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How Uncle Tom's Cabin Became One of the Most Popular Books in China · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: We have Eve's Jeff Code, whose name you've heard a
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Speaker 1: and she's finally here in the flesh as a human person.
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Speaker 1: We're so happy to have you. What a warm welcome.
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Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here. Good. Um, tell us a
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Speaker 1: little bit about some of the shows that you do
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Speaker 1: before we dive into this amazing topic. So another history
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Speaker 1: show that I do is This Day in History Class,
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Speaker 1: And so that one is kind of a really small, digestible,
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Speaker 1: little bite size episodes about history, about an event that
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Speaker 1: happened on that day in history, or a person's birthday
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Speaker 1: on that day in history. So the topics on that
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Speaker 1: show basically run the gannet um anything from science, tick wore,
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Speaker 1: a lot of war, a lot of massive's history for you. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: but they're fun, little digestible daily nuggets kind of it's
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Speaker 1: a good way to start your day with the you know,
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Speaker 1: what happened on this day in history? Yeah? Yeah, and informative.
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Speaker 1: I mean, just just because a lot of those things
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Speaker 1: are so like touching and deep and difficult doesn't mean
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Speaker 1: that they're not They're not important to learn about of course,
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Speaker 1: and history never really ends. This reminds us, go ahead
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Speaker 1: podcast platform of choice, and subscribe not only to This
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Speaker 1: Day in History Class, but also Unpopular Eaves. Could you
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Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about Unpopular? Yes. Unpopular is
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Speaker 1: a show that covers a person in history for every
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Speaker 1: single episode that resisted the status quo in some way
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Speaker 1: and a lot of people who resisted the status quo
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Speaker 1: because that was what they were doing, were persecuted for it,
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Speaker 1: So that is also part of their story. But they
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Speaker 1: did it and they did what they had to do. Nonetheless,
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Speaker 1: So whether that what that had to do with dress
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Speaker 1: reform or whether that had to do with slavery and
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Speaker 1: racism against people of color all throughout the the kind
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Speaker 1: of imperialist places in in the globe, just everything. So
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Speaker 1: some of those people, like one actually who will bring
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Speaker 1: up today was Chio Jean, who was a revolutionary in China. Uh. Yes,
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Speaker 1: because we have quite a tale ahead of us today.
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Speaker 1: This is something that you had told us about off
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Speaker 1: Air Eaves, and it's I don't know about you know,
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Speaker 1: but it was it was news to me. It's the
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Speaker 1: strange story of a book that's familiar to a lot
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Speaker 1: of our fellow listeners here in the United States and abroad.
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Speaker 1: In its time, it was a huge success. That book
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Speaker 1: is Uncle Tom's Cabin. And there's a lot more to
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Speaker 1: that story than what you actually read printed on the
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Speaker 1: page there, right, It's a deep, deep history that's behind
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Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin. So I guess the reason that I
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Speaker 1: found well, I always find things like the way that
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Speaker 1: language and words and books and ideas like that move
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Speaker 1: across different nations and cultures is just very interesting to me.
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Speaker 1: Kind of how things morph um so much and take
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Speaker 1: on different meanings and context across cultures is already very
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Speaker 1: interesting to me. So I found out that Cho Jean,
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Speaker 1: who was this kind of feminist in modern terms and
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Speaker 1: a revolutionary in China, knew about Uncle Tom's Cabin and
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Speaker 1: read Uncle Tom's Cabin and had included some of Harriet
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Speaker 1: beecher Stowe, who was the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
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Speaker 1: in her own poetry, because she wrote poetry as well,
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Speaker 1: And that just fascinating. It's like, what why was Uncle
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Speaker 1: Tom's Cabin? What was it doing in China? And how
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Speaker 1: are they using it in China? Because you would think
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Speaker 1: of Uncle Tom's Cabin having a very specific beginning from
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Speaker 1: a very specific point in time and in the cultural context,
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Speaker 1: because it was about slavery. It was kind of this
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Speaker 1: you know, fist out against slavery and this ideas of
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Speaker 1: abolitionism that were instilled in Harriet beecher Stowe. Well, it
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Speaker 1: kind of it was a pretty big deal of educating
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Speaker 1: a lot of people that wouldn't have even paid attention
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Speaker 1: to those lights and kind of having them understand a
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Speaker 1: little bit more of the perspective of like what slavery
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Speaker 1: really was about. And I think people kind of give
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Speaker 1: it some credit for sort of pushing towards, you know,
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Speaker 1: the war against slavery. Yeah. Yeah, there's that famous but
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Speaker 1: like not verified a quote about Harriet Beecher still saying
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Speaker 1: that she was like, oh, look at this is the
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Speaker 1: little lady that started the Great War like that, which
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Speaker 1: is not verified. It does. It was so incredibly popular
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Speaker 1: when it came out. I think they had to leave
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Speaker 1: the printing presses running like twenty four hours a day
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Speaker 1: to print all to meet the demand. So absolutely, at
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Speaker 1: the very least got people kind of hipps to what
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Speaker 1: was going on and maybe would have kind of not
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Speaker 1: been paying attention. Number two, uh, number two most popular
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Speaker 1: book of that century, Yeah to the Bible elands. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The Bible is like it's been hogging number one for
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Speaker 1: a while. And I think it's interesting that it was
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Speaker 1: the Bible as well, because people have compared Uncle Tom's
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Speaker 1: Cabinet itself to the Bible because of its story. Ever,
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Speaker 1: did shin in this kind of martyrdom in the in
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Speaker 1: the characters, and also to me on something I was
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Speaker 1: thinking about in that juxtaposition with the Bible at number
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Speaker 1: one in Uncle Tom's cabinet number two was this idea
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Speaker 1: of adjusting narratives to fit a certain rhetoric. So that's
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Speaker 1: what was done with Uncle Tom's cabin But as we
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Speaker 1: know to this day, that's the thing that's done with
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Speaker 1: the Bible as well, for sure, I mean, and especially
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Speaker 1: I think the term Uncle Tom has obviously been kind
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Speaker 1: of co opted is sort of a negative term of abuse,
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Speaker 1: and there's all kinds of, you know, charge stuff behind that.
