Yellow Peril

The “Yellow Peril” in Western popular culture: how did the “Yellow Peril” manifest itself in the pulp fiction of the early 20th century and was there an identifiable reaction against the racial stereotypes it portrayed?


The idea for this project came after a re-reading of Belgian cartoonist Hergé’s The Blue Lotus. When read by a child, Hergé’s hero Tintin lives a boy’s adventure fantasy: journeying to the four corners of the earth, sleeping under the stars, chasing criminals, and making the world a safer place; the stuff of dreams. But reading the book as an adult shows Tintin’s journey to the East in a new light. The Blue Lotus reveals a subtext elucidating Hergé’s determination to portray the Chinese in as faithful a light as possible. He tries to counteract an unfounded and ignorant fear of China and the Chinese dubbed the “Yellow Peril”, as portrayed in the works by Sax Rohmer. At the same time, he champions an exotic and downtrodden nation struggling against Japan. Hergé made the first discernibly honest attempt in Western popular literature to depict the Chinese culture and customs as accurately as possible. Throughout much of the novel, it is the West that is negatively stereotyped by Hergé. This overt racist-bashing invites two questions: where had these prejudices that he was attempting to dispel come from and have other authors, before or since, attempted the same through a medium of popular literature?

Authors like Sax Rohmer, Earl Derr Biggers and Hergé were all writing at a time when Western imperialism was rife. Indeed, it was because of Britain and America’s colonial tendencies that the myth of the “Yellow Peril” grew at all. Britain had laid claims to China since the 18th century, but had never successfully colonized the country. Instead, they wrested control of the main East coast ports from the Chinese and built quarantined international settlements in the large cities. As a result of the West’s self-isolation in China and their failure to successfully colonize the “natives”, there remained a grey area of cultural understanding between the West and East, which endures today.

Cultural ignorance of China – and other areas of the British Empire such as Africa – on the part of the West led to the unfair stereotyping of races, visible in the works of these authors. The apparently voluntary, although often in practice forced migration of Chinese as workers to Western countries like England and America – the ‘Coolie trade’ – consolidated rather than alleviated this cultural ignorance. Westerners grew suspicious of the Chinese trying to steal their jobs and taint the white race with their “yellow” skin. Their cultural ignorance evolved into a conscious attempt to besmirch the Chinese culture. Pulp fiction like Sax Rohmer’s Dr Fu Manchu, filled with scaremongering stereotypes, exacerbated this racial prejudice and served to prolong an unjustified myth. As Anthony Berkley, a scholar of “Yellow Peril” literature noted, “…what the Chinese have done to deserve this, I do not know.”[1] Despite all three writers being influenced by the imperialist attitudes which pervaded all echelons of society at the time in which they wrote, their specific portrayal of the Chinese can also be attributed to other personal reasons.

A brief account of the historical context from which this “Yellow Peril” fear arose is necessary, as ultimately the ramifications of past historical events influenced all three authors to write as they did. How the three authors wrote, drawing upon their approach to and use of the “Yellow Peril” message in conveying their story to the audience will be discussed. Even though Sax Rohmer and Hergé’s stories were the antithesis of each other with regards to playing on “Yellow Peril” fears as a literary device, why were both so phenomenally popular? Finally, one should consider whether there was a reaction against the proliferation of the “Yellow Peril” myth and why this reaction occurred with the authors portraying the Chinese as they did.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

The “Yellow Peril” - the fear that the Asians were attempting to colonize the world and subvert the colonial interests of the West - has existed since the late 19th century. In this essay, the “Yellow Peril” refers exclusively to the Chinese. However the term was often used immediately before WWII to express the fear of growing Japanese armed forces and an impending attack upon American culture. This fear was ultimately realised by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, which resulted in the internment of the Japanese-American population by the American government during the war.[2]

Before the Opium Wars of 1840-43 and 1853-60 and the resulting “Unequal Treaties” which followed, the majority of Westerners in China were a mix of traders and missionaries. However China’s loss in both conflicts saw foreign influence grow. The Sino-British Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1842, leased Hong Kong Island and some mainland territory to the British, and opened several key trading ports such as Guangzhou, Fuzhou and Shanghai to foreign merchants at low tariffs.[3] Similar treaties were signed with nations like France, Russia and the United States, which likewise awarded them with the right to trade and purchase mainland real estate on which to construct foreign settlements.[4] This carving up of China into different spheres of foreign influence propped up a decaying and necessarily compliant imperial state, ensuring Westerners could continue living in closed communities, watching and judging from a safe haven the increasing dereliction of the Chinese culture.

The Chinese had been emigrating to the West in search of a better life and salaries since the turn of the 19th century. However, the “Unequal Treaties” allowed foreign merchants unfettered access to the poverty-stricken interior of China. As a result of the Taiping Rebellion which caused rampant devastation in the countryside and extreme taxation increases, the merchants easily persuaded labourers that a happier and better-paid life in the West awaited them.[5] The 1860 Convention further legalised the recruitment of Chinese labourers for dispatch abroad. This became known as the “Coolie Trade”, and was a tacit replacement of slavery in the British Empire as well as other Western nations. Recruits were badly abused, underpaid (if paid at all), and subject to conditions on par with the black slaves of centuries past.

Despite the “Coolie Trade” being a brainchild of Western traders, this sudden influx of Chinese immigrants to the West creating an increasingly competitive blue-collar job market. Many Chinese were hired to work on the Pacific-coast railroads and goldmines in favour of their Western counterparts, because of their readiness to accept paltry salaries. The situation was similar in Britain. This gave rise to serious discontent among the British and American working class. In The Times of 1878, an article warned, “We shall see the rise in the cities of Europe…of Chinese quarters…which will cause discontent among our working classes. The Chinese will end up by fixing themselves among us like Jews.”[6] The British Trade Union Convention (TUC) praised American labour unions for their opposition to Chinese immigration enshrined in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.[7] Finally, in 1905, the British passed their own sinophobic legislation, the Aliens Restrictions Act. These protectionist measures not only reserved jobs for non-Chinese, but were also an attempt to allay fears of the Chinese perverting the purity of Western females and genetically tainting the white race.

The Western fear of Chinese stealing jobs or out-populating a white community through immigration was certainly responsible in part for the “Yellow Peril” myth. However, the fear held for the Chinese was not only one of an immigrant population out of Western control; it was also a fear of the “Chinaman” himself: the evil he embodied, the anti-imperialism he propounded and the cruel tendencies he displayed towards his apparently peaceful Western neighbours. It was the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 which helped concrete this image.

The rebellion was initially a peasant-based uprising which attacked the foreign mining and railroad interests in the north of China, as well as proselytizing Christian missionaries. In 1900, the Boxers attacked the international legations in Tianjin and Beijing, and killed an envoy of the German Empire, Klemens Freiherr von Ketteler.[8] The ensuing international protest saw an eight-nation alliance intervene, ‘For the sake of civilization’. They fought and finally defeated the Boxers in 1901. Throughout the entire conflict, foreign media put a negative spin on the Chinese, and made exaggerated reports of the alleged brutal torture and killing of foreigners in Beijing. Many of the most scaremongering stories that appeared in international newspapers were the result of malicious fabrication.[9] This publishing of untruths resulted in the demonising of the Chinese as a race and further exacerbated the “Yellow Peril” fears.

