viewpoint that like slaveries, Okay,
what's wrong with there? What are you talking about? Why
are you making it seem so horrible? They like what
they're getting there have a good lot, Um, then there
is no reason for you to write a novel like
this trying to awaken the consciousness of the people to
what was so bad about slavery? Right. But if it's
(13:57):
that's that's the inherent uh disconnect, right, that's the logical fallacy.
There they're saying, there's nothing wrong with this, so stop
talking about you know, classic double things like this isn't
a problem. But if it is, no one must know
about it exactly. Yeah, something else is going on deeper there, right,
for sure. So Harriet Beetristow polished Uncle Tom's Cabin in
(14:25):
an abolitionist newspaper called The National Era, and she did
that in eighteen fifty one, and then the next year,
eighteen fifty two, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book four,
and so it was basically an immediate hit. Um. It
wasn't one of those things that was kind of the
slow burn up to the popularity of it. It was,
you know, in its first five years in print, it
sold more than five hundred thousand copies. It was the
(14:47):
best selling novel of the nineteenth century. And it inspired
this part is funny to me. It inspired a bunch
of Uncle Tom branded merchandise um in Britain, like Uncle
Tom's shrinkable woolen stockings that reminds me of the passion
of the Christ. They had like little nail necklaces that
you can get it, like gas stations that always made
me cringe. Shrinking I don't know what the shrinkable part means,
(15:09):
is like a shrinky dink situation woolen stockings, But there
were a bunch of things like that too, like I
imagine mugs. But the thing that's funny about it to
me is because precisely because of that whole the way
that Uncle Tom the phrase is viewed now Uncle Tom
merchandise is a totally different thing now in this context,
and it was then. It just makes me imagine of
(15:30):
like imagine a store, an antique store in Savannah that
just has a ton of racist memorabilia. Absolutely and just
just for this isn't a term that I hear thrown
around much anymore, but can just to catch people up,
what is the negative connotation of that term? Okay, so
the negative connotation of Uncle Tom is kind of a
person being a quote unquote good negro, like somebody who's submissive,
(15:52):
somebody who is compliant and willing to do basically anything.
And like we said earlier that the character himself, he
wasn't that way. People viewed him as a martyr then,
and he is more of a hero, you know, he's
a protagonist and he's a positive hero. But the term
Uncle Tom because of the minstrel shows in the way
(16:13):
that the white people who were producing these minstrel shows
portrayed Uncle Tom's character as this fool, as a person
who was an oh, just bumbling about the stage. Basically
they were, and I guess in there as successful in
making creating that character for Uncle Tom, for sure. And
(16:33):
it's interesting, like the first place I ever heard of
Uncle Tom's Cabin was in the musical The King and
I there's a play within the play where some of
the characters put on a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin
for the King of Siam Um just obviously in Asia.
And today we're talking about the way Uncle's Tom's Cabin
made its way to China and was hugely popular. And
(16:54):
also another version of that kind of like re contextualization
and sort of like changing the narrative to fit the
goals of the you know, the culture kind of or
even finding um, finding analogs, it's not changing the narrative
for seeing the universal via the specific, absolutely, And I
just think it's such an interesting story as as far
(17:14):
as like how this translation took root and what ended
up happening with it. So we threw out some of
these astonishing statistics right about the publication of Uncle Tom's
Cabin in the US, for sure, and we implied some
of the we alluded to rather some of the global
statistics you mentioned. The merchandise was very popular in Britain, right.
(17:37):
I think over over one point five million copies of
Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold in just a few years
after publication in Britain. This was a global phenomenon, and
people weren't as worried about copyright laws, you know what
I mean. So someone could just get a copy of
this and make their own thing. They also had the
(17:58):
agency to change it if they hunted, right, and they did.
Whatever do you mean? Yeah, And so the novel definitely
did really well outside of the United States, um, as
you said in Britain, but it also did really well
in France, and it did really well in Russia. And
it's interesting too because in addition to China, which we'll
(18:18):
get you in a second. It was also translated into
German and pretty much immediately, and by eighteen fifty two
there were already thirteen different German additions. So it wasn't
just popular in other places, it was super popular in
other places besides the United States. Um after in fact,
actor it was published in Germany and I'm going to
butcher this German word, so please forgive me. But there
(18:39):
was a new genre of slave narrative emerging called Sclavinckton.