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Speaker 1: But I read that it was less to do with
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Speaker 1: the book itself and more to do with the stage
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Speaker 1: plays that kind of came out and reinterpreted and re contectualized,
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Speaker 1: and they had to sell tickets, so they made it
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Speaker 1: a little more per and kind of gross. Yeah. So
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Speaker 1: the history of minstrel shows themselves is also another ridiculous,
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Speaker 1: ridiculous history that's very deep and very just like involved,
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Speaker 1: and minstrel shows played a big part in popularizing this
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Speaker 1: narrative of the fool, you know, and Tom was an
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Speaker 1: easy target in that, even though that's not really what
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Speaker 1: Uncle Tom was like in the book itself. And so
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Speaker 1: just because of out of these these means of needing
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Speaker 1: to make money but also perpetuating dominant narratives of black
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Speaker 1: people being inferior and white people being superior, that that
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Speaker 1: was an easy way to do that, and that that
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Speaker 1: was what sold tickets, you know, that's what brought people
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Speaker 1: into their seats as well. So for anyone who doesn't
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Speaker 1: remember this book from school, right, a lot of a
7:28
Speaker 1: lot of kids read this book in school. We have
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Speaker 1: the basic plot, right, just the nuts and bolts of
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Speaker 1: the plot. This comes to us from Smithsonian article about
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Speaker 1: the real inspiration behind Uncle Tom's cabin. Right. So, the
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Speaker 1: beecher Stowe story is this, there are two enslaved people
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Speaker 1: and they're about to be sold off by the slave
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Speaker 1: owner Kentucky farmers, very much in debt. One of the
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Speaker 1: characters is named Harry and flees with his mother north
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Speaker 1: to Canada. The other, the character called Uncle Tom, is
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Speaker 1: transported down the Mississippi River. He is sold to uh
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Speaker 1: terrible plantation owner in Louisiana, and he almost gives up,
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Speaker 1: but he receives these visions that keep him standing steadfast,
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Speaker 1: and then he encourages two other enslaved people to women
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Speaker 1: to go north, but he is beaten to death when
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Speaker 1: he refuses to divulge where they've gone. And then Tom's
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Speaker 1: original person, the Kentucky farmer in debt, tries to buy
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Speaker 1: him back, essentially, but the money comes too late, and
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Speaker 1: then the farmer's son goes back to Kentucky. And because
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Speaker 1: of the lesson the farmer's son learned, which is a
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Speaker 1: little bit white saviory if we're being honest, uh, he says, Okay,
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Speaker 1: I've learned him in a set all of my father's
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Speaker 1: slaves free. And whenever you see this cabin, think of Tom,
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Speaker 1: who taught me to be a less crappy person, essentially.
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Speaker 1: But that narrative, that's like you said, no, that's the book.
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Speaker 1: That's not the stage play, right, because things in the
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Speaker 1: book were considered a little too uh dangerous, right, That's right.
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Speaker 1: And what we're talking about today is a completely different
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Speaker 1: version of this, again, re contextualized for a Chinese audience,
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Speaker 1: translated by the incredibly popular Chain Dynasty translator Lynn Shoe.
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Speaker 1: But even though we know the story as it was
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Speaker 1: originally published, we don't pay as much attention to the
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Speaker 1: story about the story, right, So what what's the origin here?
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Speaker 1: What inspired Beatrice? So where did it come from? So
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Speaker 1: Harriet Beatristoe was a white American woman and she was
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Speaker 1: in obviously this was a very turbulent period um, a
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Speaker 1: period of transition. This was around the time of the
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Speaker 1: Civil War, at the time of the Amanca pacer and
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Speaker 1: procle nation. And she was seeing all these people who
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Speaker 1: were part of the abolitionist movement and was kind of
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Speaker 1: on the fringes of the north and the South and
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Speaker 1: saw the slavery, butN also saw the people in the north.
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Speaker 1: I don't want to make it seem as if it
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Speaker 1: was such a North south division in terms of there
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Speaker 1: were only abolitionists in the North, the only terrible slave
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Speaker 1: owners in the South, like that's not exactly how it was.
