明代前的古文評點分析

 評點的定義

 

若要理解或嘗試為評點提出一些定義，最好是先從字義本身入手。根據古代的字書，「評」的字義在歷史上大抵沒出現過多大的變異。「評」字應是源出「平」字，二字古時相通，如《三國志‧魏書‧杜畿傳》中：「大事當共平議。」三國時的訓詁書《廣雅》將「評」字解為：「平也，議也。」南北朝的文學理論專著《文心雕龍》稱「評者，平理。」到北宋的《廣韻》注：「平量也」；南宋的《增韻》曰：「品論也。」可見，「評」的字義上沒有多少可爭論之處，儘管或稍有從「平議」漸至於「品評」的演化之跡，但其大抵意思仍與今日相類。

 

至於「點」字，則有較明顯的演化。從暫時最早的字書《爾雅》可見：「滅謂之點。」點者，刪字也。如《後漢書‧禰衡傳》中稱禰衡作〈鸚鵡賦〉時「攬筆而作，文無加點」，即謂其文思敏捷，無需刪字之意。《說文》僅稱「點，小黑也。」，可見「點」字尚未與「評」字並用。三國兩晉時的「點」亦只是指「點竄」、「點定」，用意也只是「修改」而已。直至唐代，始漸與評注並論。例如劉知幾所著的《史通》：「文有煩者，皆以筆點其煩上……盡宜去之。如其間有文句虧缺者，細書側注於其右。或回易數字，或加足片言，俾分佈得所，彌縫無闕。庶觀者易悟，其失自彰」，「點」此一客觀的刪字動作，慢慢與「評」的主觀審美相連，而當中是先經歷了一個「刪改訂正」的過程，牽涉到作者的判斷和取捨。是以演變到後來明代的《正韻》，則開宗明義稱「點」為「點注也。」

 

由上，或可略窺「評點」二字從演化以至並用的脈絡。

 

要補充的是，雖然今日所謂評點中的「點」是指一種在文本上標示的方法，然其本身並無一定的體式，故種類繁多，亦不乏曖昧處。如姚鼐所言：「圈點之妙，有勝於人意者。」評點中的「點」或大略可分為點、抹、撇、截四種標記手法，然細分之下卻可尚有重文號、倒乙號、省代號、廢讀號、界隔號、層次號、絕止號等等諸多不同的名目。各家標示之法，亦自有差異。如《古文關鍵》抹筆所用最頻，多在篇目關要與句法佳處。「點」反而不多，純是提醒之意，如一些重要字眼。南宋危稹更有詩云：「我有讀書癖，每喜以筆界。抹黃飾句眼，施朱表事派。」由是可見，「點」實帶有很大的隨意性。加上文獻在流傳時，圈點比批語易於佚失，亦未必為後人所採，如清代《四庫全書》中的古文評點選本，批語保留，而圈點幾近盡去。可見要將歷史上各種圈點的手法歸納成一種規範，或近於緣木求魚；而籠統將評點中的「點」釋作：「以示醒目處」，亦未嘗不公允也。

 

略為疏理「評點」的字義與演化後，再綜合歷史上「古文評點」存在的形式，在這裏或可依據其特點嘗試作出一些定義。首先，古文評點是一種將文學批評與作品本身結合的狀態，其必須依附於文本，與之有緊密的關係。其次，評點必然牽涉個人主觀的好惡、取捨和褒貶，亦有對讀者指點之意。特點上，評點分佈零散，文氣時有不甚完全者；文字亦較短促，難構成一縝密之思索系統；隨意靈活，可中段插入，或於首尾作一總論，長短皆可。評點注重直覺，事關其所追求的乃是一針見血，片言隻語，足顯評者之眼界見地。而實際上，評點的形式亦確保其不會脫離文本，所評文字皆有所依據和指涉。

 

評點作為一種獨立的文學形式，其雖與訓詁或一般文學批評有相近以至相關之處，唯其獨立性是不容置疑的。就評點與訓詁之別而論，訓詁目的只在解釋字詞的出處、音義，而評點是一種文本的細讀，透過圈點和文字，縷析其線索脈絡，細緻處可及每字每句，再在宏觀上指點出文章的佈局、運意、發展、和修辭，偶有音義出處只屬補充。至於評點與一般文學批評，則是隨文批評與獨立批評的區別。一般文學批評未必展示批評者的閱讀過程，只顯示了評者在閱讀後的評價；評點則離不開文本的閱讀過程，而且是讀者與評點者的同步閱讀，批評文字亦必須在原文或文本附近，以便於尋索和及時作出讀文的指引，其「臨場感」是一般文學批評所沒有的。而評點的主體亦不得不以讀者與文本為依歸，評點僅為輔導、啟發作用。簡而言之，評點文字無法獨立於文本而存在，否則很多只會是片言隻語，令人不明所以，此是其限制。而其靈活、即時和隨興，便於讀者文評對照，則又有着一般文學批評所不能取替的效果。

 

明代以前評點簡史

 

起源

 

評點源於訓詁，或可視為其的一種發展。而鑑於評點的出現在史學上遠比文學上為早，故古文評點亦可說與史學有一定關聯。章學誠的《校讎通義》云：「評點之書，其源亦始鍾氏《詩品》，劉氏《文心》。然彼則有評無點；且自出心裁，發揮道妙」，就早期文學評論與後來評點之別，可作參考。

 

古文評點是一種文學批評的演變，而古文評點選本，是其再滲以時代背景底下的產物，當中可從歷史見其跡象。首先，是漸見針對性及依附於文本的評論。例如毛詩，除了有像一般泛論的《大序》外，另有各《小序》作為每篇詩的題解，其簡介亦以作品本身文字為依歸，而非單單以某代、某家或某作者的作品風格空泛地概括之，文字亦已相當類近一種「指點」，如《匏有苦葉》序：「刺衞宣公也。公與夫人並為淫亂。」

 

其次，就是主觀色彩的加重。如唐高宗時李善在《文選》注謝靈運詩句「河洲多沙塵，風悲黃雲起」如是：「繁欽《述行賦》曰：茫茫河濱，實多沙塵。古詩曰：白楊多悲風。淮南子曰：黃泉之埃上為黃雲」，到唐玄宗時李周翰則注為：「洲水灘也。風悲，謂風急而悲也。黃雲謂兼埃塵之色黃，比喻亂也 。」李善所注的，實與古代的訓詁無異，但稍後李周翰所注的，則已隱然有一種講解的意味，文字不再是客觀的引錄或描述，而是主觀的判斷，由此可見其與前人不同之處，而漸近於後來的評點了。

 

評點選本的出現

 