I tried, I could spell it really well. We're famous
for a butchery of foreign words. So you did a
great job, thank you, um. And but those were slave stories,
and so the condition of enslaved people in America was
compared to those the conditions of workers in Germany. And
(19:02):
also at that time, German immigration to the States was increasing,
and so that comparison of German immigrants to African American
helped define immigrants high status, and the Germans replaced that
issue of race with the issue of class to make
it fit their own narrative. And they sometimes even suggested
that enslaved black people in the in America were treated
better than German servants were, and so a similar idea
(19:25):
to that was also present in China. You know, the
idea that, as we spoke of earlier, how popular Uncle
Tom's Cabin was in America, the way that Harriet Beecher
Stowe positioned Uncle Tom's it was kind of like a
soft way of advocating for anti slavery sentiments. And so
the ideas that surrounded how that moved that idea moved
(19:47):
in America were also translated to China, and so at
the time there was a lot of turbulence in China.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was translated in nineteen o one in China,
and it was published and I'm going to attempt Chinese
here as hey knu ye ten lu, and that meant
black slaves appealed to heaven. And that was by Lean Shoe,
(20:08):
a translator, and also boy Ye, and they worked together
on translating this novel. Lynn Shoe is really interesting character.
He was super popular during the Qing dynasty. He translated
things like Charles Dickens and Washington Irving and he did
like up a hundred and eighty full length books and
everything from like short stories to essays into Chinese between
(20:28):
eighteen nineteen twenty UM and then of course, one of
his more famous ones as this translation of Uncle Thoma's Cabin.
It's interesting though, he had like twenty assistance and he
didn't speak any of foreign languages at all. He only
spoke Chinese. And he did this thing called tandem translation,
which is super popular, where you would get what would
be considered a lower class citizen who could speak another language,
(20:49):
because to be able to write in Chinese like he could,
he had to be in the highest echelon of society.
That was a very highly educated, privileged position. This was
also this first translation was classical Chinese, so it's going
to be a more elevated tone, right, Maybe I guess
the two would be that it lends itself to slightly
(21:10):
more poetic description what's need. So what we would do
for tandem translation is he would have the English speaker
read him the story translating from English to Chinese, and
then he would hear it and do his own translation,
like in his head on the fly. So there's the
poetic license all these different things. And so I just
want to say that to point out the irony in
this is that because I do not read Chinese, I
(21:33):
have to work off of the translations of a translation
of a translation. Um, so you can just imagine, you know,
in playing telephone and thinking about translations, how much is
already lost in just what is not able to be
said succinctly and accurately in a different language as compared
to the next. On top of that, Lean she took
(21:53):
his own personal liberties in telling the story like Uckle
Tom's Cabin. Yeah, Like, I think he actually made a
different character, kind of the hero. He did, so he
made George Harris kind of the hero. And George Harris
had this story of you know, being here fighting against
slavery and slave owners, fleeing to Canada, and then going
(22:16):
to Liberia to help found Liberia. And it's interesting because
later this idea of Liberia becomes kind of symbol in
the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin to Chinese people, and
that it is this idea of self reliance. And so
whereas Liberia, the whole plot of Harris going to Liberia
(22:40):
in America was looked down upon in terms of this
idea of bringing the kind of back to Africa. Taking
all the black Africans who were brought from Africa to
America back to Africa was something that was an idea
that was going around at the time. So it was
looked down upon in the book at that time. But
later in China, liberia operated as this symbol of self
(23:04):
reliance and liberation and freedom, and we know that this
garnered attention in the US as well. Right in the
book Racial Reconstruction, Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion by ed Lee Wong,
there's this there's this fascinating note where people begin comparing
(23:24):
the different versions of Uncle Tom's cabin or a Black
Slaves Appeal to Heaven with other things like the Turkish version, right,
and the Persian version, and they start noticing some of
these differences. Right, So we said the protagonist changes, the
interpretation of Liberia changes. What are some other notable divergences
(23:49):
of plot or tone. So I will note about people
knowing about all these different translations in the United States,
people did write about them, so they were aware that
Chinese translations were happening. But it's funny because they weren't
mentioning the anti imperialist dances that were in those translations.