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Speaker 1: But she didn't see, she didn't see both of those
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Speaker 1: worlds quote unquote, and so she felt compelled to speak
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Speaker 1: out against the institution of slavery, which she thought was
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Speaker 1: brutal and objected to. She wasn't the most like go
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Speaker 1: hard abolitionists or every anything like that, but she was
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Speaker 1: affected by the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which
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Speaker 1: was that enslaved people who escaped to the north were
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Speaker 1: supposed to be sent back. Basically basically said like anybody,
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Speaker 1: everyone is responsible for doing this exactly, and anybody, even
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Speaker 1: if you didn't weren't complicit in the actual owning of slaves,
10:54
Speaker 1: if you were complicit in this fugitive Slave Act in
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Speaker 1: terms of catching the slaves and sending them back, then
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Speaker 1: you were also part of this terrible institution. And so
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Speaker 1: she was affected by that Fugitive Slaved Act, and she
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Speaker 1: really wanted to draw the sympathy of northerners by showing
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Speaker 1: them exactly what the horrors of slavery were. And she
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Speaker 1: also um a thing about her own personal anecdote is
11:15
Speaker 1: that she had a child who died who was eighteen
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Speaker 1: months old in eighteen forty nine, and so she sympathized
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Speaker 1: with mothers who were enslaved because obviously family separation is
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Speaker 1: a huge part of the history of slavery. And she
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Speaker 1: also wrote that she was divinely inspired, so the book
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Speaker 1: was kind of written by the hand of God. In
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Speaker 1: one edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin So I have to
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Speaker 1: mention here that one inspiration for her story was Josiah Hanson,
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Speaker 1: who was a formerly enslaved black man. And so that's
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Speaker 1: important just because she didn't live through slavery. So you
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Speaker 1: know that a lot of people who were enslaver, who
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Speaker 1: were formally enslaved, wrote their own stories but didn't get
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Speaker 1: as much shine as she did because they were black
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Speaker 1: and they were formerly enslaved and just had a different
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Speaker 1: kind of access um and platform. And so along with
12:04
Speaker 1: Josiah Hinson, who wrote a memoir called the Life of
12:06
Speaker 1: Josiah Hinson, formerly a slave now an inhabitant of Canada,
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Speaker 1: has narrated by himself um that was published in early
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Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine, which is just a couple of years
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Speaker 1: before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in eighty two. Yeah. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: And so Uncle Tom's character had a lot of similarities
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Speaker 1: with the character of Josiah Hinson. And she even wrote
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Speaker 1: that Hinson inspired the character along with a bunch of
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Speaker 1: other people, you know, a bunch of other stories of
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Speaker 1: people who were previously enslaved and who were abolitionists. It's
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Speaker 1: interesting too, she actually got a lot of flak of
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Speaker 1: people saying that we're against what she was talking about,
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Speaker 1: like that this was all made up, this is all
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Speaker 1: overly emotional. There was no way that this stuff was real.
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Speaker 1: So she, in response to that, in eighteen fifty three,
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Speaker 1: released this companion piece called A Key to Uncle Tom's
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Speaker 1: Cabin Facts and Documents, upon which the original story is founded,
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Speaker 1: together with collaborative statements verifying the true of the work
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Speaker 1: by Harriet Beecher stuff. So it was like a response
13:03
Speaker 1: directly to that. Yeah, and she had to do that
13:05
Speaker 1: because of all the pro slavery advocates, and not all
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Speaker 1: of these people were necessarily, you know, barn stormers about it.
13:14
Speaker 1: There were a lot of kind of milk toasts centrists
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Speaker 1: you know, who are like, hey, can we compromise on this?
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Speaker 1: And they put out all these newspaper articles. I think
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Speaker 1: that inspired Beecher Stowe to respond, and they said stuff
13:26
Speaker 1: like a few facts from Mrs Stowe and Uncle Tom Mania,
13:31
Speaker 1: Well I got something for you. Yeah. I think a
13:33
Speaker 1: lot of the people to just felt that slavery was justified,
13:36
Speaker 1: like there was nothing wrong with it. So if you
13:38
Speaker 1: imagine somebody having that perspective and viewpoint that like slaveries, Okay,
13:42
Speaker 1: what's wrong with there? What are you talking about? Why
13:43
Speaker 1: are you making it seem so horrible? They like what
13:45
Speaker 1: they're getting there have a good lot, Um, then there
13:48
Speaker 1: is no reason for you to write a novel like
13:50
Speaker 1: this trying to awaken the consciousness of the people to
13:54
Speaker 1: what was so bad about slavery? Right. But if it's
13:57
Speaker 1: that's that's the inherent uh disconnect, right, that's the logical fallacy.
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Speaker 1: There they're saying, there's nothing wrong with this, so stop
14:05
Speaker 1: talking about you know, classic double things like this isn't
14:10
Speaker 1: a problem. But if it is, no one must know
14:12
Speaker 1: about it exactly. Yeah, something else is going on deeper there, right,
14:16
Speaker 1: for sure. So Harriet Beetristow polished Uncle Tom's Cabin in
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Speaker 1: an abolitionist newspaper called The National Era, and she did
14:28
Speaker 1: that in eighteen fifty one, and then the next year,
14:31
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book four,
14:34
Speaker 1: and so it was basically an immediate hit. Um. It
14:38
Speaker 1: wasn't one of those things that was kind of the
14:39
Speaker 1: slow burn up to the popularity of it. It was,
14:42
Speaker 1: you know, in its first five years in print, it
14:44
Speaker 1: sold more than five hundred thousand copies. It was the
14:47
Speaker 1: best selling novel of the nineteenth century. And it inspired
14:51
Speaker 1: this part is funny to me. It inspired a bunch
14:53
Speaker 1: of Uncle Tom branded merchandise um in Britain, like Uncle
14:56
Speaker 1: Tom's shrinkable woolen stockings that reminds me of the passion
15:00
Speaker 1: of the Christ. They had like little nail necklaces that
15:02
Speaker 1: you can get it, like gas stations that always made
15:04
Speaker 1: me cringe. Shrinking I don't know what the shrinkable part means,
15:09
Speaker 1: is like a shrinky dink situation woolen stockings, But there
15:13
Speaker 1: were a bunch of things like that too, like I
15:14
Speaker 1: imagine mugs. But the thing that's funny about it to
15:17
Speaker 1: me is because precisely because of that whole the way
15:21
Speaker 1: that Uncle Tom the phrase is viewed now Uncle Tom
15:24
Speaker 1: merchandise is a totally different thing now in this context,
15:27
Speaker 1: and it was then. It just makes me imagine of
15:30
Speaker 1: like imagine a store, an antique store in Savannah that
15:34
Speaker 1: just has a ton of racist memorabilia. Absolutely and just
15:37
Speaker 1: just for this isn't a term that I hear thrown
15:39
Speaker 1: around much anymore, but can just to catch people up,
15:41
Speaker 1: what is the negative connotation of that term? Okay, so
15:45
Speaker 1: the negative connotation of Uncle Tom is kind of a
15:48
Speaker 1: person being a quote unquote good negro, like somebody who's submissive,
15:52
Speaker 1: somebody who is compliant and willing to do basically anything.