儘管文學批評在古代早已存在，但正式的評點選本要到唐代方見端倪。而以古文為評點對象的選本，則更要待南宋才出現。評點選本先自於詩，如唐代殷璠的《河嶽英靈集》和高仲武的《中興間氣集》。雖然這些選本俱非本文的重點，但相較之下，古文評點出現之晚是值得留意的。固然，若要分析當時唐人對詩和文普遍態度的分別當甚為困難，何況詩文分野尚不甚明，但詩的評點先於文受到重視，則應是不爭的事實。這或許能歸因於體裁的本質（如詩為吟詠性情，故較適合於形式隨意的評點），但不能忽略選本的流行，很多時是視乎科舉的內容和士子的需要。如唐代科舉進士科多試詩賦，當為詩評點選本先出現的主因。而宋代對理學的着重，王安石時甚至曾廢詩賦的考核，純以策論取士，亦未始不為古文評點選本出現的誘因。

 

宋代背景

 

宋代行中央集權制，偃武修文，着力文治，當為古文評點出現的基礎。而畢昇發明活字印刷術後，促進了著作的流通，造就了選本流行的條件。加上科舉漸趨完善和程式化，宋代考試亦不如唐代試詩賦般講究才情，士子需要簡便的選本和精到的點評以應付考試。以及南宋理學的興起，選本有助擴大其對主流價值觀的影響力，呂祖謙、真德秀等評點者莫不與理學有所關聯，俱可視為古文評點選本出現的背景。正式古文評點選本始於南宋呂祖謙的《古文關鍵》，然後是樓昉《崇古文訣》的發展，真德秀《文章正宗》的重義理，以至最後謝枋得的《文章軌範》。

 

南宋的古文評點選本

 

《古文關鍵》是現存最早的古文評點選本，成書於孝宗乾道、淳熙年間(1173-1174)，作者是呂祖謙。它首次確立唐宋散文經典，開評點風氣，其結構較簡單，只分上下卷，單是選唐代的古文，而且幾乎只限「論」這種體裁的文章，顯然是針對科舉，帶強烈的實用色彩。就特點而言，《古文關鍵》多用旁批，尾批較少，亦好評文字體式，如《諫臣論》總評：「此篇是箴規攻擊體，是反題難文字之祖」、《捕蛇者說》總評：「感慨譏諷體。」、《與韓愈論史官書》總評：「亦是攻擊辯詰體。」，可見其對辨別文章體式的重視。後世亦時有評語相同，如評《與孟簡尚書書》：「一篇須看大開合」，評《梓人傳》：「抑揚好，一節應一節。嚴序事實。」和評《與韓愈論史官書》：「亦是攻擊辯詰體，頗似退之諍臣論。」，俱為《崇古文訣》所引。而評《答陳商書》：「文婉曲而有味」，亦與《文章軌範》評語相同。其批評術語亦多為南宋評點選本所採，如 「關鍵」、「主意」、「關鎖」、「字法」、「句法」等。可見其影響傳播之廣。

 

《崇古文訣》的作者樓昉曾受業於呂祖謙，故不論是其評點形式或選文風格，均見對《古文關鍵》的繼承，如《四庫全書》在《崇古文訣》的提要中所云：「其大畧如呂氏關鍵，而所録自秦漢而下至扵宋朝，篇目增多，發明尤精，學者便之……此書篇目較備，繁簡得中，尤有禆扵學者。蓋昉受業扵呂祖謙，故因其師説推闡加密，正未可以文皆習見而忽之也。」足見清代對《崇古文訣》的肯定，樓昉是在其師的基礎上有所增益的。最為顯然，就是它的篇幅遠較《古文關鍵》為長，共三十五卷，評點也更完備。而其在選文上亦較《古文關鍵》寬廣，選錄了秦漢至宋代的二百多篇古文，規模非《古文關鍵》可比。樓氏多在文前作評，每篇俱有，頗見系統，文末則多留白。據南宋劉克莊在《迂齋標註古文序》的評價：「千變萬態，不主一體，逐章逐句，原其意脈，發其秘藏，尊先秦而不陋漢唐，尚歐曾而並取伊洛」，除肯定選文客觀外，且點出了其兼取的性質，當中包括「伊洛」所指的二程理學。可以見得，《崇古文訣》已非純然為了科舉而設的考試書，而是在文學鑒賞意義上更上一層樓的選本。

 

《文章正宗》現存二十四卷，作者真德秀（1178年－1235年）師從詹體仁（朱熹的弟子），故其繼承朱熹理學思想的痕跡亦非常明顯。在其自序除批評了《昭明文選》《唐文粹》外，亦說得明白：「故今之所輯，以明義理切世用為主。其體本乎古，其指近乎經者，然後取焉，否則辭雖工不錄。」文章正宗綱目：「正宗云者，以後世文辭之多變，欲學者識其源流之正也」。可見，《文章正宗》著重的不純是文學上的點評，還強調立論之本。《四庫全書》在其提要中就此有頗為詳盡的評說：「其持論甚嚴，大意主於論理而不論文……克莊後村詩話又曰：『文章正宗初萌芽以詩歌一門屬予編類，且約以世教民𢑱為主。如仙釋閨情宮苑之類，皆勿取。』……蓋道學之儒與文章之士各明一義，固不可得而強同也。」……顧炎武《日知録》亦曰：『真希元文章正宗所選詩一掃千古之陋，歸之正旨，然病其以理為宗，不得詩人之趣。且如古詩十九首，雖非一人之作，而漢代之風畧具乎此。今以希元之所刪者讀之，不如飲美酒被服紈與素……六代浮華固當刋落，必使徐庾不得為人，陳隋不得為代，毋乃太甚豈非執理之過乎？』……「然専執其法以論文，固矯枉以過正；兼存其理以救浮華冶蕩之𡚁，則亦未嘗無裨。」大抵是指其說理矯枉太過，有偏頗之失。就其特點而言，《文章正宗》選錄自《左傳》《國語》以下至唐末作品，開選先秦文章先例。而其分辭令、議論、敍事、詩賦四類，每類俱有總評在前。文首文末倶時有作評，尤以中段為多，分佈相當不平均。若謂其「藉評點以立己說」，亦未嘗不妥。

 