They were just saying, look at all these translations, everybody
loves Harriet feature Still's Uncle Tom's caven Um and wasn't
(24:12):
mentioning them, So that just made me think of that.
But there's also a quote that I like by critic
Leslie Fiedler, and he once said, for better or worse,
it was Mrs Stowe who invented American blacks for the
imagination of the whole world. So I think that can
be a very grand statement, like it's kind of it
can seem like kind of an overstatement, but it does
get to that essence of how much of an international
(24:35):
impact Uncle Tom's Cabin had. And so basically where most
of the differences the divergences came in Uncle Tom's Cabin
as translation as a black slaves appeal to Heaven, which
is just one translation of the name itself, but that's
pretty much how all the other translations go, whether that's
a black slaves prior to Heaven, Yeah, but it's all
(24:55):
along those same lines. Is that it had this anti imperialist,
anti us, anti white, if you would call it, and
kind of a pro we have this unified consciousness of
being a quote unquote yellow race or a quote unquote
yellow people informing this kind of collective consciousness around the
(25:16):
fact that whatever was done was in service of proving
that point of that we're going to be slaves pretty soon,
just like you know, the African Americans in the United
States if we don't do something about the way that
this white encroachment and US policies, US policies. The Opium
Wars had just finished, and so there was a lot
of carving up of China and just like hands in
(25:37):
China and the twenty one Demands and just all of
this imperialists and international and white you know, domination and
cultural changes that were happening. And and and I will
say that the other thing about the novel that change
was the inclusion of Christianity. So that was a big thing.
As I said, Harriet Beecher Stolle said that the novel
was divinely inspired, written by a God's hand, or however
(26:00):
she said it. But lean shot took out a lot
of the Christianity that was involved in the story itself
because that didn't fit. That didn't we don't need that
to prove our point. But that's literally Uncle Tom's character.
He's devoutly Christian in the book. Right. Well, it was
first self for them, it was a protest novel, so
I didn't really have to be about literature, what's about art?
You know that later it wasn't even really looked at
(26:23):
as an artistic work at the time. It really did
just function in a political means, and so it wasn't
until like the nineteen eighties when people started to recognize
it and value it a little bit more as an
artistic work, as a good work of literature, even though
it's not like the greatest work. That's pretty poorly written.
(26:47):
I mean, that's the criticism I've seen a lot. It's
not a super page turn if I'm being honest, it's
and it's yeah, it's but it is the first American
novel translated into Chinese. That's another accolade we can on there.
So it's fascinating to see this because taking this to
(27:09):
the modern context, just as a quick aside, we see
something very similar happening with US produced feature films now
because the market in China is so huge. There's so
many people that a film could be at an utter
failure here in the US, but then it can make
(27:29):
all the money back and more in China. The problem
is one of narrative and cultural interpretation. So the authorities
in the Chinese government will take films that appear in
one version in the US, like the Avengers are literally
insert any blockbuster film here and then there will be
a different version that shows in China. One of the
(27:53):
weirdest examples of this. One of the most apparent would
be the Pacific Rim series. Uh, you know, giant robots
fighting giant Kaiju monsters, right, because it did so well
in the Chinese market, the sequel Pacific Rim something or other.
They don't call it just number two. It is heavily,
like heavily leans into themes that would be considered by
(28:15):
the authorities more appropriate for a native Chinese audience. And
the question then is at what point are we telling
two different stories? So to take it back to Uncle
Tom's cabin or a black slaves appeal to heaven. At
what point does Lends Shoes story become something fundamentally different
from Beecher Stows. So yeah, At the time, the situation
(28:37):
in the US with Chinese immigrants and laborers was very
interesting because it was in the eighteen eighties eight two
to be specific, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed,
and so the Chinese Exclusion Act was a federal law.
