Troubling American Women: Narratives of Gender and Nation in Hong Kong

Introduction: Women, Nation, and the Cross-Cultural Encounter

A nation’s reputation depends upon the general character of its women, for they form at least half, if not more, of the population. In this respect America stands high, for the American woman is lively, open-hearted and ingenuous; she is also fearless, independent, and is almost without restraint. She is easily accessible to high and low … To a stranger, and especially to an Oriental, she is a puzzle … The American women are in some respects dissimilar to the women of other nations … They can converse on any subject with ease and resource, showing that they have a good all-round education … The persistence with which they stick to their opinions is remarkable … There is one fault I find with American women, if it can be so called, and that is their inquisitiveness; I know that this is a common fault with all women, but it is most conspicuous in the Americans … Wu Ting-fang, America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat, 1914 This book analyzes narratives written by several European American, Chinese American, and “Americanized” Chinese women who lived in Hong Kong and Macao for substantial periods of time during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their narratives constitute an archive of memoirs, diaries, letters, journalistic essays, fiction, interviews, and film. The study highlights the diverse ways in which the cross-cultural encounter led women to re-envision their sense of national identity. It pays particular attention to links between national, gender, and ethnic identities, cultural myths and ideologies, and historical context. It is, however, the Chinese man quoted above rather than an American woman who sets the stage for this study of performances of American womanhood and Americanness in Asia. Although American women had been living in China for nearly a century Introduction Women, Nation, and the Cross-Cultural Encounter 2 | Troubling American Women before he published his views in 1914, Wu Ting-fang’s words underscore the centrality of gender to the project of nation building on both sides of the Sino-American encounter. He reminds us of some of the ways in which women are marked, individually and as a cohort, as bearers of culture and keepers of tradition. He also reminds us that American women who went abroad often encountered those who had already formed opinions about them. Wu’s story illustrates the deep historical connections between many generations and nations and his experiences speak to larger themes of cultural encounter that recur throughout this study of women’s narratives. Born in the British colony of Singapore, Wu qualified as a barrister in England and moved to colonial Hong Kong, where, under his Cantonese name, Ng Choy, he distinguished himself among the local legal and business elite before going to China. As a “foreigner” in the US at the dawn of the twentieth century, Wu, by virtue of his background and wealth, would have been spared much of the American prejudice against the Chinese during the exclusion era, although it is likely that he would have been familiar with and sensitized to anti-Chinese sentiment in Hong Kong, the US, and elsewhere in the West.1 His transnational ties and cross-border movements are a reminder of the importance of paying attention to multiple meanings of Chineseness and they place Wu squarely in the flow of people, products, and ideas that scholars have come to identify with the Chinese diaspora. It is ironic, then, that Wu, whose life countered stereotypes of “Chinese coolies” and of other orientalist tropes circulating in the West, was, to a certain extent, complicit in constructing stereotypes of American women in the East. In the passage above, Wu is, for the most part, complimentary of American women, describing them as “fearless,” “open-hearted,” “independent,” and of “pure and high character.” Yet he also asserts that American women “stick to their opinions” to a “remarkable” extent, and he flips the script on Western notions of Chinese inscrutability by declaring American women “a puzzle.” While they may be worthy of praise in many respects; for Wu, American women are “almost without restraint” and too curious (a fault Wu playfully asserts that all women share, albeit to differing degrees). At a time when women on both sides of the Pacific were claiming an expanded role in public life, Wu’s words subtly schooled them about the impressions they left on others. Introduction | 3 For me, Wu’s words generate a mixed...