Imagining China with Timothy Billings Part 3

End Case: Gold Fish & Literati
This figurine has never been publically shown. It is not the sort of art that collectors collected. It is missing its cap and scepter; the scepter was probably made of jade... Upper right: A London edition of a Jesuit work with additional illustrations of what Chinese people looked like; the illustrations were copied from similar figurines brought back by English sea captains.

Case 8: Religion & Superstition
This 17th century porcelain figure shows the Great General and hero, Guandi. He is also shown in the engraving above the figure. Later, after his death, he was given the posthumous title of
Emperor. He was venerated; in fact. he became the most popular deity in the Daoist pantheon.
European writers don’t give Chinese religion a fair shake, but the information is detailed and
accurate when you filter out the cheap shots.

Case 9: Civilized Comforts
Two pairs of chopsticks, one of ebony and one of ivory. Matthew Ricci wrote that chopsticks were made of ebony and ivory, with silver tips. In one pair the silver is on the handle end; in the other the silver is on the eating end. Supposedly silver will reveal the presence of poison. The chopsticks are also borrowed items; one from the curator, one from an antique dealer.

Free Standing Case: Polyglot Bible
This Bible was printed in several languages. To set it apart from some other multilingual Bibles, the publisher wished to include some samples of other languages including Chinese. So they went to the Orientalist, Thomas Hyde, for a text that they included in their Bible. On the right is a facsimile of the page (now in the British Library) which was copied. A popular Chinese novel, The Romance of the three Kingdoms, had been dismantled and its pages acquired by various scholars who wanted an example of Chinese writing. This page is actually the last page of the novel, the colophon identifying the date and place of publication.

Case 10: Real Characters
In Europe there was much discussion among intellectuals about devising a Universal Language, something everyone in the world could speak. This would return us to the period before the Tower of Babel. These 16th and 17th century European philosophers believed that the Adamic or Edenic language, as they referred to the one first spoken in the Garden of Eden, was intimately connected with things in the real world; (as opposed the modern deconstructionists’ belief that words are merely arbitrary symbols). They tried to reconstruct or invent such a language so that the name of a thing would make clear where it fit into creation. As an example, the word for horse might consist of three parts; the first would indicate an animal, the second that it was a quadruped and the third be the specific kind of animal. They saw Egyptian hieroglyphics as an example of this. When they learned that Chinese written symbols involved combinations of several basic words, they welcomed that into their theories...Upper left: One wacky fellow named John Webb wrote a book claiming that Chinese was closest to the Edenic language because of its picture writing...
Lower right: John Wilkins was working from a sample of Chinese characters that looks nothing like real Chinese characters.

Case 11: Kong Fu Zi Says
This case is on Confucius, something we had to have in the exhibit. He was the Aristotle of Chinese culture and lived at about the same time. Matteo Ricci started trying to translate his work; the translation was very difficult and took centuries. Jesuits worked together on the translation...
Left: This very precious book is borrowed from the Library of Congress (the FSL does not own a copy.) The little round things shown on the table are ink stones, used to grind solid pieces of ink. Two characters appear over and over in the Chinese version; translated literally as “the master says” or as every Fortune cookie has it “Confucius says.”...Center. A 1573 Chinese edition of Confucius. This was written by the Grand Secretary as a simplified version to be read by the young emperor. So it was written as a more easily understandable edition to help him with his studies. The Jesuits used this to help them decipher Confucius. The writings of Confucius are hard to translate, especially when you have to write your own dictionary as you go along. In the 17th century there arise a huge controversy about Confucius, especially the fact that the Chinese apparently worshiped him. They paid homage to their deceased parents, to their ancestors and to great figures of history. Was this pious remembrance or worship? Matteo Ricci said it was a secular paying of respect, not worship; but others disagreed. By the time Ricci died, he had changed his mind. The custom was officially ruled to be worship and so incompatible with Christianity. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck” etc. This brought down the Jesuit mission since the Chinese wouldn’t give up their custom. By the early 18th century, the Jesuits were out of China. When they came back much later, they were redefined as missionaries.

Case 12:Imperial Letters
Case 13: A New Dynasty
This is the first of two cases related to drama. In 1644, the Ming Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Manchu Qing Dynasty which lasted until 1911 and was the last dynasty of China. This historical happening fascinated Europeans and became the source of a play written in 1676 by the up and coming dramatist Elkanah Settle, then the hottest thing on the English Stage. Some people claimed he was better than Dryden, but he turned out to be a flash in the pan while Dryden was ... Dryden. Settle’s play was not a bit historical or accurate. As was customary in the period, he included “tableaus” where the curtain would rise to show a number of actors in a still pose. One particularly dramatic one showed all the wives and concubines who had committed suicide (as ordered) after the overthrow of the old Emperor. That part of the story is true. Free

Standing Case: Chinese Translations of Shakespeare
By the early 17th century there were translations of WS’s works into German and French. By the mid 19th century, there was a great Japanese translation. In 1904 a Chinese scholar, a master of classical Chinese, translated some of the plays. He knew no English, but depended on a bilingual collaborator to tell him the stories. In turn, this collaborator was working, not from the original plays, but from a copy of Lamb’s Tales. Because of the excellence of the Chinese language, WS attained a very high reputation in China. The most popular stories (they were not translated as plays) were Hamlet and Macbeth because of the supernatural aspects. The title of the Chinese version is roughly “Strange Stories from across the Seas.”...The first translation of Hamlet as a play was in the 1920's. It was not until the 1960's that all the plays were translated. During the late 1930's and 1940's, there were two competing translators working; one affiliated with the Communists and the other with the Nationalists. During the Japanese occupation, they worked on the run. The Communist translator died after he had completed 30 of the plays. After the war, the Nationalist fled to Taiwan where he lived to an old age. The two translations are very different: one more oriented toward performance, the other toward a reading version. A individual’s preference is often based on his politics.

Case 14: The Orphan of China
The Yuan Dynasty was the Golden Age of Chinese drama. The Orphan of China was probably written around 1275. It was a variety play, like an operetta; colloquial speeches were interspersed with songs that are in a dense form of poetry and very hard to translate. For a Chinese audience these songs were very important, but they were sometimes omitted in the translations. It tells of a young man who survived the complete eradication of his family by a corrupt official. He became a hero, showing humor and nobility. At the end, he reveals the evil of the corrupt official; then chooses to turn him over to justice rather than taking personal vengeance. In 1735, it became the first Chinese play to be translated into a Western language, in this case French, and was included in a monumental work Description...de l’empire de la Chine. (This book is not in our exhibit)...
Upper left: Voltaire adapted the play into a work of his own. Also in the case are English translations of both the straight translation and of the Voltaire adaptation. David Garrick liked the play in the translation by Arthur Murphy and put it on at Drury Lane...
Upper right: There are lots of things we do not know about that production, but we do have the play bill...
Lower right. A letter from David Garrick to a friend about the play.