最後是謝枋得（1226年－1289年）的《文章軌範》，收錄漢晉唐宋之文共七卷六十九篇，大致以唐宋文為主。謝枋得認為：「凡作文，初要膽大，終要心小，由粗入細，由俗入雅，由繁入簡，由豪盪入純粹。」故前二卷書為放膽文，後五卷書為小心文，每卷開首俱有拙要解說。王陽明於其序曰：「宋謝枋得氏取古文之有資於塲屋者，自漢迄宋，凡六十有九篇，標掲其篇章句字之法，名之曰文章軌範。蓋古文之奧不止於是，是獨為舉業者設耳。」指其純為科舉而設。唯其身處南宋末年，《文章軌範》雖非傷時感世之書，但在評點取態中亦可略窺其思想一二。如《欽定四庫全書‧文章軌範提要》云：「……（某些篇章）皆有圈㸃而無批註，蓋偶無獨見即不填綴以塞白，猶古人淳實之意。其前出師表丶歸去來詞乃併圏㸃亦無之，則似有所寓意。其門人王淵濟跋謂漢丞相晉處士之大義清節乃枋得所深致意，非附㑹也。」評點手法方面，《文章軌範》多用眉批尾批，尤以尾批為前人所鮮見，批語亦多中肯得當。故《文章軌範》雖篇幅不長，但仍是汲取了前人評點的經驗，在評點史上有相當的意義。

 

至宋代小結

 

在《欽定四庫全書‧崇古文訣提要》中有一段評述以上四本選本的文字：「宋人多講古文，而當時選本存扵今者不過三四家。真徳秀文章正宗以理為主，如飲食惟取禦饑，菽粟之外，鼎爼烹和皆在其所棄。如衣服惟取禦寒，布帛之外，黼黻章采皆在其所捐。持論不為不正，而其説終不能行扵天下。世所傳誦，惟呂祖謙古文關鍵，謝枋得文章軌範及昉此書而已。」可說是一種簡單的概括。宋代重文輕武，著重學術，評點倶與治學有關。而評點選本，多數亦甚為簡單淺白，供士子入門之用，此乃南宋古文評點的特色。行文語句有時甚至不避白話口語，如樓昉在《崇古文訣》中評《醉翁亭記》：「歐陽修此文所謂筆端有畫，又如累疊階級一層髙一層，逐旋上去都不覺」，力圖自然曉暢，顯淺易懂，是一種傾向通俗的文學批評。而在現實環境下，古文評點選本講究實用（特別是科舉上），亦帶一定的功利色彩。

參考資料

《中國評點文學史》 (孫秦安 1999年，上海社會科學院出版社)

《現存評點第一書——論《古文關鍵》的編選、評點及其影響 》（吳承學）

http://www.twwiki.com/wiki/%E5%8F%A4%E6%96%87%E9%97%9C%E9%8D%B5

《四庫全書》《唐宋八大家文鈔》《文編》《古文關鍵》(清 紀昀等編)

Review of Jack Goldstone’s Why Europe?

Jack Goldstone’s Why Europe? is a book which tries to explain the reason of the “rise” of Europe as an indisputable fact that had happened in the world after the 19^th century. The whole book is based on a presupposition that Europe (also including the US) had been more advanced and ahead in the world civilization since the last two century, and the short question “why Europe”, should mean why the modernization of Europe had come first in human history. Undoubtedly, Goldstone had recognized this fact, but he disagrees with some conventional interpretations of the past western historians upon this phenomenon.

To reverse a common misconception that the west had been always richer than the east in the past, the book starts with the climate in both Europe and Asia, pointing out that the natural factors were actually more favorable for the eastern agriculture due to the monsoon system. This simple introduction provides a fundamental backing, when he further elaborates on how the east was much more prosperous in almost every aspect of society before the 16^th century. “How did Europe catch up and why was it able to eventually surpass Asia in the 19^th century?”, this is the central question he raised in the very beginning of the book. Besides, Goldstone also indicates there is a noticeable patterns of change in history, in which he calls it the “up-and-down” cycle, which had confined the society from “further and proceeded flourishing”. He argues that this cycle is applicable to the population, the urbanization, the price of consumables, and the people’s income (which are all indicators for the extent of a society’s prosperity) before the mid 19^th century, as there were constantly periodic upswings for them, but were soon followed by a subsequent decline. And this was the reason which hindered the process of “modernization”, as there had not been a crucial “break through” for people to achieve a higher living standard in the past two-thousands year. The wide range of data that he enumerates, makes this argument as well as the overall picture quite convincing for readers.

Regarding the rise of Europe, there were many explanations provided by scholars which stressed on the “unique qualities” of the Europeans as the cause of this outcome. Some of the most prominent say centred around the difference of religion, trade, family, states, laws, taxes and revolution between west and east. For the religion of west and east, they proposed that the former is interested in controlling nature while the latter does not, which made the believers of the former have a stronger tendency to explore the world geographically, as well as acquire practical knowledge and making material progress. It also stressed on the competition between Christianity and Protestantism, which they thought could foster the technological development in Europe. However, Goldstone challenges this point of view as there were also religious competitions (like Confucianism and Buddhism) in the East Asia. Most importantly, if the rise of Europe was really owing to the virtue of Christianity, why the continent had been lagged behind Asia for a thousand year, given the long history of this religion? For trade, some scholars assumed that the European had always been the better traders. And what matter most is that they could enrich themselves by colonialism since their discovery of the New World in 1492. In other words, “robbing other people to make themselves wealthy”. For the former, Goldstone had refuted it effortlessly with flourishing trading history of the east, such as using the sail of Zheng He from China as an evidence, as Zheng’s fleet had already traveled across the Indian Ocean and reached East Africa in 1414, which was much more earlier and large-scale than the Columbus’ sail. For the latter, he indicates that the most exploitative countries in colonialism (Spain and Portugal) did not really benefit in long term from the extra slavery labor, as both of them had declined in the 19^th century. Goldstone also rebuts the point that the western society had a better population control than the east, as he points out that the Chinese society had their own way to keep the population down by methods like abortion along with the high mortality of infants. From the above, we can see that Goldstone strongly disagrees to use the first three as the “qualities” to interpret the rise of the West.

For the remaining four subjects, it seems he had a lesser hostile attitude, though apparently he did not totally agree with what many had said in the past either. For the first one, past scholars liked to argue that the European states were more scattered and full of competition (and also credited themselves as being similar to the Greek states), while in Asia it was mainly dominated by great empires which were stagnated in innovation. In respect to this, Goldstone reminds that Asian Empires had also undergone similar extent of competition, just that the size of their states were much larger than the European’s. For law, Goldstone specifically recognized the common law tradition of Britain, saying that it contributed significantly in confining the power of the monarch, as cases were determined by a jury but not a single judge.

After countering with all these existing claims upon the rise of west, Goldstone finally pointed out that the de facto rise was Britain but not the other European countries. He declares the most important reason for it to rise was its culture of innovation, spread and constant exchange of information, as well as an intimate linkage between science and industrial production. He mentions after 1500, “a series of discoveries forced thinkers to seek an escape from ancient religious traditions of knowledge”, which made scholars started to use mathematical and empirical approaches to demonstrate things. Also, this innovation culture was cultivated by the atmosphere of religious tolerance as well as pluralism in Britain at that time.  