There were a lot of other laws already but this
was a federal law that banned Chinese labors from immigrating
to the US. And so that came at a time
(28:58):
when white people, specifically in the Western United States, but
people were you know, and this was the time of
the Goal Rush as well, so there was a lot
of competition, and Chinese immigrants were coming to the US
looking for gold but also taking a lot of low
wage jobs, and so companies were paying people low wage jobs,
and the white people who were working with these companies
(29:19):
saw that and that was driving their costs down, and
they were viewing this as quote unquote an invasion of
Chinese people into the United States because they were coming in,
they were willing to work for these low wages, and
they already had all of these ideas about what Chinese
people were and what Eastern Asians were to them, which
was kind of this this inferior people who were primitive,
(29:42):
who had special powers, who you know, they just I mean,
go back and look at some of the propaganda are
furing that time, you know, yeah, control it's crazy. So
that's what the sentiment around Chinese people was in the
late eighteen hundreds going into the nineteen hundred. I think
the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three. Yeah,
(30:06):
so it was a long time it was set to begin.
It was set to go on for ten years in
the beginning, then it was renewed, and then it went
on until nineteen forty three when it was repealed. So
there was all this competition, what they thought was competition
from these people who they felt was invading. And I
just want to point out here too that that is
not isolated, like that sentiment is still present today in
(30:28):
the United States, um about feelings about Eastern Asians and
about Chinese people in this anti Chinese sentiment. So those
sentiments extended even beyond Chinese people to the Eastern world.
It shifted to the Japanese a little bit later. There
was this idea of general Yellow peril, which was a
(30:49):
xenophobic fear of this made up danger that Eastern Asians
posed to the Western world. They were seen as the other.
And so back in China, we were nearing the end
of the Ching dynasty which ended in nineteen twelve, and
so Emperor guang Shu was ruling at the time, though
Empress Dowager, so she was the one who was really
(31:11):
in charge. And so, as you said earlier, Lynch, you
translated a lot of books, and also he has expressed
in other books that anti imperialist sentiment as well. But
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a big one, and it was
only the second foreign novel he translated, and he really
showed the character of Western societies and showed that there
(31:33):
was good literature outside of China. So that's kind of
an initial impact that it had on people, just presenting
this idea of slavery in this kind of writing and
literature to people in China who weren't necessarily familiar with
this kind of work. So even though it was sort
of tailored a little bit to be more appealing or
(31:53):
to kind of like push forth this agenda, it did
still accomplish something pretty powerful. Yeah, it did. It was
in terms of power, I mean, Land show himself that
work and his work influence other people to translate many,
many more foreign work, so that's important, you know. And
he also influenced the development of modern fiction in China.
(32:16):
And yeah, so it's really interesting to think about this
guy who who didn't know foreign languages, is that influential?
This is something I was going to save it. Frost fair,
but this is something that still happens today. There is
a famous uh roomy translator professor I think, working out
of Chattanooga named Coleman Barks. He doesn't read, nor speak
(32:38):
Farsi nor Arabic of any sort. What he does is
probably similar to Lynn Shoes Lynn Shoes process in some ways.
It's it's just fascinating though when you think about it,
a translator who doesn't speak the language they translate, you know,
it gives us. It gives us these um these dramatic reinterpretations.
(33:01):
There's a ton of room for error, but it also
can give us a unique sort of thematic fingerprint because
we're we're hearing this through the mind of several people,
and in there when they're writing towards a goal, which
Lynchu certainly is. I think it's a sincere goal. I
don't think it's like crassly manipulative. We we can see
(33:22):
that they're they're honing in on the focus. I really
want to read their version of this now and then
maybe go back and read the original and see what's different.
When I learned to read Chinese, and I have I
have Harry Potter books and Chinese at home that I
got when I was in China, because I was like,
these covers are awesome and how could I not have
(33:42):
Harry Potter and Chinese are the titles like wildly different,
sort of like the I can't read them because I'm
not I don't know kanji. I don't know kanji. I'm
trying to learn. But the cover, the cover art itself
is they look the like Harry and Haggard look more
Chinese and they do British, you know, on the covers,
and they're just so fluid and flowy and blue and magical.