15:58
Speaker 1: And like we said earlier that the character himself, he
16:01
Speaker 1: wasn't that way. People viewed him as a martyr then,
16:04
Speaker 1: and he is more of a hero, you know, he's
16:07
Speaker 1: a protagonist and he's a positive hero. But the term
16:10
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom because of the minstrel shows in the way
16:13
Speaker 1: that the white people who were producing these minstrel shows
16:17
Speaker 1: portrayed Uncle Tom's character as this fool, as a person
16:20
Speaker 1: who was an oh, just bumbling about the stage. Basically
16:25
Speaker 1: they were, and I guess in there as successful in
16:30
Speaker 1: making creating that character for Uncle Tom, for sure. And
16:33
Speaker 1: it's interesting, like the first place I ever heard of
16:36
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin was in the musical The King and
16:39
Speaker 1: I there's a play within the play where some of
16:42
Speaker 1: the characters put on a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin
16:45
Speaker 1: for the King of Siam Um just obviously in Asia.
16:48
Speaker 1: And today we're talking about the way Uncle's Tom's Cabin
16:51
Speaker 1: made its way to China and was hugely popular. And
16:54
Speaker 1: also another version of that kind of like re contextualization
16:58
Speaker 1: and sort of like changing the narrative to fit the
17:01
Speaker 1: goals of the you know, the culture kind of or
17:03
Speaker 1: even finding um, finding analogs, it's not changing the narrative
17:09
Speaker 1: for seeing the universal via the specific, absolutely, And I
17:12
Speaker 1: just think it's such an interesting story as as far
17:14
Speaker 1: as like how this translation took root and what ended
17:17
Speaker 1: up happening with it. So we threw out some of
17:19
Speaker 1: these astonishing statistics right about the publication of Uncle Tom's
17:24
Speaker 1: Cabin in the US, for sure, and we implied some
17:29
Speaker 1: of the we alluded to rather some of the global
17:32
Speaker 1: statistics you mentioned. The merchandise was very popular in Britain, right.
17:37
Speaker 1: I think over over one point five million copies of
17:41
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold in just a few years
17:44
Speaker 1: after publication in Britain. This was a global phenomenon, and
17:49
Speaker 1: people weren't as worried about copyright laws, you know what
17:52
Speaker 1: I mean. So someone could just get a copy of
17:55
Speaker 1: this and make their own thing. They also had the
17:58
Speaker 1: agency to change it if they hunted, right, and they did.
18:01
Speaker 1: Whatever do you mean? Yeah, And so the novel definitely
18:07
Speaker 1: did really well outside of the United States, um, as
18:09
Speaker 1: you said in Britain, but it also did really well
18:11
Speaker 1: in France, and it did really well in Russia. And
18:15
Speaker 1: it's interesting too because in addition to China, which we'll
18:18
Speaker 1: get you in a second. It was also translated into
18:20
Speaker 1: German and pretty much immediately, and by eighteen fifty two
18:23
Speaker 1: there were already thirteen different German additions. So it wasn't
18:28
Speaker 1: just popular in other places, it was super popular in
18:30
Speaker 1: other places besides the United States. Um after in fact,
18:33
Speaker 1: actor it was published in Germany and I'm going to
18:36
Speaker 1: butcher this German word, so please forgive me. But there
18:39
Speaker 1: was a new genre of slave narrative emerging called Sclavinckton.
18:46
Speaker 1: I tried, I could spell it really well. We're famous
18:50
Speaker 1: for a butchery of foreign words. So you did a
18:53
Speaker 1: great job, thank you, um. And but those were slave stories,
18:56
Speaker 1: and so the condition of enslaved people in America was
18:59
Speaker 1: compared to those the conditions of workers in Germany. And
19:02
Speaker 1: also at that time, German immigration to the States was increasing,
19:05
Speaker 1: and so that comparison of German immigrants to African American
19:08
Speaker 1: helped define immigrants high status, and the Germans replaced that
19:12
Speaker 1: issue of race with the issue of class to make
19:14
Speaker 1: it fit their own narrative. And they sometimes even suggested
19:18
Speaker 1: that enslaved black people in the in America were treated
19:21
Speaker 1: better than German servants were, and so a similar idea
19:25
Speaker 1: to that was also present in China. You know, the
19:28
Speaker 1: idea that, as we spoke of earlier, how popular Uncle
19:32
Speaker 1: Tom's Cabin was in America, the way that Harriet Beecher
19:35
Speaker 1: Stowe positioned Uncle Tom's it was kind of like a
19:37
Speaker 1: soft way of advocating for anti slavery sentiments. And so
19:44
Speaker 1: the ideas that surrounded how that moved that idea moved
19:47
Speaker 1: in America were also translated to China, and so at
19:50
Speaker 1: the time there was a lot of turbulence in China.