In my opinion, there is not much problems for the main body of Goldstone’s argument, as most of his evidences or his “discovery” actually is not that controversial in my point of view, especially for the context that in the past the east was more prosperous than the west as well as the importance of science in Europe’s modernization. The causation is also not difficult to follow. However, I found some of his generalization quite rash, especially for the religion part. To my surprise, he directly puts Confucianism into the category of religion, without single word stating their difference. It seems he is a bit too eager to provide an overview for the world, while committing the same mistake that he had criticized his fellows, which is “knowing so much about the west while ignoring the detail of the east”. In page 121, he even asserts that “by the early 1700s, all of the great Eurasian civilizations had long followed one or more of the major salvation religions launched in the axial age...”, in which straightly links Confucianism with the concept “salvation”. First of all, the word “religion” came from the Latin religio. If we look at its classical interpretation by Cicero in De natura deorum,

“those... who carefully reviewed and so to speak retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to retrace or re-read), like 'elegant' from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from diligere (to care for), ‘intelligeny’ from intellegere (to understand); for all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is present in ‘religious’”. [1]

It seems religio contains only the meaning of “carefully reread the lore of ritual” and “select” in itself. But if we trace back a few lines earlier, it says “it is our duty to revere and worship these gods under the names which custom has bestowed upon them. But the best and also the purest, holiest and most pious way of worshiping the gods is ever to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both of thought and of speech. For religion has been distinguished from superstition not only by philosophers but by our ancestors”[2], which clearly shows the connection between those rituals and “god”. However, if we re-examine the classics of Confucianism, there have never been a concept of “god” like the western Christianity or the Muslim does. In fact, there is a well-known dialogue between Confucius and his student Chi Lu in the Analects,

“Chi Lu asked about serving the spirits. Confucius said, “If you can't yet serve men, how can you serve the spirits?” Lu said, “May I ask about death?” Confucius said, “If you don't understand what life is, how will you understand death?””[3] 

In the orthodoxy of Confucianism, it seldom mentions about things that would happen in after life, which have reflected also plainly in another famous line of the Analects, “the master never discussed strange phenomena, physical exploits, disorder or ghost stories”.[4] As scholar Jana S. Rosker had argued in her article, “Confucianism is not a religion in the Western sense but a discourse that represents both a practical moral teaching and an abstract philosophy of immanent transcendence”[5], we can see that the categorization of Confucianism by Goldstone is merely a rash statement for his own convenience. And would there be any fundamental disparities in nature between the western religion and this Chinese traditional thought which might have brought a whole different outcome in history is something that still needed to be further explored. 

10 Dec, 2018

Footnotes

[1] Cicero, De natura deorum II, (H. Rackham translated., the Loeb Classical Library, 1933), 28. Accessed from (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Natura_Deorum/2A*.html?fbclid=IwAR0IYJyHn5ntPGm61GiTr8BzaIV_7WsvCVLu8WEFU78SwOvOwWiSgSHswtI)

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Analects of Confucius. Muller Charles A. translated. Xianjin eleven. Accessed from (http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html)

[4] Ibid. Shu er seven.

[5] Rosker Jana S., Is Confucianism a religion? Modern Confucian theories on the ethical nature of classical discourses, Asian Philosophy, Vol.27(4), 2017, pp.279-291

Bibliography
 
Cicero, De natura deorum II, H. Rackham translated., the Loeb Classical Library, 1933. Accessed from http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Natura_Deorum/2A*.html?fbclid=IwAR0IYJyHn5ntPGm61GiTr8BzaIV_7WsvCVLu8WEFU78SwOvOwWiSgSHswtI
 
Rosker Jana S., Is Confucianism a religion? Modern Confucian theories on the ethical nature of classical discourses, Asian Philosophy, Vol.27(4), 2017, pp.279-291
 
The Analects of Confucius. Muller Charles A. translated. Accessed from http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html

 

「人道」表相與人文反思 － 讀黃春明的〈兩個油漆匠〉

「人道」表相與人文反思

　　　　　　　　　　　　　讀黃春明的〈兩個油漆匠〉　　文：江離

 

　　〈兩個油漆匠〉是台灣小說家黃春明的名篇，發表於1971年，寫的是兩個台灣的農村青年在社會實現了急劇的現代化後，其前往城市謀生的經歷，以及他們最終的悲劇命運。作為六七十年代台灣鄉土文學的代表人物，黃春明的作品一向被評論稱譽為「具有深廣的人文視野和關懷」，但當中「人文」所指為何，論者似乎多傾向於將之從略，鮮見有人會就此作進一步的闡釋。誠然，闡釋並不一定能帶來意義，而強行套加定義，也很容易會忽略了「人文」二字本身的包容性。本文以「人文」為題，也非是要對所謂「人文主義」作一番學術式的追源溯流，而是純粹因為筆者在閱讀時偶然對「人文」和「人道」這兩組素來看似互通的詞語生發了不同的感受，而此感受的分別，又自覺頗適合用作這篇小說的討論切入點。簡單地說，今時今日每當我們說到「人文精神」時，我們通常指的，是一種對普遍人性的關懷和慈悲，或如古羅馬劇作家泰倫提烏斯（Terence）所言：「我是人，且我認為沒有任何有關『人』的事情是與我無關的。」（Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am human, and I consider nothing human is alien to me.”）反觀「人道」，儘管此詞本身不帶貶意，卻總易教人想起「人道罪行」、「人道毀滅」，或「人間正道是滄桑」之類的老話，若換英文說句，是「ways of human」，當中的所謂「道」，其實隱含着一種無情的意味。而〈兩個油漆匠〉故事裏最深沉和反諷的地方，正正就是在於它揭示了所謂的「人道」考量，竟會直接促成了一場原可避免的悲劇的發生。在故事裏，主角猴子是一名長時間在高空工作的髹油工人，而他在下班後和朋友阿力攀上高處未建好的陽台，純粹是想吹吹風，宣洩一下工作的苦悶。但他此舉卻隨後被地面的群眾誤認為意圖自殺，最終在警察和傳媒重重圍困的壓力下，二人因「人道」考量而被「褫奪」了自行安全離開高台的選項，終使猴子一時失足，釀成慘劇。故讀後不禁教人思考，何謂人道？而黃春明在此小說中，又是如何以人文對應「人道」的？

 

