The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism

2. China and the Rejection of Christianity

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 [First Page] [17], (1) Lines: 0 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [17], (1) 2 China and the Rejection of Christianity China existed in relative isolation from European nations for millennia, but Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century resulted in temporary alien conquest. European interest in China escalated with Marco Polo’s publication of his extended venture to the Asian land during the reign of Kublai Khan. Catholic missionaries began arriving in China in the sixteenth century, and British traders installed themselves at Canton in 1715. There they confronted an ancient culture steeped in Confucianism that differed greatly from their own wasp values. An authoritative , heirarchial social order valued obedience over individualism , and the clash of cultures resulted in the British wringing concessions from a weakened Chinese dynasty. British victory in the Opium War of 1839–1842 provided the United States with an entrèe into the Asian market, and it quickly secured the TreatyofWanghiain1844.Subsequenttreatiesin1858and1860 extended American priviliges at the expense of the natives.1 18 china and the rejection of christianity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 [18], (2) Lines: 54 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: [18], (2) An American Protestant missionary came in 1807 but took seven years to gain a convert. More American missionaries arrived in 1830. Three years later congregationalists established a school in Canton. In 1836 Baptists founded a school for girls in Macao. The establishment challenged the Chinese gender order, which placed no value on the education of females. Episcopalians arrived in 1842 and Methodist teachers five years later, but by 1853 the combined Protestant efforts had garnered only 350 souls.2 Commercial exchange provided a more symbiotic relationship as Chinese immigrants traveled to California in the gold rush of 1848. In 1852 more than twenty thousand disembarked in San Francisco. Although whites initially accepted the Chinese as a curiosity, they soon castigated their cultural difference and railed at their success as more efficient miners . Anglos questioned the masculinity of the Chinese who “scratched” at the ground to derive overlooked nuggets. One writer declared that they used their tools “like so many women, as if they were afraid of hurting themselves.” Likewise, when battles between Chinese factions failed to produce fatalities, Anglos chided them as weak and inept. They imposed a foreign miners’ tax in 1852 and drove others from the mines. Two years later the California Supreme Court refused any testimony by Chinese or any other nonwhites, effectively establishing white legal hegemony.3 In the 1860s Chinese laborers composed as much as 90 percent of the labor force that built the Central Pacific Railroad across the California mountains, braving conditions and accepting meager wages unacceptable to whites. A nativist backlash ensued, as white workers perceived the Chinese as a threat to jobs. In 1871 whites attacked the segregated urban ghetto known as Chinatown in Los Angeles, looting and killing. A similar riot followed in 1877 in San Francisco, as the Chinese became scapegoats for capitalist woes. American laborers viewed the Chinese as slaves and unfair competitors for jobs, rather than a class of workers even more exploited than themselves. Compounding the issue was the Chinese resistance to assimilation . Efforts to Christianize them met with futility. Newspapers and magazines characterized the Chinese as heathens, criminals, and degenerates in racialized cartoons. Consequently, Chinese in California failed to gain the privileges of whiteness, became disenfranchised, and, after 1882, legally excluded from immigrating to the United States until 1943.4 china and the rejection of christianity 19 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 [19], (3) Lines: 60 to ——— 14.5pt PgV ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [19], (3) Chinese students in San Francisco had already been recalled to their homelandbutnotbeforethe“Orientals”baseballclubdefeatedanOakland team by using a curve ball pitcher. After a defeat in the Arrow War of 1856– 1860, Chinese leaders decided on a course of westernization...