The works of Rohmer, Biggers and Hergé were penned within a 35-year period following the end of the Boxer Rebellion. They had read these untruths of wanton Chinese brutality in their respective country’s media and they had seen the pictures of brutalised Western soldiers lying dead in the streets. This was the context in which all three authors found themselves writing. Perhaps more importantly, this was also the context in which the novels were read. As for the work of Sax Rohmer, the “Yellow Peril” fears were fresh in the minds of the author’s original audience. This no doubt facilitated, if not encouraged the readers to adopt the stereotypes and prejudices they were presented as at least believable, if not completely true. In turn, the fears of a Chinese invasion were exacerbated and the living conditions for Chinese immigrants in the West worsened for years to come. Conversely, the readership received the somewhat unprecedented criticisms of Western prejudices in both Bigger’s and Hergé’s work surprisingly well. Both authors’ works appeared at a time when Westerners, mainly the British, became increasingly aware and critical of ruthless empire-building in the East. Public attitudes turned against the British government’s meddling abroad, symbolised by the “Hands of China” movement during the General Strike of 1926.[10]

“YELLOW PERIL” LITERATURE:

The three primary sources, Sax Rohmer’s Dr Fu Manchu, Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan and Hergé’s The Blue Lotus, together form a neat spectrum of “Yellow Peril” popular literature. Dr Fu Manchu, the epitome of early 20th century pulp-fiction accused of perpetuating the racist myths surrounding the Chinese culture, is littered with stereotypes and prejudice, and is analysed as the “pro-Yellow Peril” source. Charlie Chan is much more moderate, at times defending the Chinese as an admirable race, worthy of Western admiration. Biggers portrays his portly Chinese detective in a light that requires a Western reader to accept and appreciate him for his intellectual abilities and not for his racial origin. Hergé’s The Blue Lotus is at the far end of the spectrum, in complete opposition to Dr Fu Manchu. For the entire book, Hergé negatively stereotypes the Western characters whilst portraying the Chinese and their culture in a glowingly positive light.

FU MANCHU:
Writing between 1913 and 1959, Rohmer,[11] an Englishman, penned a highly popular fictional series of thrillers epitomising the fears associated with the “Yellow Peril”. The stories recounted the pursuit of the Chinese criminal mastermind, Dr Fu-Manchu, by Britain’s leading spy Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Commencing his writing just a short decade after the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in 1913, Rohmer’s arch-villain embodied the Western fears of the Chinese and was seen as the “Yellow Peril” incarnate:

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of a true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect…Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the “Yellow Peril” incarnate in one man.”[12]

The books formed one of the most acclaimed series of the early 20th century, especially in America, where it spawned a whole “Fu Manchu” genre of radio, theatre and most frequently, movie spin-offs. To this day the character of Dr Fu-Manchu is immortalised in popular media, most recently (and surprisingly!) by Nicholas Cage, with his role in the 2007 movie Grindhouse.[13]

Rohmer had from a young age been fascinated with the East, writing short stories about Egyptian magic and Arabic intrigue. However, his interest with China was aroused when Rohmer, at a loss for job opportunities, asked an ouija board where his future lay. [14] The board magically responded by spelling out “C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N”, leading Rohmer to pursue any stories involving the Chinese. It was only in 1911 that Rohmer was finally commissioned to write about the Chinese community in the Limehouse area of London. His experiences there would form the inspiration for his Dr Fu Manchu series which he began writing that same year.

The article’s focus was a man known only as Mr King, a Chinese criminal kingpin allegedly responsible for a drugs and gambling syndicate operating in the Limehouse area.[15] Rohmer’s time spent combing this neighbourhood allowed him to witness the somewhat alien Chinese community first-hand.

Limehouse was London’s original Chinatown and notorious for opium dens, which was considered a ruinous vice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Rohmer described the area as, “…a vista of dark streets, shadowy yellow-faced forms, a brief flash of a knife blade, a scream in the night…The neighbourhood which honest citizens hesitated to penetrate after dark.”[16] This imagery is faithfully reflected in Rohmer’s depiction of Limehouse in his novels. However, it is questionable whether we should take this description as the truth; another eyewitness source contemporary with Rohmer described the area in a contrasting light, “Taken altogether, the Chinaman in Limehouse is almost peaceable, inoffensive and harmless character [sic]. He is picturesque in a region where it is surely needed.”[17]

Rohmer chose to ignore the reality of Limehouse in favour of his search for its fabled underworld of organised crime. Through his investigations and his observation of the Chinese, he became aware of a number of close-knit kinship groups and ‘mutual-aid’ networks, which amalgamated to form London’s “Chinatown”.[18] Rohmer, persuaded by his own obsession with conspiracy and the occult, took these kinship groups to be sworn brotherhoods, and allowed his imagination to run wild: ‘Supposing, I asked myself, a number of those sinister organisations were in turn responsible to the direction of some super-society. Such a society would hold power to upset governments, perhaps change the very course of civilization…What president of my imaginary super-society could be in charge of this world-wide shadowy empire?’[19] This president would eventually become the character of Dr Fu-Manchu.

The Dr Fu Manchu series, in terms of the racial stereotypes it portrays, is inaccurate and removed from any foundation in reality. The hero throughout the series is the white, dashing and ever-jingoistic Sir Denis Nayland-Smith. Locked in a dance of death with the evil doctor, he manages to pass a racial slur about the Chinese every five pages or so. The novels’ three main ingredients are sex, drugs and crime, which all seem entirely recognisable to us today as the necessary components of any trashy novel. Dr Fu Manchu was the incumbent leader of a cruel yellow gang consisting of dacoits, trained assassins and beautiful seductresses. He is described as, “…no ordinary criminal…the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on the earth for centuries.”[20] Rohmer justifies that because he, “…belongs to a race of ancestor worshippers”, his behaviour is totally irrational and his evil genius capable of anything.[21] Rohmer makes his villain even more incredible, stating that he has combined Western science with Eastern genius to create a power of super-hypnosis, as well as a host of assassination methods and secret potions.[22]

The exaggerated imagery used to describe the arch-villain is nothing more than a device to attract readers and make the story more fascinating. In The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu, the first novel in the series, Dr Fu Manchu is a straightforward assassin. He is also at his most bloodthirsty: “They die like flies...I am the god of destruction!”[23] As the series progresses, Dr Fu Manchu gradually kills his way to the position of president in the “Si-Fan” society, bent on world domination. This is Rohmer moving away from personalizing the “Chinaman” as evil and instead playing harder upon the “Yellow Peril” fear that the Chinese were in the process of empire-building.