　　〈兩個油漆匠〉的故事設定在一個虛構的「祈山市」內，虛構的原因我們不得而知，但此城市顯然甚有現實中台北巿的影子。小說甫開始時便運用長鏡頭刻畫了一個大都市在經歷了現代化後的迭變和「氣派」，例如從前不常見的高樓大廈，如今已成為城市面貌的一種標記。而在芸芸風景中作者特別着墨的，是一面不知何故被建成的巨牆。有趣的是，作者一開始並沒有交代它的用途，而在平常人眼中，它彷彿是無緣無故地「形成」，無緣無故地存在，只不過是後來才給「吉士可樂」看中用它來賣廣告的。換句話說，在作者的藝術經營裏，這面巨牆的原初建造意義是不明的，而弔詭的卻是，故事偏又提到有報紙說它「似乎是活着的」。無疑，巨牆在這裏是作為一種文明的「象徵」，而現代文明，也理應是排拒迷信的；但實際上，我們看到該「象徵」卻是需要倚賴傳媒將之神話化（mythicize）或奇蹟化（miraculize），以保持其本身的魅力和存在的正當性。而黃春明在小說開首所揭示的，正正就是這種在現代化的潮流表象下人性所流露的虛妄。由此我們便能理解為何他要這樣細緻描寫人們經過巨牆時的情形：當人們從另一邊乘車迎面遇上它時，由於經過的橋身是拱背式的，故當車輛駛過了橋的中段開始下滑時，車上的人便會有一種巨牆朝自己倒塌的錯覺。說白了，這是「文明」給人的下馬威。接着小說的鏡頭再接駁到兩位身處高空的主角，突顯了他們是如此卑微地寄生於這種「象徵」之上，且一直都在此「文明」虛妄的表相下存活。可見，作者在一方面呈現「人道」（ways of human）的同時，另一方面也是以此來襯托在「人道」當中生存的人，這毋寧是一種人文關懷的體現。

 

　  而整篇小說最引人深思的，便是結尾主角猴子的悲劇了。平心而論，造成此結果的成因有許多，但小說裏特別側重的，除卻警察和談判專家的所謂「人道」考量外，還有傳媒在事件中的作用。這裏先說前者。猴子最後之所以無法自由地離開高台，主因是在於他因一時的憤激，說了句晦氣話「當心我跳下來壓死你們」，成為了人家的口實，體制的執行者得以扼殺其往後表達思想的權利，像那警察杜組長所說，「不能相信想自殺的人的話」，「這才是人道啊」。同時，前來協助的警察其實也不是真心想幫助高台上的二人，而是想保證自己能撇清責任（如杜組長質問記者「你能負這個責任嗎」）。由是，因為「職責所在」，「人道」和「責任」成為了限制和壓迫他人的手段。至於傳媒的追訪，亦是釀成慘劇的重要原因，如小說所述，「連串採訪的強光，使他們除了對方外就甚麼都看不見」，直接增加了現場環境的危險性。而電視台的全國直播，亦為二人構成巨大壓力，擔心鄉下的家人會在電視中看到自己。到悲劇終於發生時，猴子一個倒栽掉下高台，接着鏡頭一轉，比照了在未建好的燈罩內蜷縮一團，彷彿是復歸「胎兒」形相的阿力，然而在一片嘈雜中記者呼喊的「Camera」之聲卻不住攀升。無疑，「Camera」在此處所追求的已不是事實真相的呈現，而是一種「觀看他人痛苦」的細緻度。故在此也不禁令人反問，一味放大他人的痛楚，到底是在維護一種怎樣的公眾知情權？而〈兩個油漆匠〉這篇小說最大的意義，就是在於其戳穿了所謂「人道」和「文明」的表相。誠然，文學的可貴，正是在於其能夠正視和反思現實中各種冷酷和荒謬的事情，而人文的「文」，也絕不等同於文過飾非的「文」。而這種堅持對現實作赤祼刻畫的態度，也教筆者想起了十多年後歌手羅大佑所寫的一段歌詞：

 

「或許你將會真的發現一些奇蹟／只要你拋開一些面子問題」

「或許你將會發現人生還算美麗／只要你拋開一些面子問題」

－（〈現象七十二變〉）

 

　　是的，一件事情處理得「文明」或「人道」與否，有時或真會是觀點與角度的問題。但更多時候，這其實只是人的「面子問題」而已。

 

二零二零年十一月二十五日

A Compromise to the Coast - the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

 Paper’s title: A Compromise to the Coast - the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Central research question: Why was the anti-Chinese sentiment of the pacific coast able to overcome its opposition force in the country and prompted the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882?

 

Introduction

 

To the studiers of the history of Sino-American relationship, the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 has long been one of the most controversial policy of the United States.  Not only because of its discriminatory nature, or its significance in marking the outset of an ideological trend of anti-Asian immigration in the following century of America, but also for the fact that its occurrence was actually only about a decade later after the end of the Civil War, which to an extent did give outsiders an impression that the American had rather chose to “redirect” their racism than to truly break up with their past dishonorable practice, and made this case exceptionally ironic in history. And for the people who had been so used to the history of the oppression that the Chinese had suffered in the 19^th century of America, it might be hard for them to imagine that in the early 1850s, the first wave of Chinese were actually received pleasantly by the California people. As from an article of the Daily Alta California talking about the Chinese people on 27 April of 1852, it mentioned,

 

“They (the Chinese) furnish employment to our shipping in coming, to our steamers and carriages in the transportation of themselves and their freight ...They are contented with small piles, and generally go to places that have been abandoned by other miners because they did not yield enough to pay for working ...Let as many come as choose; we have room enough and to spare”.[1]

 

So, why was this harmonious picture in 1850s completely overturned in the later decades? And how prevalent the anti-Chinese sentiment actually were among the American society, after three decades of Chinese settlement in America? These are something what we are going to explore in this paper.

 

If anti-Chinese sentiment was something already established in American society, why did the Exclusion Act come so lately and exclusively in the early 1880s?

 

Past scholarships has often regarded the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 as a manifestation of domestic labor competition and racial conflict that had long beset the US society during the second half of the 19^th century. However, questions like why did the exclusion occur so lately, given that the first wave of Chinese miners actually arrived at the pacific coast since the late forties, and also why did the restrictive measure singly target the Chinese race but not the others continued to remain equivocal among researchers if not unanswered. Certainly, the exclusion later also extended its scope to include other Asians groups like the Japanese and the Korean in the subsequent century, but it is self-evident that the Chinese was the first racial group that was able to gain a nationwide media attention in US and also to “suffer” the first blade of its discrimination (if we are not counting the blacks), and the 1882 act was actually a symbolic legislation which indicated the outset of the US government to adopt an exclusionist policy towards immigrants with unassimilable characteristic or tendency. The change of the US government’s policy from an originally commercial-prioritized attitude which favored labor importation, to a later protectionist and self-isolationist manner which ultimately shut down the whole immigration gate from outsiders is also a worth pondering phenomenon in the diplomatic history of US, though this might be a bit out of the scope for this paper.