19:54
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin was translated in nineteen o one in China,
19:58
Speaker 1: and it was published and I'm going to attempt Chinese
20:01
Speaker 1: here as hey knu ye ten lu, and that meant
20:05
Speaker 1: black slaves appealed to heaven. And that was by Lean Shoe,
20:08
Speaker 1: a translator, and also boy Ye, and they worked together
20:12
Speaker 1: on translating this novel. Lynn Shoe is really interesting character.
20:17
Speaker 1: He was super popular during the Qing dynasty. He translated
20:20
Speaker 1: things like Charles Dickens and Washington Irving and he did
20:22
Speaker 1: like up a hundred and eighty full length books and
20:25
Speaker 1: everything from like short stories to essays into Chinese between
20:28
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen twenty UM and then of course, one of
20:32
Speaker 1: his more famous ones as this translation of Uncle Thoma's Cabin.
20:35
Speaker 1: It's interesting though, he had like twenty assistance and he
20:37
Speaker 1: didn't speak any of foreign languages at all. He only
20:40
Speaker 1: spoke Chinese. And he did this thing called tandem translation,
20:42
Speaker 1: which is super popular, where you would get what would
20:45
Speaker 1: be considered a lower class citizen who could speak another language,
20:49
Speaker 1: because to be able to write in Chinese like he could,
20:51
Speaker 1: he had to be in the highest echelon of society.
20:54
Speaker 1: That was a very highly educated, privileged position. This was
20:58
Speaker 1: also this first translation was classical Chinese, so it's going
21:02
Speaker 1: to be a more elevated tone, right, Maybe I guess
21:07
Speaker 1: the two would be that it lends itself to slightly
21:10
Speaker 1: more poetic description what's need. So what we would do
21:12
Speaker 1: for tandem translation is he would have the English speaker
21:16
Speaker 1: read him the story translating from English to Chinese, and
21:20
Speaker 1: then he would hear it and do his own translation,
21:23
Speaker 1: like in his head on the fly. So there's the
21:25
Speaker 1: poetic license all these different things. And so I just
21:28
Speaker 1: want to say that to point out the irony in
21:30
Speaker 1: this is that because I do not read Chinese, I
21:33
Speaker 1: have to work off of the translations of a translation
21:36
Speaker 1: of a translation. Um, so you can just imagine, you know,
21:40
Speaker 1: in playing telephone and thinking about translations, how much is
21:43
Speaker 1: already lost in just what is not able to be
21:46
Speaker 1: said succinctly and accurately in a different language as compared
21:50
Speaker 1: to the next. On top of that, Lean she took
21:53
Speaker 1: his own personal liberties in telling the story like Uckle
21:56
Speaker 1: Tom's Cabin. Yeah, Like, I think he actually made a
22:00
Speaker 1: different character, kind of the hero. He did, so he
22:03
Speaker 1: made George Harris kind of the hero. And George Harris
22:07
Speaker 1: had this story of you know, being here fighting against
22:12
Speaker 1: slavery and slave owners, fleeing to Canada, and then going
22:16
Speaker 1: to Liberia to help found Liberia. And it's interesting because
22:21
Speaker 1: later this idea of Liberia becomes kind of symbol in
22:27
Speaker 1: the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin to Chinese people, and
22:31
Speaker 1: that it is this idea of self reliance. And so
22:35
Speaker 1: whereas Liberia, the whole plot of Harris going to Liberia
22:40
Speaker 1: in America was looked down upon in terms of this
22:44
Speaker 1: idea of bringing the kind of back to Africa. Taking
22:47
Speaker 1: all the black Africans who were brought from Africa to
22:51
Speaker 1: America back to Africa was something that was an idea
22:54
Speaker 1: that was going around at the time. So it was
22:57
Speaker 1: looked down upon in the book at that time. But
22:59
Speaker 1: later in China, liberia operated as this symbol of self
23:04
Speaker 1: reliance and liberation and freedom, and we know that this
23:09
Speaker 1: garnered attention in the US as well. Right in the
23:12
Speaker 1: book Racial Reconstruction, Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion by ed Lee Wong,
23:18
Speaker 1: there's this there's this fascinating note where people begin comparing
23:24
Speaker 1: the different versions of Uncle Tom's cabin or a Black
23:28
Speaker 1: Slaves Appeal to Heaven with other things like the Turkish version, right,
23:34
Speaker 1: and the Persian version, and they start noticing some of
23:39
Speaker 1: these differences. Right, So we said the protagonist changes, the
23:44
Speaker 1: interpretation of Liberia changes. What are some other notable divergences
23:49
Speaker 1: of plot or tone. So I will note about people
23:52
Speaker 1: knowing about all these different translations in the United States,
23:56
Speaker 1: people did write about them, so they were aware that
23:58
Speaker 1: Chinese translations were happening. But it's funny because they weren't
24:02
Speaker 1: mentioning the anti imperialist dances that were in those translations.
24:06
Speaker 1: They were just saying, look at all these translations, everybody
24:08
Speaker 1: loves Harriet feature Still's Uncle Tom's caven Um and wasn't
24:12
Speaker 1: mentioning them, So that just made me think of that.