His stereotyping would not have been so damaging had his books not enjoyed such success. Although there had been several Asian protagonists in pulp fiction before Dr Fu Manchu, the evil doctor was the first Chinese character in Western literature to have widespread readership, mainly in America but also in Britain. As the fear upon which the series plays – the Chinese conniving to conquer the West and outbreed the Whites – was such a pertinent issue, especially in terms of competition for jobs between the Chinese and Whites in Britain and America, the audience was more ready to embrace the work. Western readers, although perhaps cautious in accepting Rohmer’s portrayal of the Chinese as honest in its entirety, perhaps still viewed his general driving accusation against the Chinese as believable. This readiness to accept the work as even a half-truth was hastened by a dearth of honest portrayals of the Chinese widely available to the public at the time. Even if the story was digested by its audience as a fictional work, Rohmer’s comical and exaggerated depiction of a cunning, yellow, green-eyed arch-villain became embedded in the Western subconscious as the commonplace Chinese stereotype.[24]

Ironically, the character of Dr Fu Manchu which has been ingrained in the Western mind was only based on a glimpse that Rohmer thought he had caught of Mr King during his stakeouts in Limehouse. Obsessed with coming face to face with his foe, Rohmer, concealed in a narrow alley, experienced something, “…so completely unlikely to happen…as to qualify as a phenomenon.”[25] From a glossy limousine stepped a, “…tall, dignified Chinese…followed by an Arab girl in a grey fur cloak…I knew I had seen Dr Fu Manchu! His face was the living embodiment of Satan.”[26] The physical portrayal of other Chinese throughout the book, apart from the repetition of a “yellow” skin colour and “feline” features, is not where Rohmer really does his damage and leaves his legacy.

It is in his delineation of Dr Fu-Manchu’s mission in the West and the generalisations that he makes to the Chinese race as a whole, that Rohmer has had a detrimental effect upon Western attitudes to the Chinese since the early 20th century. In all the novels, but particularly in The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu, there are continual references to Dr Fu Manchu attempting to spearhead a Chinese mission to take over the West. The series’ hero, Nayland Smith describes Dr Fu-Manchu as “…an advance agent of a mission so epoch-making that not one Britisher…has ever dreamed it,”[27] and claims that his arch-nemesis, “…has the backing of a political group whose wealth is enormous and whose mission it is to pave the way.” [28] These claims exacerbated fears that the invasion had already begun. The 1906 population of Chinese in Liverpool was around 2000 people, almost all of whom were male sailors who had been accused of “perverting women” and having “sinister offspring”.[29] In the Sunday Chronicle, Claude Blake asked if Chinatown could really be an, “…open sore to be allowed to fester in a white community.”[30] To calm the fears of the “Yellow Peril”, like those expressed by Blake, an independent commission was established in Liverpool. Even though it found that the Chinese community was the embodiment of public order, the damage had already been done. Rohmer’s references to an organised invasion further fed the already growing flames of cultural suspicion.

Thus, Rohmer’s work has been credited with the unfortunate popularisation and propagation of the “Yellow Peril” myth through his literature. He has furthermore been admonished by the overseas Chinese populations for what is perceived as a direct attack upon the culture and customs of their homeland.[31] When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) filmed The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu in 1929, starring Warner Oland (who was later famed for him performance as Charlie Chan), production was halted after protests from the Chinese embassy in America. Van Ash reported that they had taken a “humourless” view to the stereotyped portrayal of both Dr Fu Manchu and his Chinese mob, which they considered, “…damaging to their image.”[32] MGM’s lawyers attempted to counter-sue but Rohmer, hinting at his own perception of his work, considered the complaint totally understandable and would not let legal proceeding continue.[33]

His sympathetic treatment of the Chinese embassy’s objections and his work playing, in an often comedic manner, so hard on the “Yellow Peril” fears perhaps suggests that Rohmer did not take his own plot lines or characters too seriously, and was also conscious that his work filled the pulp fiction niche rather than that of general reference. Rohmer once claimed to his biographer and protégé Cay Van Ash that, “I made my name on Fu Manchu because I know nothing about the Chinese!”[34] There are several features which through the course of the series suggest both Rohmer’s potentially light-hearted approach to his stories and also his desire to distance himself, after allegations of racism, from his planting of the evil “Chinaman” stereotype in the Western subconscious.

Rohmer’s description of the “Yellow Peril” incarnate Dr Fu Manchu (and by extrapolation, the Chinese people), is damning, but also illuminates a chink in Rohmer’s apparently racist armour; the man he describes as having a face like Satan and all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race is also flattered with features like Shakespeare’s brow and a giant intellect. Granted that Rohmer portrays his villain as necessarily evil, but he also assigns to him characteristics that are worthy of praise. At the beginning of the series, Dr Fu Manchu is the British government’s arch-nemesis. Realising the detrimental effect that his portrayal of a mad Chinaman pitted against civilisation was having on the West, Rohmer gradually softened his theme towards the end of the series, allowing Dr Fu Manchu to help the Western agents fight the Chinese Communists.[35] Rohmer further detached his novels from reality by describing the zany and bizarre assassination techniques used by Dr Fu Manchu such as the ‘Zayat Kiss’ – a six-inch long insect that is attracted to a mysterious scent and trained to give the victim a lethal injection.

Ironically, it was these most far-fetched assassination techniques and exotic references that were researched in detail and really did exist. Although his research on the Chinese was highly dubious, he was obsessed with the occult and meticulous in discovering every last detail about the props he used to set the scene. This dedication extended as far as Rohmer once trying opium, which made him sick.[36] This inclusion of the occult reflected Rohmer’s desire to deliberately mystify his audience and bring the reader face to face with the unknown. Van Ash maintains that Rohmer, “…drew the line at spreading misinformation, but did not object to…misdirection.”[37] He warns that although Rohmer wrote appropriately for his time and in line with the beliefs and fears of the readers, as a modern audience we must not subject and judge his writing in accordance with our own social norms.

CHARLIE CHAN:

The pulp fiction of the 1920s concerning Chinese characters was almost without exception loaded with prejudice, and portrayed the ‘Chinaman’ as evil, subversive and downright diabolical. The above mentioned Dr Fu Manchu epitomized these stories, as did a number of racist serialized stories which appeared in American newspapers at the time. The newspaper in which Biggers first printed his Charlie Chan novels, the Saturday Evening Post, contained a serialization which portrayed the Chinese as evil at a rate of around once per month.[38] Stories of malevolent Chinese peasants murdering useless daughters in the fields or of a vengeful Chinaman burning a ship packed with white sailors perpetuated the racial prejudice against the Chinese, filling the pages and readers’ imaginations.[39]

But Charlie Chan was different. Unlike the Saturday Evening Post or Dr Fu Manchu, Ohio-born Earl Biggers attempted to rewrite the prejudices held against the Chinese. However he was perhaps not as successful in doing this as he might have been, because he still purposefully pandered too much to his American audience. He wrote six Charlie Chan novels over a period of seven years in the early 20th century. Starting with The House Without a Key in 1925, Bigger’s gave the West their first Asian hero, in the form of Chinese-Hawaiian detective Charlie Chan. As the only Chinese protagonist in literature at the time, the character immediately became an ambassador for honest Chinese-Americans by default.[40] Biggers once stated, "I had seen movies depicting and read stories about Chinatown and wicked Chinese villains, and it struck me that a Chinese hero, trustworthy, benevolent, and philosophical, would come nearer to presenting a correct portrayal of the race."[41] Biggers’ books intentionally created a character which symbolised an explicit social rebuttal to the pulp fiction of the era that was so full of “Yellow Peril” racial stereotypes. However, unlike Hergé who was inspired by portraying the truth regardless of his audience’s reaction, ergHeBigger’s rebuttal was intended to soothe his white audience rather than antagonise. Instead of allowing Chan to combat undue racism from other characters with equally vicious stereotyping or prejudice, he makes Chan use his acerbic wit to defend himself, or indirectly vindicates Chan by the outcomes of cases to which he is assigned.

