China and the West

Twain, Mark. John Chinaman in New York [ID D29336].
A correspondent (whose signature, "Lang Bemis," is more or less familiar to the public) contributes the following:
As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks, and a large group had stopped to stare deliberately.
Is it not a shame that we who prate so much about civilization and humanity are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as this? Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to see in such a being, in such a situation, matter merely for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and grave reflection? Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it? Apparently not. Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked roof and ball on top; and his long queue dangling down his back; his short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton, tight-legged pants tied close around the ankles, and his clumsy, blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific? among the rice-fields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of remembered mountain-peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange forest trees unknown to climes like ours? and now and then, rippling among his visions and his dreams did he hear familiar laughter and half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly faces of a by-gone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen this bronzed wanderer; a cheerless destiny enough. In order that the group of idlers might be touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on the shoulder and said:
"Cheer up -- don't be down-hearted. It is not America that treats you in this way -- it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the humanity out of his heart. America has a broader hospitality for the exiled and oppressed. America and Americans are always ready to help the unfortunate. Money shall be raised -- you shall go back to China --you shall see your friends again. What wages do they pay you here?"
"Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy, barrin' the bloody furrin clothes that's so expinsive."
The exile remains at his post. The New York tea merchants who need picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.

Sekundärliteratur
Ou Hsin-yun : It describes a man dressed like a Chinese man standing in front of a New York tea store 'acting in the capacity of a sign', scolded by passersby, and paid only four dollars a weed. The narrator initially objects to the use of a living man as an advertisement for 'one of those monster American tea stores' and expresses compassion toward the unfortunate Chinese man who suffered from ill treatment at the hands of white American. Astonished by the insult to the Chinese man's humanity, the narrator envisions himself in the role of a benevolent citizen, and delivers a self-righteous critique of white civilization. The narrator sees the Chinese as humans with a history and culture. His genteel humanism becomes a satirical target because of his inability to visualize the Chinese except through a set of ethnic stereotypes. Later in the sketch, sympathy for Chinese is further satirized when the 'poor Chinaman' turns out to be an Irishman in disguise.