New York to Charleston

To accompany Afong Moy’s presentation of salable goods in New York City in 1834, the Carneses opened an adjoining public exhibition displaying ancient Chinese artifacts—the first such completely public presentation of Chinese objects in America. In the accompanying exhibition catalogue they featured an image of Afong Moy which greatly differed from that of the Risso and Browne lithograph. This exotic personification would follow her on her trips to Philadelphia, the President’s House in Washington, DC, Baltimore, and finally to Charleston where her bound feet were exposed to the public. Afong Moy’s fame quickly spread across the country. Those who could not see her in person learned of her through articles in children’s magazines, read about her in poems, or saw her image in the local newspaper.

The Cast

Chapter 1 establishes the American political and mercantile environment into which the Chinese woman Afong Moy was thrust when she arrived in 1834. It explores the lives and the economic motivations of the Carnes merchant family, whose business focused on selling inexpensive Chinese goods to middle-class Americans. Having a branch of the Carnes firm in France enabled them to select French goods which were then cheaply replicated in China for the United States market. Their ship captain, Benjamin Thorndike Obear, and his wife, Augusta, brought Afong Moy from China to the United States, entwining their lives with hers in unexpected ways. The Chinese goods that accompanied Afong Moy affected thousands of American households.

Introduction

The introduction provides the early history of the American China trade by recounting China trader Captain John O’Donnell’s landing with Chinese seamen in Baltimore in 1785 and a newspaper welcome that asserted: “Commerce binds and unites all Nations of the Globe with a golden chain.” Nearly a half-century later, in 1834, a young Chinese woman, Afong Moy, arrived in America, having been coerced to participate in this golden chain of global commerce. As the first Chinese woman to travel the country, her exotic appearance and bound feet elicited commentary in newspapers, diaries, poems, and letters. Unwittingly, she served as the first cultural bridge in the American public’s perceptions of China through the staged presentation of objects, clothing, and images—and herself.

The Final Act

With the arrival in New York of the celebrated Chinese junk Keying in 1847, Afong Moy’s presence as a well-known Chinese spectacle was again in demand. Chapter 10 tells us that after an eight-year hiatus, P. T. Barnum, America’s preeminent promoter, engineered her return. Coupled with Tom Thumb, Barnum recounted their origin stories in a seven-page pamphlet and presented them together at his American Museum in 1848. In characteristic fashion, in 1850, Barnum supplanted one Chinese female spectacle with another, a supposed Chinese woman of a younger age named Pwan-ye-koo. She presented in Afong Moy’s place in America and later in England. Foreigner Jenny Lind’s arrival in late 1850 captivated the American public, and Afong Moy—first a billboard for Chinese goods and then an objectified oriental exotic—was completely forgotten.

The Curtain Rises

Chapter 3 identifies the role that the Carneses and Obears defined for Afong Moy as a hawker of their imported Chinese goods and as an exotic personage on the stage. This role development is illuminated by a lengthy diary description of her fall 1834 presentation in New York City by merchant Philip Hone, and by the accompanying lithographic view of the stage set by New York artists Risso and Browne. In New York, Atung, Afong Moy’s Chinese interpreter, joined the presentation. His theatrical presence enlivened the performance and gave visitors insights on Chinese life, on Afong Moy, and the objects that surrounded her.

Afong Moy Presents Chinese Objects for the Home

Near the time Afong Moy arrived in New York, the Hone family was planning a move to a new home. Though there is no evidence that they purchased the Carneses’ Chinese goods that they saw in Afong Moy’s salon for their new residence, Philip Hone and his wife Catharine, who attended the presentation, were potential customers for the objects displayed. These objects included household articles such as tea and sewing equipage (thread winders and tea caddies), rice paper paintings, blinds, matting, feather dusters, and fly whisks, as well as comestibles and drugs (rhubarb); most were objects that Afong Moy also used in China.

Afong Moy Presents Chinese Objects for Personal Use

In New York and elsewhere, Afong Moy, with Atung’s assistance, presented Chinese objects such as toys, paper folders, firecrackers, fans, card cases, and shawls which the Carneses brought to America in great numbers. Information in this chapter defines how these goods moved from her stage to the wider market. Using as a foil Philip Hone’s two teenage children, who attended Afong Moy’s staging with him, the chapter investigates the sorts of Chinese objects younger Americans might purchase for their individual use. Afong Moy’s and Atung’s explanations of their application conveys aspects of Chinese cultural life. The chapter also explores the purpose and function of Chinese-made objects in everyday American life.

Epilogue

The author uses the theory of parsimony to explain Afong Moy’s final years. The epilogue relays the changes occurring in the later nineteenth-century marketing, public perception, and use of “oriental” goods with the opening of Japan in 1854. The author considers the lives of other Asian immigrants such as Chang and Eng Bunker (called the Siamese Twins) and several known Chinese women who came after Afong Moy. The epilogue addresses the position of the Chinese immigrant in the nineteenth century with the passage of the 1884 Chinese Exclusion Act. A comparison of the “Made in China” goods of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries with those of the earlier trade provides an understanding of China’s place in the golden chain of global commerce.

Travel to Cuba and up the Mississippi River

The great New York City fire of December 1835 wiped out the Carneses’ warehouses and their incentive to promote their Chinese goods. Afong Moy’s manager took her on an extensive and strenuous trip to Cuba and up the Mississippi River in 1836, exposing her to many cultures—Spanish, Native American, Creole, and French—as well as the pernicious effects of slavery, Indian removal, and nativism. Her appearance in New Orleans, highlighted in a broadside, presented both the exotic oriental woman and the royal Chinese lady. A poem to “The Chinese Lady—Miss Afong Moy” by antislavery advocate Rev. William Tappan after he saw her in Cincinnati indicated his hope that she might see the Christian “sparkles of the light” and discard her heathen beliefs.

Return to the North

As chapter 7 tells us, Afong Moy’s return to New York City in 1835 began her transition from a promoter of goods to that of spectacle herself. Her new manager, Henry Hannington, may have been responsible for that change. Such a transition exposed her to both the actions of moral reformers in New York and, later, the jibes of newspaper reporters in Boston. To publicize Afong Moy, her new manager joined her presentation with that of other performers in Salem, Massachusetts, New Haven, Connecticut, and Albany, New York. The public’s exposure to Afong Moy and China affected and influenced American material culture.