Instead of being a product of complete invention and imagination, Biggers based his detective upon a real-life Honolulu-based Hawaiian-Chinese policeman called Chang Apana, whose exploits he had read about on a holiday a few years previous to writing his first Charlie Chan novel.[42] Perhaps because of this, his creation marked a perceptible change in the portrayal of Asians, specifically Chinese. Chan was still the victim of stereotyping and racism, but more subtle and less threatening.[43] His physical description, in opposition to that of Dr Fu Manchu, is soft and unimposing:

“He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby’s, his skin ivory-tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting.”[44]

Biggers had eschewed the stereotyped, traditional portrayal of the Chinese for one that was intended to endear itself to a suspicious Western audience.

In addition to his physical appearance, Chan’s English, unlike Dr Fu Manchu who spoke “…with almost equal facility in any of the civilized languages,”[45] is far from perfect. Although Biggers makes it clear that he has not mastered English and writes Chan’s dialogue in a stilted style, Chan still excels in perfectly conveying his meaning, and when persuading a colleague not to give up on a case because he has reached a dead-end, Chan advises, “That are wrong attitudes completely. Detective business made up of insignificant trifles.”[46] The style in which he speaks is not annoying i.e. his skewed grammar and colourful vocabulary is totally understandable, and this further endears him to a predominantly white audience.

The personality traits and characteristics Biggers assigned to his hero were also intended to liken Chan to his America audience. Many of them aspired to possess the same traits as Chan, and this allowed them to more readily accept him. He was calm and peaceful, self-effacing and friendly, which as Chinese-American Fletcher Chan suggests was, “…the antithesis of the opium-den image.”[47] He is so demure that throughout the series he is referred to a number of times by his colleagues as the plain, impassive or serene Buddha. He is patient, believing it to be the highest virtue and best remedy to resolve any situation, “…patience is always a bright plan in these matters. American has always the urge to leap too quick. How well it was said retire a step and you have the advantage.”[48]

Perhaps Chan’s most impressive characteristic is his politeness and passivity in the face of overt racial prejudice. At times he is polite to absurdity: in one incident, Chan is insulted by a Bostonian whose cousin has been murdered. He is in disbelief that a Chinese has been assigned to handle the case. Chan recognizes his racist attitude and humbly rebukes him, saying, “…pardon to mention it, I detect in your eyes slight flame of hostility. Quench it, if you will be so kind. Friendly cooperation are essential between us.”[49]

Biggers was writing on two levels: he wanted success for his own work and so had to tailor it to a predominantly white American audience. However there can also be no question that he was writing to dispel the prejudiced myths that surrounded the Chinese at the time. His intention was for the audience to have fun with Charlie Chan, but not at his expense. His clever chiding of racist or ignorant Whites makes Chan’s point, but not in a way that is too offensive for his readers.

When Chan witnesses a British man (who later turns out to be the murderer) berating his Chinese cook for embodying, “…all the worst qualities of a heathen race,” he defends his countryman saying, “A heathen race that was busy inventing the art of printing when gentlemen in Great Britain were still beating one another over head with spiked clubs.”[50] This kind of polite defence which occurs repeatedly throughout the series leaves the white aggressor looking the worst in the situation, and further serves as a subtle embarrassment for the white audience, playing on their ignorance of everyone’s culture but their own.

Biggers was deliberately the bastion of an un-enlightened, but encouragingly less-ignorant view of other cultures. William Wu writes that Biggers hoped Chan would be seen in a new light, removed from the fears of the “Yellow Peril”. However, he believes that Biggers did not take full advantage of championing Chan as a new generation of Asians who were on an equal footing with Whites.[51] In his opinion, Charlie Chan’s politeness to his white critics and traits such as bowing to his colleagues and clients – which Wu has wrongly taken to be out of deference - is merely a sop to the white audience.

However, Biggers’ stories speak for themselves and seem to disagree with Wu. By using Chan as a spokesperson for his own “anti-Yellow Peril” agenda, it is perhaps in Chan’s defense of the Chinese culture that Biggers intentions speak loudest. The plump detective continually finds his culture compared to America’s. Although the comparison is always made by a white American, usually in a tone of ignorant condescension, it is the Chinese culture that Biggers allows to be vindicated, and often judged superior. In an incident that epitomizes this, an old Bostonian woman tells Chan that the, “…Chinese are my favorite race…the aristocrats of the East…carrying on among the lazy riff-raff of the Orient.” Chan replies, “Appreciation such as yours makes music to my ears. We are not highly valued here in the United States, where we are appraised…as villains in the literature. You have a great country…about rest of world it knows little, and cares extremely less.”[52] Chan does not have to be rude to make his point, but this makes its significance resonate that much louder.

Chan not only protects his culture through justification to ignorant Americans and his acid wit, but he also retains a Chinese superficiality as a device further to persuade the reader of the importance of his roots, and to add an extra dimension of interest to the character, as well as popularity to the novels. He talks of living by a muddy river in a thatched hut and having eleven children, but being disappointed that three of them were daughters. Both these details pandered to Western stereotypes, but meant that Chan was more believable to his suspicious readership and could retain a veneer of exoticism. Throughout his police investigations he quotes Confucian-esque proverbs, like “Only a very brave mouse makes nest in cat’s ear” or “Do not wave stick when trying to catch dog”. Conversely, in line with Sandra Hawley’s argument, perhaps the Chinese superficiality was actually a clever device to show how Americanized he was becoming, either by choice or unwanted influence.[53]

Was Chan really becoming American? Biggers’ portrayal of Chan is as a man who against all odds has worked hard to gain the position he is in. However, his rejection of his adopted nation’s culture in favour of his own is another device to portray Chan in not just an unprejudiced light, but perhaps even one of cultural superiority. It is Chan’s bemoaning the Americanization of his children that substantiates this device most overtly. He states his displeasure that his son Henry has taken up smoking and that his daughter, Rose, openly questions and argues with her father. He is most upset because he knows that if his mother was to see the degenerate state of his family, from a traditional Chinese perspective, she would have, “…mourned for the old ways, the old customs.”[54] Chan also tries to maintain a strictly Chinese household at his home on Punchbowl Hill. He is depicted as receiving a guest at the front door dressed in his silken Chinese robes, with dragon hangings and oriental screens and vases in the background. However this was more an unfortunate stereotype and another attempt by Biggers to pander to his American audience rather than a reflection of Chan’s Chinese-ness. Throughout the series, Chan is otherwise always dressed in Western clothes and in one novel is displeased with the idea of wearing Chinese dress as a costume.