24:15
Speaker 1: But there's also a quote that I like by critic
24:17
Speaker 1: Leslie Fiedler, and he once said, for better or worse,
24:20
Speaker 1: it was Mrs Stowe who invented American blacks for the
24:24
Speaker 1: imagination of the whole world. So I think that can
24:28
Speaker 1: be a very grand statement, like it's kind of it
24:30
Speaker 1: can seem like kind of an overstatement, but it does
24:32
Speaker 1: get to that essence of how much of an international
24:35
Speaker 1: impact Uncle Tom's Cabin had. And so basically where most
24:40
Speaker 1: of the differences the divergences came in Uncle Tom's Cabin
24:43
Speaker 1: as translation as a black slaves appeal to Heaven, which
24:46
Speaker 1: is just one translation of the name itself, but that's
24:49
Speaker 1: pretty much how all the other translations go, whether that's
24:52
Speaker 1: a black slaves prior to Heaven, Yeah, but it's all
24:55
Speaker 1: along those same lines. Is that it had this anti imperialist,
25:00
Speaker 1: anti us, anti white, if you would call it, and
25:04
Speaker 1: kind of a pro we have this unified consciousness of
25:09
Speaker 1: being a quote unquote yellow race or a quote unquote
25:12
Speaker 1: yellow people informing this kind of collective consciousness around the
25:16
Speaker 1: fact that whatever was done was in service of proving
25:19
Speaker 1: that point of that we're going to be slaves pretty soon,
25:22
Speaker 1: just like you know, the African Americans in the United
25:25
Speaker 1: States if we don't do something about the way that
25:28
Speaker 1: this white encroachment and US policies, US policies. The Opium
25:32
Speaker 1: Wars had just finished, and so there was a lot
25:35
Speaker 1: of carving up of China and just like hands in
25:37
Speaker 1: China and the twenty one Demands and just all of
25:40
Speaker 1: this imperialists and international and white you know, domination and
25:46
Speaker 1: cultural changes that were happening. And and and I will
25:49
Speaker 1: say that the other thing about the novel that change
25:52
Speaker 1: was the inclusion of Christianity. So that was a big thing.
25:55
Speaker 1: As I said, Harriet Beecher Stolle said that the novel
25:57
Speaker 1: was divinely inspired, written by a God's hand, or however
26:00
Speaker 1: she said it. But lean shot took out a lot
26:03
Speaker 1: of the Christianity that was involved in the story itself
26:06
Speaker 1: because that didn't fit. That didn't we don't need that
26:08
Speaker 1: to prove our point. But that's literally Uncle Tom's character.
26:11
Speaker 1: He's devoutly Christian in the book. Right. Well, it was
26:14
Speaker 1: first self for them, it was a protest novel, so
26:17
Speaker 1: I didn't really have to be about literature, what's about art?
26:20
Speaker 1: You know that later it wasn't even really looked at
26:23
Speaker 1: as an artistic work at the time. It really did
26:26
Speaker 1: just function in a political means, and so it wasn't
26:30
Speaker 1: until like the nineteen eighties when people started to recognize
26:35
Speaker 1: it and value it a little bit more as an
26:38
Speaker 1: artistic work, as a good work of literature, even though
26:42
Speaker 1: it's not like the greatest work. That's pretty poorly written.
26:47
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the criticism I've seen a lot. It's
26:49
Speaker 1: not a super page turn if I'm being honest, it's
26:53
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, it's but it is the first American
26:56
Speaker 1: novel translated into Chinese. That's another accolade we can on there.
27:06
Speaker 1: So it's fascinating to see this because taking this to
27:09
Speaker 1: the modern context, just as a quick aside, we see
27:12
Speaker 1: something very similar happening with US produced feature films now
27:18
Speaker 1: because the market in China is so huge. There's so
27:23
Speaker 1: many people that a film could be at an utter
27:26
Speaker 1: failure here in the US, but then it can make
27:29
Speaker 1: all the money back and more in China. The problem
27:33
Speaker 1: is one of narrative and cultural interpretation. So the authorities
27:38
Speaker 1: in the Chinese government will take films that appear in
27:43
Speaker 1: one version in the US, like the Avengers are literally
27:45
Speaker 1: insert any blockbuster film here and then there will be
27:48
Speaker 1: a different version that shows in China. One of the
27:53
Speaker 1: weirdest examples of this. One of the most apparent would
27:55
Speaker 1: be the Pacific Rim series. Uh, you know, giant robots
27:59
Speaker 1: fighting giant Kaiju monsters, right, because it did so well
28:03
Speaker 1: in the Chinese market, the sequel Pacific Rim something or other.
28:07
Speaker 1: They don't call it just number two. It is heavily,
28:10
Speaker 1: like heavily leans into themes that would be considered by
28:15
Speaker 1: the authorities more appropriate for a native Chinese audience. And
28:19
Speaker 1: the question then is at what point are we telling
28:22
Speaker 1: two different stories? So to take it back to Uncle
28:24
Speaker 1: Tom's cabin or a black slaves appeal to heaven. At
28:28
Speaker 1: what point does Lends Shoes story become something fundamentally different
28:33
Speaker 1: from Beecher Stows. So yeah, At the time, the situation
28:37
Speaker 1: in the US with Chinese immigrants and laborers was very
28:41
Speaker 1: interesting because it was in the eighteen eighties eight two
28:44
Speaker 1: to be specific, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed,
28:47
Speaker 1: and so the Chinese Exclusion Act was a federal law.
