ABSTRACT

The Chinese men are servile, deceitful and utterly regardless of the truth. From the emperor to the beggar through every rank of society, through every grade of office, there is a system of cheating, and hypocrisy, practiced without remorse. The New York Times ran an article in its April 30, 1905, edition about the efforts of female missionaries to rescue white slave girls held in captivity by Chinese "opium fiends". Like the Italians, the Chinese are family- oriented. In such cultures food serves the double function of filling both the stomach and the need for getting together with kinsfolk. Accounts of Chinese conduct during the Opium Wars also helped fix the association of cruelty with the Chinese in the mind of nineteenth-century America. Almost without fail British actions, such as the bombardment of Canton, were regarded as just and Chinese retaliation as barbarous and inhuman.