Chan repeatedly considers the Chinese culture to be superior to what he considers the degeneracy of the American ways. However, lurking in the subtext of the novels is an unspoken desire to both remain culturally Chinese but throw off the derogatory connotations that accompanied his immigrant status in early 20th century America, even if that means gradually becoming American himself and adopting their cultures and prejudices. Wu attributes it to the commonplace immigrant desire of upward social mobility.[55] Chan retains his Chinese-ness through stories of his upbringing, but is keen to show his colleagues that he should not be associated with Chinese immigrants who are not knowledgeable about American ways. This becomes clear with Biggers overtly portraying Chan as believing he is superior to other Chinese immigrants: when Chan is required to play the role of a Chinese servant for a bigoted American murder suspect on his country ranch, he ostentatiously adopts a different form of speech, a vulgar pidgin in place of his intermediate English: “Maybe you wantee catch ‘um moah fish, boss?” He laments this forced degradation of his English saying, “All my life I study to speak fine English words. Now must strangle all such in my throat, lest suspicion rouse up. Not a happy situation for me.”[56] As Chan is the first Asian protagonist to be accepted not for race but his intellectual capacity, he has, “…on the surface progressed from the status of struggling minority to moral authority.”[57]

Although Biggers made such an honest attempt to portray Chan and the Chinese in a more faithful light, he still falls victim to the unconscious prejudice against other races which pervaded at the time. Assigning Chan black servants has been seen by critics as an insult to the black community and a disservice to the racial equality Biggers tried to promote. Ironically, Chan himself is guilty of racial prejudice. To allow Chan to judge his Chinese culture at least on par with that of America, and perhaps also in line with a growing Western concern for an empire-hungry Japan, Chan, on occasion, is overtly anti-Japanese. Kashimo, a Japanese immigrant to Hawaii, is assigned to Chan as a junior police officer. Like Chan, he is constantly trying to evade racial prejudice and climb the social ladder. However, he is always left looking the buffoon and is constantly criticized and chided by his Chinese superior. Chan introduces Kashimo to Inspector Duff saying, “Kashimo studies to be a great detective like you are. So far fortune doesn’t favour him. Only this morning he proved himself useful as a mirror to a blind man.”[58] The fact that Biggers displays the anti-Japanese sentiment so openly whilst simultaneously trying to dispel anti-Chinese sentiment suggests that the fear of the Japanese was relatively new and widespread, and not considered to represent unjust prejudice.

THE BLUE LOTUS:

Like Biggers novels, Hergé’s work, and in particular Tintin’s adventure to China, was a response against the unjust portrayal of the Chinese. However it was much stronger in content and less sensitively written for the Western audience. The Blue Lotus was Georges Remi’s, alias Hergé, fifth story to be published as a book and his young hero Tintin’s first foray to the Orient. It is the second instalment of Tintin’s efforts to crack an opium-smuggling ring, beginning in Cigars of the Pharaoh which leads him from the sands of Egypt to the mountains of India. However, although it is a continuation of the same story, The Blue Lotus signifies a marked departure from his previous works in terms of style, drawing, story-telling and attention to detail. There is almost unanimous agreement that this adventure was Hergé’s best so far, with some critics venturing as far as saying his best ever.[59]

Importantly, it was the first work in which Hergé openly denounced racist and prejudiced attitudes of the time, using his protagonists as spokespeople for what he believed was wrong and required correction. It represented a true backlash against the myths perpetuated in fiction like Dr Fu Manchu and is even a departure from Earl Biggers well-meaning attempt to portray the Chinese in as honest a light as possible. Hergé recognised that even Biggers’ hero Charlie Chan suffered at the hands of subconscious stereotypes: he was described as a Chinese who grew up in a thatched hut on a muddy riverbank, and whose children numbered eleven. Hergé, for personal reasons rather than anything else, decided enough was enough, and not only overtly put the Chinese people and culture on a pedestal, but blatantly satirised the empire-building Western nations and the sabre-rattling Japanese.

Hergé got his break drawing for a Belgian Catholic daily, Le XXe Siècle. His artistic talent was quickly recognised and he was commissioned to produce a weekly supplement, Le Petit Vingtième, for children. It made its debut on November 1st, 1928, and Tintin first entered the pages in early January the next year. Tintin was so popular that on Thursdays the readership of the newspaper sextupled soon after his release.[60] Since his youth, Hergé had aspired to be a foreign correspondent, but with his drawing duties tying him firmly to Belgium, in his place he sent Tintin around the globe to cover world news. Of Tintin, Hergé said: “I believe that all creators of stories…project themselves into their characters. Tintin is my most brilliant reflection, my successful double.”[61]

At the start of the series, Tintin began his career as a reporter, but his job description quickly moved from sending dispatches back to headquarters at Le XXe Siècle (which he is seen doing only twice throughout all twenty-two adventures) to becoming a fully-fledged detective. Drawn unchanged throughout the entire series wearing the same brown plus-fours, shirt and overcoat, hair coiffed neatly into a permanent quiff even when in zero gravity, Tintin is timeless. A child is gripped by the excitement and adventure of Tintin, whereas an adult is enthralled by the political satire and prescience. Hergé once said that Tintin was aimed, “…at all young people aged from seven to seventy-seven”[62], but later extended that range in both directions, when it became obvious that Tintin was universal.

Hergé was an armchair traveller. He did not voyage to most of the countries to which he sent Tintin until much later in his life. Although he was invited to China by Madame Chang Kai-Shek in 1939, political blockades ensured he never made it to the mainland and only to Taiwan some forty years after.[63] As a victim of his own unintentional ignorance, Hergé’s earlier works fall prey to the clichés and stereotypes which still lingered in the West during the 1920s and 30s.

Tintin au Pays des Soviets, was Tintin’s first adventure to the Soviet Union, and was considered so politically incorrect that it was only ever revised in book form for Hergé’s private use. Le XXe Siècle was a Catholic newspaper, and anti-Communist by definition. Hergé openly admitted that drawing in this atmosphere, along with the influence he received from reading Joseph Douillet’s Moscou Sans Voiles, which, “…denounced vehemently the vices and depravities of the regime”, meant that when drawing, “…one would literally devour Bolsheviks.”[64] In one section, a communist is showing a delegation of English trade union officials around the Potemkin factories,[65] propounding, “Contrary to the big mouths of the bourgeois nations, our factories work at full capacity!” while the Englishmen look on approvingly.[66] On the next page Tintin surmises that, “That is how the Soviets fool the poor idiots who still believe in a ‘Red paradise’.”[67] Hergé’s work suffered because of his lack of research, the use of only one biased source and the influence of the general Belgian Catholic attitude to Communism. It was because of this that this particular adventure is the only one to have never been redrawn and put into colour. Hergé himself acknowledged it as one of the, “…sins of my youth.”[68]

In Tintin’s next adventure, he visits Belgium’s most recent colonial extension, the Congo. Tintin au Congo is yet another example of Hergé’s flawed work, bearing the scars of an author influenced by the ugly colonial and bourgeois attitudes of the time. The Congo had been annexed by Belgium in 1908 and Tintin is sent to thwart a diamond racket run by none other that Chicago gangster Al Capone. In the original French version, Tintin teaches a class of attentive Congolese a lesson about their fatherland, “Mes chers amis, je vais vous parler aujourd-hui de votre patrie: La Belgique!”[69] [My dear friends, today I am going to talk to you about your homeland: Belgium!]. In the colour reprints, his colonialist pedagogy is replaced with a simple arithmetic lesson, in an apparent attempt to broaden the book’s market appeal (understandably to France), but in fact most likely a tacit withdrawal of what would later be seen as offensive imperialism.[70] However, these revisions were merely face-lifts which did not alter the colonialist skeleton of the stories.