(34:03):
They look so magical. And I'm already a fan if
you can't tell, I'm a fan of Harry Potter, but
I'm already a fan of the the U. S r
Um And so I got those and I was just like,
one day, I'm going to learn to read Chinese. I'm
gonna figure it out and learn to speak Mandarin. You know,
I'm gonna figure it out. But anyway, Um, I think,
to what you were saying, Ben, that was an aside.
I think to what you were saying, been about that
(34:25):
translation of a translation also makes me think that it
just makes the world feeld a little bit smaller because
I don't know another language, and language is a huge
barrier for me when I travel somewhere or even am
in America and I'm in a place that's a community
for people who don't speak the English language, and I'm
an outsider, and I have guilt around that, and so
(34:47):
you know, knowing that you can still communicate with people
beyond language barriers. I think it's some some kind of
inspiration in the translations of the translations thatly and She
was doing. I that's well put. As someone who's also
slow learning Mandarin, that that is well played. I've got
a couple of the books you mentioned and speaking side notes.
You probably already know this Eaves, but there are tons
(35:11):
of unofficial other Harry Potter books written by and for
the Chinese market. They're not they're not approved by j K.
I don't know what happens, but I know there's there
are allegedly tons of them. So if when you and
I get our Mandarin down, we might never have to
stop reading. Here. I got a few of those titles
(35:32):
right here. If you're interested in what it's called. Harry
Potter and the Leopard, Walk Up to Dragon, Harry Potter
and the Chinese porcelain doll stone. Uh, Harry, Harry Potter
and the Big funnel. Wait is that mentor it's like
it's a symbol for imperialism even deeper rip off check?
(35:54):
Or this is from Russia. Tanya Groder and the Magical
Double Bass and it's yeah on the covers like a
Harry Potter asked young lady writing on a flying double
bass and holding like, uh, it's like a magic stone
in her hands. And you can you can learn more
of that. Uh, there's a Mental Floss article. Let's I'm
finding Harry Potter and Calcutta Indian version and Harry Potter
(36:17):
and the water repelling Pearl. What a repelling? Yeah, what
a quality? Well here check out the art. See it's
he's the pearl I think is down there repelling. That's
quite a pearl. That that may not be the best
example of cover art out of these dot offs, but
these titles are great. They're so good. You can totally
(36:38):
find that article and Mental Floss and man, this has
been really educational on so many levels and really fun
to have this conversation and to have you on the show. Eaves,
thank you so much for joining us. Yes, thank you
very much. For your time to Eves. Uh for everybody
who is rushing to check out your shows Unpopular and
this state in History class? Where where should they go
(37:00):
find you? So they're all on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter,
and so you can look up Unpopular um on all
of those platforms, and you can also look at this
day in History class on all of those social media things.
And while you are on the internet, if you have
not had a chance to do so yet, why not
check out our show We're We're a lousy on the Internet.
(37:23):
We're all over the place. You can find us on Facebook,
you can find us on Instagram, you can find us
on Twitter. You can hang out with our favorite part
of the show, your fellow listeners on our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians. And if you feel like hanging out with
me and Ben individually, you can find me on Instagram
at how Now Noel Brown. And you can see my
various adventures and misadventures here and abroad at Ben Bullen
(37:45):
on Instagram. You can hear my terrible attempt at one
liners at Ben bull and hs W on Twitter. Hughes,
thanks again to you, Eves for being here with us today.
Thanks to our super producer Casey Pegram. Thanks to Christopher
Haciots always here in our hearts. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland
The Quister for once again not showing up. But I
feel like our time is running out. Yeah yeah, yeah,
(38:08):
we are overdue. But it's uh, it's one of those
kind of live in the moment, embraced the now sort
of things. We never know when Jonathan Strickland ak the
Quister will show up. That's why you can hear is
speeding up a little on our outros exactly we're trying
to get past that point. Thanks also to Alex Williams,
who composed the stone cold hit that you hear at
(38:29):
the beginning of every episode of Ridiculous History. Thanks to
Gaye Lousia, Thanks to Ryan Bearish, thanks to Lynn Shoe
and Hey Old Brown. Thanks to you. Thanks to you too, man.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
(38:50):
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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