 

Back to the questions asked in the previous paragraph - what made the exclusion come so late, and also why was it set solely against the Chinese race in the 80s. The second question, though sounds sweeping in scale, is actually easier to explain by a contrast of timeline of the Asians’ arrival in North America as well as a quick look on the habitual appellation that the American had given to the Chinese since the 1850s. Leaving aside the Filipinos, the Chinese were in fact the first racial group to set foot on the pacific coast in significant number since the late forties. Both the Japanese and Koreans were late arrivers, given the Meiji Restoration was staged only in 1868, and before that Japan was under Sakoku. Therefore, even in the 1880s, the Chinese were still the largest Asiatic population in America which could definitely overshadow the other “yellows”. Then, for their appellation in the US society, we might notice that they were frequently called as the “Mongolian” throughout the fifties to the seventies, which suggests that the majority American at that time actually did not have a very clear understanding on the Asiatic races as well as their distinctions, or to say, they simply did not care much about these “nuances”. One of the most infamous example would be the verdict of The People of the State of California v. George W. Hall in 1854, in which the Chinese were not only deprived of the right to testify in court against white persons, but were also declared as “the same type of the human species” as “the American Indians and the Mongolian”. As it went, “the name of Indian, from the time of Columbus to the present day, has been used to designate, not alone the North American Indian, but the whole of the Mongolian race, and that the name... was afterwards continued as appropriate on account of the supposed common origin”.[2] The verdict made utterly no attempts to clarify the character as well as the uniqueness of the Chinese people within the whole Asiatic race. Instead, it blurred them deliberately. From the above we could see that even for a state’s Supreme Court of that time could treat the definition of a race with such rashness and irresponsibleness. So for the lower class people in America, it was not unlikely for them to use the term “Chinese” just as a convenient label for those “unpleasant Asiatic immigrants” in their eyes who they wanted to vent their anger on. After all, the Chinese at that time were unmistakably the largest portion of the Asiatic population in the country. So, maybe to borrow words from the verdict, during that era every racial terms should be understood in its “generic” sense, no matter how ironic it seems in nowadays’ perspective.

 

The specific targeting of the Chinese in the 1882 Act could be explained by the fact that the Chinese were simply the most “blamable” villain for the country at that time, given the precondition of both the anti-Chinese concept and the exclusionist discourse had already been well established for more than a decade. However, for the first question, which is why did the anti-Chinese sentiment have to be accumulated for more than thirty years before an actual nationwide legislation finally came to meet the expectation of its people, would require a more detailed examination on the social atmosphere of that time, especially of the late seventies. We have already learned from past researchers’ works that the fifties was an exploitation period for the newly-born California state after the Mexican - American War. Scholars like Kanazawa, has noted the context of the state’s financial predicament in its early years and also the correlations between the its finance and the change of its policies toward the Chinese. His paper indicates that although the Chinese had been perceived as competitors by native miners since the very start of the gold rush era, there was still a significant pro-Chinese voice in the state which effectively hindered the practical anti-Chinese legislation throughout the early and mid fifties. And the main reason is that the Chinese had already become an indispensable tax source to the state since the latter’s establishment, given that the foreign miners’ tax (a discriminatory tax for the Chinese miners since 1850) had long accounted for at least ten percent of the total state revenues throughout the fifties and early sixties, and the state had only managed to extricate itself from financial deficit since 1857.[3] This explains very well why was the exclusion not happening in the fifties. And for the sixties, it was occupied firstly by the Civil War (1861-65), then followed by a series of anti-racist legislations like the the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment and the 1870 Civil Rights Act, and also the signing of the Burlingame Treaty in 1868, which would all provide a certain extent of protections to Chinese immigrants in the country. Therefore, we could see that although throughout the fifties and sixties the anti-Chinese sentiment was still being visible and undiminished in the US society, it was clear that the sentiment was far from being as overwhelming and destructive as it did in the subsequent decade.

 

Scholars have often attributed the success of the anti-Chinese movement in the seventies to the effort of the “organized labor”, so a subtext here would likely be that the failure of the previous exclusionists’ attempts were mainly because of their lack of organization and solidarity.[4] The absence of a nationwide economic crisis (i.e. the Panic in 1873) was also a reason of why the workers did not radicalize in the early Reconstruction era. The 1870 Naturalization Act that revoked the citizenship of naturalized Chinese Americans could be seen as a sign of the country’s resurrected hostility towards the Chinese in the wake of a decade, and the Chinese massacre in Los Angeles of the following year also indicated that the anti-Chinese movement were now becoming more and more open and unbridled. The significance of the discharge of Chinese after the completion of First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 is unquestioned, as it immediately flooded the labor market with low-wage workers, and its impact was also felt even in the faraway northeastern states like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, given that the railroad had now granted the Chinese the accessibility to the east.[5] However, what I want to focus here instead of elaborating on the much-discussed anti-Chinese discourse and events, is rather the other side of the topic. We know that the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, but the transition from the original anti-Chinese agitations which were very much confined to the pacific coast in the seventies, to the gradual nationwide recognition of the Chinese problem and finally the victory of the exclusion campaign in the early eighties, was actually involved in so many intricate dynamics and struggles between various stakeholders of the country, such as the state and the federal government, the legislature and the judiciary, the Democrats and the Republicans, the companies and the working class, the conservative press and the Workingmen’s Party, and let alone fortuitous circumstance and the general climate of political opportunism of that time as specifically mentioned by Elmer Sandmeyer.[6] Yet, at least one thing is clear from the aforementioned phenomenon, which is the delay of exclusion indicates that even in the late seventies the American society had not yet reached its consensus with regard to the Chinese question. And I would argue that despite the pervasiveness of anti-Chinese sentiment in west America, there was still a notable opposition force to the exclusion of Chinese in the country which had to a certain level offset the influence of anti-Chinese agitators and also help to keep the sentiment in check even until the end of the seventies. I will roughly divided them into three main types, which were the pro-Chinese voices, the anti-exclusionists, and the anti-Kearneyists, though most of the time these terms were actually compatible and interchangeable with one another.

