The Heathen Chinee

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The Heathen Chinee, originally published as Plain Language from Truthful James, is a narrative poem by American writer Bret Harte. It was published for the first time in September 1870 in Overland Monthly.^[1][2] It was written as a parody of Algernon Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (1865)^[1], and satirized anti-Chinese sentiment in northern California.

Harte, who is known to have repeatedly opposed racial discrimination since as early as 1863^[3], intended the poem to be a satire of the prevalent prejudice among Irish laborers in northern California against the Chinese immigrants competing for the same work. However, the predominantly white middle-class readership of the Overland and the periodicals that reprinted it — including the New York Evening Post, New York Tribune, Boston Evening Transcript, Providence Journal, Hartford Courant, and Saturday Evening Post (published twice) — interpreted and embraced the poem as mocking the Chinese. The Heathen Chinee, as the poem was most often called, was recited in public among opponents to Chinese immigration, and Eugene Casserly, a Senator from California who was "vehemently opposed to the admission of Chinese labour", apparently thanked Harte in writing for supporting his cause. Harte's poem shaped the popular American conception of the Chinese more than any other writing at the time^[3], and made him the most popular literary figure in America in 1870.^[1]

When asked about it in later years, Harte called the poem "trash", and "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote."^[3]

[edit] The poem

Here is the poem in full:

Which I wish to remark,

And my language is plain,

That for ways that are dark

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;

And I shall not deny,

In regard to the same,

What that name might imply;

But his smile it was pensive and childlike,

As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was August the third,

And quite soft was the skies;

Which it might be inferred

That Ah Sin was likewise;

Yet he played it that day upon William

And me in a way I despise.

Which we had a small game,

And Ah Sin took a hand:

It was Euchre. The same

He did not understand;

But he smiled as he sat by the table,

With the smile that was childlike and bland.

Yet the cards they were stocked

In a way that I grieve,

And my feelings were shocked

At the state of Nye's sleeve,

Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,

And the same with intent to deceive.

But the hands that were played

By that heathen Chinee,

And the points that he made,

Were quite frightful to see, —

Till at last he put down a right bower,

Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

Then I looked up at Nye,

And he gazed upon me;

And he rose with a sigh,

And said, "Can this be?

We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor," —

And he went for that heathen Chinee.

In the scene that ensued

I did not take a hand,

But the floor it was strewed

Like the leaves on the strand

With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,

In the game "he did not understand."

In his sleeves, which were long,

He had twenty-four packs, —

Which was coming it strong,

Yet I state but the facts;

And we found on his nails, which were taper,

What is frequent in tapers, — that's wax.

Which is why I remark,

And my language is plain,

That for ways that are dark

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar, —

Which the same I am free to maintain.

[edit] Further reading

• Duckett, Margaret. "Plain Language from Bret Harte". Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Mar., 1957), pp. 241-260.
• Brown, Darren Lee. "The Heathen Chinee": stereotypes of Chinese in popular music. ISBN 1885864175. San Francisco State University. 2003.
• McClellan, Robert. "Heathen Chinee: A Study of American Attitudes Toward China, 1890–1905". Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 1971. 272 pp.
• Johnsen, Leigh Dana. "Equal Rights and the "Heathen 'Chinee'": Black Activism in San Francisco, 1865-1875". Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1980), pp. 57–68.

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Railton, Stephen. Harte: "The Heathen Chinee". West Meets East: Depicting the Chinese, 1860–1873. University of Virginia. URL accessed 2006-12-12.
2. ^ Henderson, Victoria. Mark Canada, editor. "Bret Harte, 1836–1902". All American: Literature, History, and Culture. University of North Carolina at Pembroke. URL accessed 2006-12-12.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Scharnhorst, Gary. "Ways That Are Dark": Appropriations of Bret Harte's "Plain Language from Truthful James". Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Dec., 1996), pp. 377–399.