28:50
Speaker 1: There were a lot of other laws already but this
28:52
Speaker 1: was a federal law that banned Chinese labors from immigrating
28:55
Speaker 1: to the US. And so that came at a time
28:58
Speaker 1: when white people, specifically in the Western United States, but
29:03
Speaker 1: people were you know, and this was the time of
29:06
Speaker 1: the Goal Rush as well, so there was a lot
29:07
Speaker 1: of competition, and Chinese immigrants were coming to the US
29:10
Speaker 1: looking for gold but also taking a lot of low
29:13
Speaker 1: wage jobs, and so companies were paying people low wage jobs,
29:16
Speaker 1: and the white people who were working with these companies
29:19
Speaker 1: saw that and that was driving their costs down, and
29:22
Speaker 1: they were viewing this as quote unquote an invasion of
29:25
Speaker 1: Chinese people into the United States because they were coming in,
29:28
Speaker 1: they were willing to work for these low wages, and
29:32
Speaker 1: they already had all of these ideas about what Chinese
29:35
Speaker 1: people were and what Eastern Asians were to them, which
29:38
Speaker 1: was kind of this this inferior people who were primitive,
29:42
Speaker 1: who had special powers, who you know, they just I mean,
29:46
Speaker 1: go back and look at some of the propaganda are
29:48
Speaker 1: furing that time, you know, yeah, control it's crazy. So
29:53
Speaker 1: that's what the sentiment around Chinese people was in the
29:57
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds going into the nineteen hundred. I think
30:01
Speaker 1: the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn't repealed until nineteen forty three. Yeah,
30:06
Speaker 1: so it was a long time it was set to begin.
30:08
Speaker 1: It was set to go on for ten years in
30:09
Speaker 1: the beginning, then it was renewed, and then it went
30:12
Speaker 1: on until nineteen forty three when it was repealed. So
30:16
Speaker 1: there was all this competition, what they thought was competition
30:19
Speaker 1: from these people who they felt was invading. And I
30:22
Speaker 1: just want to point out here too that that is
30:24
Speaker 1: not isolated, like that sentiment is still present today in
30:28
Speaker 1: the United States, um about feelings about Eastern Asians and
30:33
Speaker 1: about Chinese people in this anti Chinese sentiment. So those
30:37
Speaker 1: sentiments extended even beyond Chinese people to the Eastern world.
30:41
Speaker 1: It shifted to the Japanese a little bit later. There
30:44
Speaker 1: was this idea of general Yellow peril, which was a
30:49
Speaker 1: xenophobic fear of this made up danger that Eastern Asians
30:53
Speaker 1: posed to the Western world. They were seen as the other.
30:58
Speaker 1: And so back in China, we were nearing the end
31:01
Speaker 1: of the Ching dynasty which ended in nineteen twelve, and
31:04
Speaker 1: so Emperor guang Shu was ruling at the time, though
31:07
Speaker 1: Empress Dowager, so she was the one who was really
31:11
Speaker 1: in charge. And so, as you said earlier, Lynch, you
31:14
Speaker 1: translated a lot of books, and also he has expressed
31:17
Speaker 1: in other books that anti imperialist sentiment as well. But
31:21
Speaker 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin was a big one, and it was
31:24
Speaker 1: only the second foreign novel he translated, and he really
31:28
Speaker 1: showed the character of Western societies and showed that there
31:33
Speaker 1: was good literature outside of China. So that's kind of
31:36
Speaker 1: an initial impact that it had on people, just presenting
31:41
Speaker 1: this idea of slavery in this kind of writing and
31:44
Speaker 1: literature to people in China who weren't necessarily familiar with
31:49
Speaker 1: this kind of work. So even though it was sort
31:51
Speaker 1: of tailored a little bit to be more appealing or
31:53
Speaker 1: to kind of like push forth this agenda, it did
31:56
Speaker 1: still accomplish something pretty powerful. Yeah, it did. It was
32:01
Speaker 1: in terms of power, I mean, Land show himself that
32:04
Speaker 1: work and his work influence other people to translate many,
32:08
Speaker 1: many more foreign work, so that's important, you know. And
32:12
Speaker 1: he also influenced the development of modern fiction in China.
32:16
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it's really interesting to think about this
32:19
Speaker 1: guy who who didn't know foreign languages, is that influential?
32:23
Speaker 1: This is something I was going to save it. Frost fair,
32:25
Speaker 1: but this is something that still happens today. There is
32:29
Speaker 1: a famous uh roomy translator professor I think, working out
32:34
Speaker 1: of Chattanooga named Coleman Barks. He doesn't read, nor speak
32:38
Speaker 1: Farsi nor Arabic of any sort. What he does is
32:43
Speaker 1: probably similar to Lynn Shoes Lynn Shoes process in some ways.
32:48
Speaker 1: It's it's just fascinating though when you think about it,
32:51
Speaker 1: a translator who doesn't speak the language they translate, you know,
32:56
Speaker 1: it gives us. It gives us these um these dramatic reinterpretations.
33:01
Speaker 1: There's a ton of room for error, but it also
33:04
Speaker 1: can give us a unique sort of thematic fingerprint because
33:07
Speaker 1: we're we're hearing this through the mind of several people,
33:13
Speaker 1: and in there when they're writing towards a goal, which
33:15
Speaker 1: Lynchu certainly is. I think it's a sincere goal. I
33:18
Speaker 1: don't think it's like crassly manipulative. We we can see
33:22
Speaker 1: that they're they're honing in on the focus. I really
33:25
Speaker 1: want to read their version of this now and then
33:29
Speaker 1: maybe go back and read the original and see what's different.