 

Three reports after 1876 - indicators of public opinions toward Chinese question

 

Most scholars have pointed out that 1876 was a defining year to the anti-Chinese movement in the Pacific coast. Due to the significant growth of Chinese immigrants in the past three years and also the nullifications of almost all immigration restrictive legislations of California by the circuit court, the sentiment rapidly intensified. As Sandmeyer mentions, “it was generally understood that in order to secure the labor vote a candidate must declare against the Chinese”, while drawing evidences from the discussions of various parties’ platform.[7] Moreover, in that year we can see a clear emergence of the what so called “organized labor”, as in spring, a significant labor union called the Anti-Chinese Union was formed in San Francisco, birthed by the merging of numerous anti-Chinese clubs from the past few years. It was not purely a union consisted of ordinary workers, but instead it owned Senators, Congressmen and a number of prominent politicians of the state as its central members. With the purpose “to unite, centralize and direct the anti-Chinese strength of our Country”, it obliged its members must pledge to four things before joining the union: to the constitution of the club, not to employ Chinese, not to purchase goods from the employer of Chinese, and not to sustain the Chinese or the employer of Chinese.[8] From the above we can see the California labor force had greatly strengthened its power by setting a common goal for the union and also by explicitly identifying the obligations of their members. The participation of the state’s well-known politicians were also advantageous to their exposure in newspapers as well as to their control in public discourse and most importantly, to show the solidarity and unanimity of the state upon their anti-Chinese stance as an unshakable image to the entire nation.

 

It is crucial for us to understand how the Chinese problem was presented to the whole nation instead of just quoting and analyzing on some empty anti-Chinese lines of the radical newspapers in California. As we know, what was experiencing currently in a state did not necessary entail what had been exactly felt in the other parts of country, and given that the Chinese question was still more or less a local problem in the Pacific coast, it had in fact very limited influence in no matter national affairs or decisions. Just as the Governor of Nevada had once said, “the problem had been taken from the state and placed in the hands of a government three thousand miles away, that know as little of our wants and are as indifferent to their correction as was the Parliament under George III to the wants of the colonies a century ago”.[9] And therefore, it would be of particular importance when a Joint Investigating Committee of the US Senate and the House of Representatives was finally sent to San Francisco to investigate the Chinese question in Oct, 1876 after large petitions had been made to the capital in the same year. The committee would later prepare reports to Congress, and would deliver a sufficient number of its copies to all the leading newspapers in the country, as well as ten thousand of them for general distribution.[10] And after the investigation, one official report and two minor reports were successively produced in the following two years. The most important value of these reports is that they were all written in a national perspective, so unlike many other voices in California at that time which could only represent their sectional interest, these reports would have been seen as a much more authentic, comprehensive, and unbiased accounts of the situation in California in many people’s mind, and would have left an incomparable influence on the understanding as well as public opinions of the whole United States upon the Chinese question. And that is why it would be vital to scrutinize these reports first if we are trying to sort out the public opinions of the American to the Chinese immigrants in the late seventies. As for this source is more important than many others is not solely because of their coverage and representativeness, but also because of the fact that they did to an extent shape the direction of public discussion in the coming few years.

 

It must be acknowledged that the official report that released on 27 Feb 1877 was strongly anti-Chinese in tone. Written by Senator Aaron Sargent from California, the report recognized the impact of Chinese workers on the local labor wages as well as their unassimilatory tendency, and deemed the further influx of immigrants to be “a great future evil”.[11] Therefore, it recommended “the Executive should seek a modification of the existing treaty with China, confining it to strictly commercial purposes, and the Congress should legislate on the restriction of Asiatic immigrants to this country”.[12] However, it is worth noting that Sargent was not the chairman of the Committee. The seat belonged to Senator Oliver P. Morton, who was a Republican from Indiana with Chinese sympathy, and only because of his illness, the official report was eventually penned by the strongly anti-Chinese member Sargent. In fact, even from Sargent’s report we could see the traces of Morton’s influence, such as in the beginning of the report it admitted that “the resources of California and the Pacific coast have been more rapidly developed with the cheap and docile labor of Chinese than they would have been without this element”, and “the Pacific coast has been a great gainer (from the Chinese labor)”.[13] The report also mentioned quite a number of religious leaders were actually pro-Chinese, as they thought that “the presence of Chinese among us imposes a duty and gives an opportunity of christianizing them”.[14] Given that there were also enterprising men and employers who were supportive to the presence of Chinese, we could see that although restricting the Chinese immigration was undeniably the majority thought in California as reflected by the report, the idea was still clearly far from achieving unanimity in the state.

 

People have often trivialized the content and significance of the two minority reports which were also generated from the Joint Investigating Committee, one was by Representative Edwin Meade from New York in the same year, and the another was by Senator Morton in early 1878. However, it would be too “take for granted” to think that just reading the official report is already sufficient for assessing the public attitude to the Chinese immigrants, as we should not underestimate the influence of the other two on the nationwide public opinion, given that they were also able to get plentiful appearances in a number of renowned newspapers throughout the country. For example, Meade’s report was mentioned in The New York herald, The Silver state of Nevada, and the Chicago daily tribune of Illinois, and Morton’s one had even gained a much wider coverage, as newspapers like The Vancouver independent and National Republican of Washington, The New York herald, The Wheeling daily intelligencer of West Virginia, The Jackson standard of Ohio, Daily globe of Minnesota, and the Daily Los Angeles herald of California all gave lengthy reports to the content of his memoir.[15][16] Therefore, it is also necessary to look into the substance of these two reports, especially for the one which was written by Morton.

 

We will firstly look at Meade’s report. Although it was also anti-coolie in tone and shared many similar views with Sargent’s one, it specifically highlighted that the growing commerce of with China was something “needed weighing” before the Congress should enact any exclusion acts. It also suggested that the immigration of merchants, students and capitalists should be encouraged (a more positive term than tolerated), while the others should be removed. And quite remarkably, it is for the first time a report mentioned there was a need for the country to “understand the Chinese people more thoroughly”. He then drew on the example of “even the French government had set up a professorship of the Chinese language”, so there was no reason that the US should lag behind. He then added that “a liberal endowment (to the Chinese people) for a similar purpose (of knowing more about them) would be a great benefit in developing business and political relation with them”.[17] Meade’s suggestion was more of a consideration for political manipulation, but it also partly revealed the curiosity of many other American might have in common towards the “Chinese ways of things” at that time. More importantly, it was actually quite rare for an American statesman to openly confess his lack of understanding toward a race that had often been marked as inferior, and this also implied his inclination of treating the Chinese in a more equal and non-racist manner.