One surprising feature of Tintin’s foray to Congo that remains unchanged throughout the various reprints of the story is the depiction of the native Congolese. They are portrayed as almost featureless black shapes, save for red, doughnut-like lips and bright white eyes, and are made to act like comical buffoons throughout. In the eyes of a more enlightened and less prejudiced readership, Hergé’s tale was an embarrassment. When forced to fend off accusations of outright racism, he explained his actions: “For the Congo…I was fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society in which I moved. People said at the time, ‘Africans were great big children…Thank goodness for them that we were there!’ I portrayed these Africans…in the purely paternalistic spirit which existed then in Belgium.”[71]

Up until Hergé embarked on a new quest for the reflection of reality in his drawing, symbolised by The Blue Lotus, the Chinese had suffered with equal consequence the prejudice and stereotype of Western ignorance. In Tintin au Pays des Soviets, Tintin tangles with two shady-looking Chinese wearing their hair in the style of the Manchu queue. In the black and white, serialized version of Tintin in America, Snowy (Tintin’s terrier companion) imagines two Chinese men eating him after they have tied Tintin with weights and sent him down to a watery grave at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Although he had not been alive at the time, Hergé had read and undoubtedly been influenced by the often-fabricated and graphically descriptive newspaper articles of the Boxer Rebellion, which always accented the cruelty of the Chinese. For Hergé, “…China was peopled by a vague, slit-eyed people who were very cruel, who could eat swallows’ nests, wear pigtails and throw children into rivers.”[72]

It was a retreat at Saint André-les-Bruges that sparked the then young-Hergé’s interest in China. The young boy talked to Father Neut, who had lived for several months in mainland China, about his experiences and grew fascinated with such an exotic land. Up until the time when Hergé was preparing to begin work on The Blue Lotus, he had only read a select few books, including Albert Londres’ La Chine en Folie. They all portrayed China in the stereotyped light Hergé would later try to avoid.[73]

Fortunately for later generations of appreciative readers, Hergé was unprecedentedly open about his intention to send Tintin to China. Father Nuet, with whom Hergé had kept in touch with ever since the retreat, sent him two books which Neut gauged to be honest accounts of the current China: The Origins of the Manchurian Conflict by Père Thaddée and Cheng Teng’s My Mother, which discussed the effects of the conflict on everyday life.[74] Neut presciently advised Hergé that he, “…was of the belief that this voyage could have greater repercussions than those preceding it”, and that it would serve as, “…a work of interracial comprehension, and of true friendship between Yellows and Whites.”[75] From his reading, Hergé found himself constantly revising his own stereotyped perceptions of the Chinese, and discovered little by little, “…a real sympathy and admiration for this People and a true desire to understand and love them.”[76]

Another religious figure, Abbot Gosset, had the greatest positive influence upon Hergé’s later depiction of the Chinese and their culture. Abbot Gosset was responsible for the pastoral care of Chinese exchange students studying at the Belgian University of Louvin. Upon his first hearing of Hergé’s intention to send Tintin to China, he strongly advised Tintin not to harm the sensibilities of his students, saying that, “…if you have the bad grace to draw the Chinese with a queue, or making them eat swallow’s nests…you will do terrible damage here!”[77] To save his Chinese students, who were keen readers of Le Petit Vingtième, any undue insult, Hergé was introduced by the abbot to a young Chinese man of the same age called Chang Chongren. The friendship that would grow from this one introduction would later have a huge influence on Hergé and The Blue Lotus.

On May 1st, 1934, Chang Chongren met Hergé. Chang was motherless, a failed circus performer and like Hergé, a naturally gifted artist. Whilst he was a student in Shanghai, Chang had won a scholarship to come and study at the Brussels Académie des Beaux-Arts. He had been introduced to Hergé in an attempt to rid him of any prejudice before he commenced writing his next adventure. At their first meeting, Hergé explained his intentions for Tintin, and when asked by Chang to give an idea of what he knew about China, it became clear that he was totally ignorant.[78]

Chang made the novel suggestion to Hergé that instead of basing his story in a world of fantasy as he had done before, he should base it on reality, albeit satirically. He convinced Hergé that this would give new life to Tintin’s adventures, and Chang then quickly set about teaching Hergé everything he could about China. He taught Hergé Chinese history, painting techniques, the language and its etymology, and the systems of characters. Hergé said later that, “[Chang] made me discover and love Chinese poetry, Chinese writing.”[79] Indeed, he had initiated Hergé into a new civilization.[80]

Hergé made pencil studies of Chinese dress and architecture, refining his drawings to the degree of accuracy Chang had demanded. Meanwhile Chang supervised the drawing of vases, furniture, screens and wall-hangings, which helped give the setting a, “…compelling authenticity.”[81] The accuracy of clothing is played upon in the story: Hergé - in an attempt to parody the Western ignorance of China – dresses the buffoonish detectives Thomson and Thompson in what they think is the perfect disguise when they attempt to apprehend Tintin in the town of Hukow. However, as The Blue Lotus is set in 1931, instead of wearing clothes that actually blend in - a quilted tunic or a shirt and short trousers - the costume which they believe to be accurate is in fact the dress of the Manchu courtiers: long outdated. A Chinese crowd, gleeful of their ignorance, jeers them down the street.

As well as signifying a departure from the cultural ignorance that plagues the earlier adventures of Tintin, it is also the content of The Blue Lotus – the ostentatious criticism of Western empire-building in China, the admission that Westerners are wantonly ignorant of the Chinese culture and the championing of China under the boot of Japan – that makes it so special.

Westerners in the book, apart from Tintin and Thomson and Thompson, are portrayed as universally racist and evil. The moment Tintin arrives in China, he witnesses a rotund American businessman, nose-deep in a newspaper and oblivious to all around him, getting hit by a rickshaw driver. “Dirty little China-man!...To barge into a white man,” shouts the bigoted American, beating the driver with his cane. Tintin, Hergé’s double, steps in and snaps the man’s cane over his knee, saying, “Your conduct is disgraceful”, to which the American retorts, “Stop me punishing a useless native would you? Interfering brat!!”[82] The American then storms off to the ‘Occidental Private Club’ and complains, “Can’t we even teach that yellow rabble to mind their manners? It’s up to us to civilise these savages?...Look what we’ve done for them, all the benefits of our superb Western civilisation,” whilst smashing the tray from the Chinese waiter’s hands.[83] Hergé’s opinion needs no explanation.
.
The epitome of Hergé’s attempt to spell out the cultural ignorance between East and West is Tintin’s rescue of Chang Chongren whilst en route to Hukow. As a thank you to his real-life Chinese friend for his invaluable help in the preparation of the story, Hergé gave him a lengthy cameo and he essentially became Tintin’s sidekick. Heavy flooding has washed away the train tracks, and whilst walking the rest of the way on foot, Tintin catches sight of a young boy drowning in the river. He rescues him, and a dialogue on their respective cultures ignorance of the other’s ensues.

Chang asks, “Why did you save my life? I thought all white devils were wicked, like those who killed my grandfather and grandmother during the War of Righteous and Harmonious Fists.” But Tintin explains that not all white men are bad, and the real problem is that, “…different peoples don’t know enough about each other.” Tintin then goes on to list several racial misconceptions held by Westerners about the Chinese, like that they are all, “…cunning and cruel and wear pigtails, are always inventing tortures and rotten eggs and swallows nests.” Interesting, the Chinese man drawn in the background of this frame is identical to Sax Rohmer’s depiction of Dr Fu Manchu, by which Hergé must have been influenced. Chang neatly generalises these prejudices to the entire West, saying, “They must be crazy people in your country!”[84]

The Blue Lotus is set in 1931 during the Japanese occupation of parts of the Chinese mainland. Although Hergé’s work symbolised an overt backlash against the racist myths perpetuated about the Chinese culture and avoided any stereotyping or caricatures of the Chinese themselves, it was Chang’s patriotic influence and Hergé’s growing understanding of the illegal Japanese invasion of China that led him to racially stereotype and parody the Japanese during the story.