33:33
Speaker 1: When I learned to read Chinese, and I have I
33:36
Speaker 1: have Harry Potter books and Chinese at home that I
33:38
Speaker 1: got when I was in China, because I was like,
33:40
Speaker 1: these covers are awesome and how could I not have
33:42
Speaker 1: Harry Potter and Chinese are the titles like wildly different,
33:45
Speaker 1: sort of like the I can't read them because I'm
33:47
Speaker 1: not I don't know kanji. I don't know kanji. I'm
33:50
Speaker 1: trying to learn. But the cover, the cover art itself
33:54
Speaker 1: is they look the like Harry and Haggard look more
33:57
Speaker 1: Chinese and they do British, you know, on the covers,
34:00
Speaker 1: and they're just so fluid and flowy and blue and magical.
34:03
Speaker 1: They look so magical. And I'm already a fan if
34:06
Speaker 1: you can't tell, I'm a fan of Harry Potter, but
34:07
Speaker 1: I'm already a fan of the the U. S r
34:10
Speaker 1: Um And so I got those and I was just like,
34:12
Speaker 1: one day, I'm going to learn to read Chinese. I'm
34:14
Speaker 1: gonna figure it out and learn to speak Mandarin. You know,
34:17
Speaker 1: I'm gonna figure it out. But anyway, Um, I think,
34:20
Speaker 1: to what you were saying, Ben, that was an aside.
34:22
Speaker 1: I think to what you were saying, been about that
34:25
Speaker 1: translation of a translation also makes me think that it
34:27
Speaker 1: just makes the world feeld a little bit smaller because
34:31
Speaker 1: I don't know another language, and language is a huge
34:34
Speaker 1: barrier for me when I travel somewhere or even am
34:37
Speaker 1: in America and I'm in a place that's a community
34:41
Speaker 1: for people who don't speak the English language, and I'm
34:43
Speaker 1: an outsider, and I have guilt around that, and so
34:47
Speaker 1: you know, knowing that you can still communicate with people
34:50
Speaker 1: beyond language barriers. I think it's some some kind of
34:53
Speaker 1: inspiration in the translations of the translations thatly and She
34:56
Speaker 1: was doing. I that's well put. As someone who's also
34:59
Speaker 1: slow learning Mandarin, that that is well played. I've got
35:03
Speaker 1: a couple of the books you mentioned and speaking side notes.
35:07
Speaker 1: You probably already know this Eaves, but there are tons
35:11
Speaker 1: of unofficial other Harry Potter books written by and for
35:16
Speaker 1: the Chinese market. They're not they're not approved by j K.
35:21
Speaker 1: I don't know what happens, but I know there's there
35:23
Speaker 1: are allegedly tons of them. So if when you and
35:26
Speaker 1: I get our Mandarin down, we might never have to
35:29
Speaker 1: stop reading. Here. I got a few of those titles
35:32
Speaker 1: right here. If you're interested in what it's called. Harry
35:34
Speaker 1: Potter and the Leopard, Walk Up to Dragon, Harry Potter
35:38
Speaker 1: and the Chinese porcelain doll stone. Uh, Harry, Harry Potter
35:43
Speaker 1: and the Big funnel. Wait is that mentor it's like
35:48
Speaker 1: it's a symbol for imperialism even deeper rip off check?
35:54
Speaker 1: Or this is from Russia. Tanya Groder and the Magical
35:57
Speaker 1: Double Bass and it's yeah on the covers like a
36:02
Speaker 1: Harry Potter asked young lady writing on a flying double
36:05
Speaker 1: bass and holding like, uh, it's like a magic stone
36:08
Speaker 1: in her hands. And you can you can learn more
36:09
Speaker 1: of that. Uh, there's a Mental Floss article. Let's I'm
36:13
Speaker 1: finding Harry Potter and Calcutta Indian version and Harry Potter
36:17
Speaker 1: and the water repelling Pearl. What a repelling? Yeah, what
36:21
Speaker 1: a quality? Well here check out the art. See it's
36:25
Speaker 1: he's the pearl I think is down there repelling. That's
36:29
Speaker 1: quite a pearl. That that may not be the best
36:33
Speaker 1: example of cover art out of these dot offs, but
36:36
Speaker 1: these titles are great. They're so good. You can totally
36:38
Speaker 1: find that article and Mental Floss and man, this has
36:41
Speaker 1: been really educational on so many levels and really fun
36:44
Speaker 1: to have this conversation and to have you on the show. Eaves,
36:46
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. Yes, thank you
36:50
Speaker 1: very much. For your time to Eves. Uh for everybody
36:53
Speaker 1: who is rushing to check out your shows Unpopular and
36:57
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37:00
Speaker 1: find you? So they're all on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter,
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37:07
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37:09
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37:14
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37:19
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37:51
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37:54
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37:58
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38:01
Speaker 1: The Quister for once again not showing up. But I
38:04
Speaker 1: feel like our time is running out. Yeah yeah, yeah,
38:08
Speaker 1: we are overdue. But it's uh, it's one of those
38:11
Speaker 1: kind of live in the moment, embraced the now sort
38:14
Speaker 1: of things. We never know when Jonathan Strickland ak the
38:17
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38:20
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38:23
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38:26
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38:29
Speaker 1: the beginning of every episode of Ridiculous History. Thanks to
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38:37
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38:40
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