Chang was a patriot to the core; in a letter from his daughter, Sophie, to Tintin, she says that he had, “…a deep affection for China’s long history and honourable culture.”[85] His anti-Western imperialism stance is most obvious to the trained eye: Chang was charged with writing all the Chinese slogans and advertisements that fill the background of the novel, and often plastered on doors we find the expressions like, “打倒帝国主义!” [Down with imperialism!]. Interestingly, although these signs have been translated into French in subsequent editions, in the British and American editions they still remain in Chinese.

Contrary to reports in the Western press that warned of a need for Japan to enter China to preserve peace in the north, Chang opened Hergé’s eyes to Japan’s true imperialist ambitions in China.[86] Hergé clearly sympathised and through his storyline and drawings made his undisguised anti-Japanese criticism clear. All Japanese characters, like the secret agent Mr Mitsuhirato, are drawn as gaunt and pig-like, with short legs and rectangular teeth. They are never portrayed as honest, but instead run an opium smuggling operation in China.

At one point in the story, Mitsuhirato blows up a section of railway on the Japanese-owed line in Manchuria. He then blames it on the Chinese bandits who he claims attacked a passenger train, which is a total fabrication. We see an announcer on Radio Tokyo informing his audience that, “The effrontery of Chinese guerrillas knows no bounds. Reports tell of many killed trying to defend themselves.”[87] This is an obvious allusion to the Mukden incident, when the Japanese sabotaged a length of railroad owned by Japan’s South Manchuria Railway. They successfully blamed Chinese dissidents for the attack, which provided a pretext for a Japanese invasion of the Chinese mainland and precipitated the second Sino-Japanese war.[88] In the next few pictures, we see Japanese forces marching past the Great Wall, with the Japanese representative at the League of Nations proclaiming that, “…once again Japan has fulfilled her mission as guardian of law and civilisation in the Far East! It is for the good of China herself!”

Hergé’s faithful description of the Mukden incident and the surrounding political wrangling proved both highly accurate and controversial. Chang predicted the influence that The Blue Lotus would have, saying, “All you’ve said was inspired by real events. All the world will know the truth, and you will be universally known.”[89] However, the reaction was not immediately positive, and as Tintinophile Harry Thompson rightly points out, “Certainly it is not often that a children’s comic disturbs the waters of international diplomacy.”[90]

Belgian Lieutenant-General Raoul Pontus made misplaced criticisms of Hergé for his narrow-mindedness in addressing such a contentious issue, complaining that, “This is not a story for children…It’s just a problem for Asia.”[91] The Japanese embassy in Brussels made irate protests against what they deemed to be incendiary literature and a fabricated story, and threatened to take the Belgians to the International Court of Justice at the Hague.[92] However it was the findings of the Lytton Commission that heavily censured the Japanese, refuting their claims that the annexation of Manchuria was an act of self-defence. Ultimately it was these findings which vindicated Hergé, showing his remarks and portrayal of the Japanese not to be the misplaced racism he was initially trying to avoid with the Chinese, but actually an enlightened prescience, something which has cemented The Blue Lotus as his most poignant adventure ever.

CONCLUSION:

The “Yellow Peril” clearly manifested itself in early 20th century popular literature, particularly within these three sources. There are of course many more examples of pulp fiction belonging to this genre. However, I chose these three sources as they form a complete spectrum which illustrates how the authors used the “Yellow Peril” as a vehicle to express their own personal agendas, and how the perceived fear of the East functioned as a device to add excitement or interest to the stories.

It is imperative to understand why the authors portrayed the Chinese as they did. All three wrote in a time when the Chinese were commonly portrayed as genuinely evil and a race not to be trusted. Rohmer was obsessed with the occult and intrigue, and undoubtedly his personal experience in Limehouse as a young sleuth had an enormous impact on his imagination and later stories. Biggers simply seemed to have a desire to portray the Chinese honestly, as he felt that they had previously been unjustly treated. Hergé reacted as he did because of his personal experience and friendship with Chang Chongren, who had opened his eyes to Western misperceptions of the East and the aggression of the Japanese. Moreover, his previous works had reflected a world far removed from reality and he wanted to correct the “sins of his youth”.

Rohmer and Hergé fell at extreme opposite ends of the spectrum, with their perpetuation and rejection respectively of the “Yellow Peril” myths. Biggers still pandered to a white audience to guarantee commercial success, and so his works floated somewhere in the middle. Rohmer’s work has been seen by many as the embodiment of the “Yellow Peril” in pulp fiction. At every possible turn, he threatens the West with invasion from the Chinese, and appealed whenever possible to the subconscious fears of his white audience. His alien and often exotic imagery, which was derived from the “Yellow Peril” myth, added a heavy veneer of oriental intrigue to his work. Both The Blue Lotus and the Charlie Chan series also use the “Yellow Peril”, but not as an anchor for the books’ storylines or content. Instead, it functions as an anachronistic backdrop from which to juxtapose, and ultimately favorably contrast their portrayal of the honest Chinese man in the face of bigoted Westerners.

There certainly was an identifiable reaction against the unjust racism and prejudice that the “Yellow Peril” mythology prolonged and propounded. Biggers attempted to faithfully portray his Chinese hero in terms of character and cultural associations, and gently correct any Western misconceptions of the Chinese race. However it was because Biggers attempted to allay the fears he presumed his audience held for the unknown East that he resorted to unconscious stereotypes, like Chan’s mud hut upbringing and his eleven children. This to some extent undid his efforts to portray the Chinese without prejudice, but his works ultimately still represented a reaction against the myth-mongering of the time.

Hergé’s work was a far more forceful outcry against the decay of Western imperialism than it was against the prejudice perpetuated by the “Yellow Peril”. He does still speak out against the ignorant fears of the West in the scene of morally-pure mutual cultural understanding when Tintin rescues Chang from the river. However, Hergé’s satirical and often malicious portrayal of the International Settlement and its rotten cut-throat officials, as well as the unjust Japanese treatment of China, is much the most powerful message conveyed in his book.

Importantly, in his choice of Chinese protagonist, Hergé again distinguishes himself from Biggers’ reaction against the “Yellow Peril”. By electing a polite, affable character who is already half-way to becoming an American, Biggers distanced himself from his original intention to accurately portray the Chinese, and instead chose his character as a sop to his Western audience. In contrast, Hergé forced his message across to his readers not through a protagonist with whom his Western audience could readily identify, but by detailing the plight of an honest, hardworking and loyal local Chinese boy with no experience of the West or Westerners whatsoever.

However, perhaps a more interesting question which I will not attempt to answer but merely leave it for the reader to ponder, is why all three authors enjoyed such enormous commercial success, despite their works marking such different ends of the same spectrum? The works of Rohmer and Hergé, at least in terms of their story, message and cultural criticism are diametrically opposite, but amazingly both authors proved to be some of the most successful during the early 20th century. Irrespective of the “Yellow Peril” and any subconscious fears of an invading Eastern race, it seems that it was the exoticness of China which truly captivated the Western reader.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Biggers, Earl, Behind That Curtain (New York: Bantam, 1974)
Biggers, Earl, Black Camel (New York: Bantam, 1975)
Biggers, Earl, Charlie Chan Carries On (New York: Bantam, 1975)
Biggers, Earl, The Chinese Parrot (New York: Bantam, 1975)
Biggers, Earl, The House Without a Key (New York: Bantam, 1974)

Hergé, Tintin Au Pays Soviet
Hergé, The Blue Lotus
Hergé, Tintin in the Congo

Rohmer, Sax, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (New York: Dover Publications, 1997)

Secondary Sources

Assouline, Pierre, Hergé (Plon, 1996)

Clegg, Jenny, Fu Manchu and the “Yellow Peril”: the making of a racist myth (Stoke on Trent: Tretham, 1994)

Farr, Michael, Tintin: the complete companion (Belgium: John Murray, 2001)

Goddin, Philippe, Hergé and Tintin: from Le Petit XXe to Tintin Maganzine (London: Sundancer, 1987)

Greene, D. G., “Sax Rohmer and the Devil Doctor” in Rohmer, Sax, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu (New York: Dover Publications, 1997)

Hawley, Sandra, “The Importance of Being Charlie Chan,” in Goldstein, J., et al., America Views China: American images of China then and now (New Jersey: Associated University Press, 1991)

May, V. P., “The Chinese in Britain: 1860-1914,” in Holmes, C., (ed), Immigrants and Minorities in British Society (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1978)

Preston, Diana, The Boxer Rebellion (New York: Berkley Books, 2000)

Sadoul, Numa “Entretiens aver Hergé: édition definitive” (Tournai: Casterman, 1989)

Thompson, Harry, Tintin: Hergé and his creation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991)

Van Ash, Cay, Master of Villainy: a biography of Sax Rohmer (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972)

Wu, W. F., The “Yellow Peril”: Chinese-Americans in American fiction 1850-1940 (Connecticut: Archon Books, 1982)

Articles

Blake, Claude, “Chinese Vice in England,” Sunday Chronicle December 2, 1906 in Clegg, Jenny, Fu Manchu and the “Yellow Peril”: the making of a racist myth (Stoke on Trent: Tretham, 1994)

Chan, Fletcher, “Charlie Chan: a hero of sorts,” California Literary Review September 18, 2006 (http://www.calitreview.com/Essays/chan_5029.htm)

Chang, Sophie, 丁丁与中国的故事 September 25, 2002 (http://www.booktide.com/news/20020925/200209250035.html)

Cunningham, Valerie, “Xenophobia for Beginners,” Times Literary Supplement November 25, 1983: p.513

Gregorich, Barbara, “Earl Biggers: a brief life of a popular author 1844-1933,” Harvard Magazine Vol. 103, No.4, March-April, 2000 (http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/0300129.html)

McGrath, Harold, “Pagan Madonna,” Saturday Morning Post October 2, 1924 in Hawley, Sandra, “The Importance of Being Charlie Chan,” in Goldstein, J., et al., America Views China: American images of China then and now (New Jersey: Associated University Press, 1991)

Water, Frederic, “Yellow Cargo,” Saturday Morning Post April 26, 1924 in Hawley, Sandra, “The Importance of Being Charlie Chan,” in Goldstein, J., et al., America Views China: American images of China then and now (New Jersey: Associated University Press, 1991)

Internet Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_rebellion#_note-5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_Internment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nanking
http://members.aol.com/meow103476/biobiggers.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462322/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rohmer.htm







[1] Greene in Rohmer 1997 p.vii
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_Internment
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nanking
[4] Ibid.
[5] Clegg 1994 p.18-19
[6] Clegg 1997 p.22
[7] Ibid. p.26
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_rebellion#_note-5
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_rebellion#_note-5 in Preston 2000 p.173-4
[10] Clegg 1994 p.34
[11] A pseudonym; he was born Arthur Sarsfield Ward.
[12] Rohmer The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu 1997 p.13
[13] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462322/
[14] http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rohmer.htm
[15] Clegg 1994 p.3
[16] Van Ash 1972 p.3
[17] May in Holmes 1978 p.35
[18] Clegg 1994 p.3
[19] Ibid.
[20] Rohmer 1997 p.30
[21] Ibid. p.
[22] Clegg 1994 p.5
[23] Rohmer 1997 p.
[24] Wu 1982 p.184
[25] Van Ash 1972 p.76
[26] Ibid. p.77
[27] Rohmer 1997 p.30
[28] Ibid.
[29] Clegg 1994 p.9
[30] Blake in Clegg 1994 p.9
[31] Clegg 1994
[32] Van Ash 1972 p.214
[33] Ibid. p.215
[34] Ibid. p.72
[35] Greene in Rohmer 1997 p.vi
[36] Van Ash 1972 p.293
[37] Ibid. p.291
[38] Hawley in Goldstein et al. 1991 p.133
[39] McGrath and Water in Goldstein et al. 1991 p.133
[40] Wu 1982 p.175
[41] Gregorich 2000
[42] http://members.aol.com/meow103476/biobiggers.html
[43] Hawley in Goldstein et al. 1991 p.132
[44] Biggers The House Without a Key 1974 p.17
[45] Rohmer 1997 p.12
[46] Biggers 1974 p.163
[47] Chan 2006
[48] Biggers Behind the Curtain 1974 p.117
[49] Biggers House Without a Key 1974 p.84
[50] Biggers Black Camel 1975 p.53
[51] Wu 1982 p.177
[52] Biggers House Without a Key 1974 p.130
[53] Hawley in Goldstein et al. 1991 p.138
[54] Biggers Black Camel 1975 p.111-14
[55] Wu 1982 p.180
[56] Biggers The Chinese Parrot 1975 p.53, 55
[57] Wu 1982 p.179
[58] Biggers Charlie Chan Carries On 1975 p.127
[59] Farr 2001 p.51
[60] Ibid. p.8
[61] Goddin 1987 p.171
[62] Farr 2001 p.9
[63] Goddin 1987 p.171
[64] Farr 2001 p.13
[65] Cardboard mock-ups, where to prove the factories were producing, smoke was simulated by burning straw.
[66] Hergé Tintin au Pays Soviet p.26
[67] Ibid. p.27
[68] Farr 2001 p.14
[69] Hergé Tintin au Congo
[70] Cunningham in Times Literary Supplement 1983 p.1316
[71] Sadoul 1989 p.74
[72] Farr 2001 p.51
[73] Assouline 1996 p.86-7
[74] Ibid. p.89
[75] Letter from Father Edouard Neut to Hergé May 11, 1934 (AFH) in Assouline 1996 p.89
[76] Letter from Hergé to Father Edouard Neut May 16, 1934 (AFH) in ibid. p.90
[77] Letter from Abbé Gosset to Hergé April 26, 1934 (AFH) in ibid. p.90
[78] Assouline 1996 p.91
[79] Farr 2001 p.51
[80] Assouline 1996 p.92
[81] Farr 2001 p.52
[82] Hergé The Blue Lotus p.6
[83] Ibid. p.7
[84] Ibid. p.43
[85] Chang 2001
[86] Farr 2001 p.52
[87] Hergé The Blue Lotus p.22
[88] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident
[89] Assouline 1996 p.95
[90] Thompson 1991 p.64
[91] Farr 2001 p.55
[92] Thompson 1991 p.63