 

Then, we might now turn to Morton’s report. As mentioned before, he was the original chairman of the Investigating Committee and also a Chinese sympathizer, and if he had been healthy enough to stay on writing the official report, it was not unlikely that the final conclusion of the report toward the Chinese would go completely the other way round. Nonetheless, his unfinished report was made public in Jan 1878 after his death, and it was strongly pro-Chinese in tone. In fact, the publicization of his report was quite a bit of a groundbreaking news at the time, and it also brought unease to some of the California politicians given that Morton himself was a prestigious statesman during the sixties and seventies. Here I will summarize some of the main points in his report. Firstly, it gave the Chinese a good character for industry, honesty, and temperance. It argued that their intellectual capacity were actually much the same as the American race, and the current intellectual stagnation of China was simply the result of their institutions. Then, it emphasized the important contributions that the Chinese had made in the past two decades to the prosperity of California, as “they had laid the foundations of the state’s manufacturing interests, and without them, the production and harvesting of grapes and wheat would be impossible, and the railroads of California would not even have been built”. Along with that, it mentioned the problems that were likely to arise if the Chinese labor were driven out of the American market, such as the white men might now need to degrade themselves to do the low class of labor that were used to be done by the Chinese, and California might no longer be able to sustain its famous “wheat culture” in the coming years. Most importantly, it pointed out the field in California was actually so varied and extensive, and the presence of Chinese should not have possibly hurt the interest of the white laborers. In contrast to what was commonly believed in the society, it argued that there was a scarcity of labor on the Pacific coast, and the laboring men of California actually had ample employment, and were better paid, than in almost any other part of the country. As Morton wrote explicitly in his report, “their (the Chinese) difference in color, dress, manners, and religion have, in my judgement, more to do with this hostility than their alleged vices or any actual injury to the white people of California...”. Aside from this, he also questioned the feasibility for the US government to prohibit Chinese laborers from landing on the Pacific coast when he discussed the complications that were likely to arise with Great Britain given that the Chinese immigration was almost entirely coming from the British port Hong Kong.[18] As he reminded his audiences, “though subjects of the Chinese Empire, they (the Chinese) embark at a British port, and in that respect are invested with the rights of British subjects... With the laws of England, or the marine regulations by which the people of China are permitted to enter a British province and to embark from a British port, we have nothing whatever to do...”.[19] His anxiety of seeking collaboration with the British government as well as the foreseeable difficulty of executing the restriction policy in Hong Kong was also shared by some of the other authorities in the country, such as Frederick Low, who was the United States minister plenipotentiary in China since 1870 to 1873, agreed that “the stoppage of immigration involves treating with another nation rather more than with China”, while pointing out that “the British already had its own law to forbid any but voluntary emigrants embarking on ships and requires a compliance with the law to be officially certified before a vessel leaves port”. So apparently, he asked, what more can be done by the American government at the present moment?[20] In short, from Morton’s report we could see a complete overturn of interpretation to the Joint Committee’s investigation result, as he argued that no matter from the viewpoint of the country’s founding spirit or the white labor’s interest, or simply the practicability of the policy itself, there was no reason for the United States to prohibit the Chinese from landing on the Pacific shore. And the evidences that he drew on from various interviewees of the investigation further confirmed the fact that despite the longstanding display of anti-Chinese sentiment in the Pacific coast, there were still a considerable amount of pro-Chinese voices among the Californian society by which their speakers were well-aware of the benefits that the Chinese had brought to their state, and were unabashed in opposing the exclusion of Chinese laborers even up to the mid seventies.

 

The tenacious resistance of federal judiciary to California’s anti-Chinese legislations throughout the 1870s

 

If the above-mentioned positive opinions in California were still seeming partial and unrepresentative to some of our minds, as for their actual impacts to the society of that time was indeed hard to evaluate, we might now turn to look at the state’s policies regarding the Chinese during the seventies. Just as Sandmeyer points out, that after the American Civil War, three new “barriers” which had objectively restrained the California legislature from exercising their state’s right in dealing with the Chinese immigration had been set up, and thus had protected the Chinese from a number of unfavorable legislations. The barriers were the Fourteenth Amendment and the Burlingame Treaty in 1868, and the Civil Rights Act which was ratified in 1870.[21] To say it simply, the first and the third one had guaranteed the equal protection of laws to all person in the United States, so no specific race of immigrants should face any extra tax or charge unless it was also equally imposed on the others, and the Burlingame Treaty was the foundational treaty which granted the Chinese the rights to reside in the country.[22] Yet, in spite of this reality, the California State Legislature was single-minded in restricting the Chinese immigration, and had proven itself to be unrelenting by its repeated enactments of various anti-Chinese legislation during the entire 1870s. Some main legislations include a statue in 1870 concerning the importation of lewd women from China (its scope amended and broadened in 1874), the Pigtail Ordinance in 1873, and the adoption of a new California constitution in 1879 which contained an article of prohibiting the employment of all Chinese in any corporation or public work.[23] Conceivably, when these vigorous restrictive measures were put into effect, they soon faced legal challenges from their victims since almost unexceptionally all the prosecuted Chinese would appeal to the federal judiciary, and the anti-Chinese efforts of the California legislature were now being recurrently offset and nullified by the decisions of circuit courts throughout the whole decade. And aside from the fact that the court’s verdicts were usually considerate of the Chinese interests, it was also often for their tones to be blunt and unfaltering in denouncing the discriminatory nature behind those anti-Chinese legislations, which was likely to generate antipathy from many people in California who were in favor of restricting Chinese immigrants. For example, in both the verdicts of In Re Ah Fong and Chy Lung v. Freeman, the character of the amended version of the “lewd law” in 1874 was mocked as “extraordinary”, as the former went,

 

“A statute thus sweeping in its terms, confounding by general persons widely variant in character, is not entitled to any very high commendation... It is certainly desirable that all lewdness, takes the form of prostitution, should be suppressed, and that the most stringent measures to accomplish that end should be adopted. But I have little respect for that discriminating virtue which is shocked when a frail child of China is landed on our shores, and yet allows the bedizened and painted harlot of other countries to parade our streets and open her hells in broad day, without molestation and without censure.”[24][25]

 

Similarly, the ordinance of 1873 was also criticized harshly later in the case of Ho Ah Kow v. Matthew Nunnan for its obvious discriminatory nature, as the verdict bitterly remarked,

 

“The ordinance is known in the community as the "Queue Ordinance," being so designated from its purpose to reach the queues of the Chinese, and it is not enforced against any other persons. The reason advanced for its adoption, and now urged for its continuance, is, that only the dread of the loss of his queue will induce a Chinaman to pay his fine. That is to say, in order to enforce the payment of a fine imposed upon him, it is necessary that torture should be superadded to imprisonment.”[26]

 

And for the state’s constitution that was newly adopted in 1879, its article that concerned the Chinese was almost completely voided in the case In re Tiburcio Parrott and In re Ah Chong of the subsequent year, with only one of the four sections that was allowed to remain in effect.[27] In short, by the end of the decade, practically all anti-Chinese legislations set forward by the California legislature were defeated in the circuit court. So if the actual impact of the aforementioned pro-Chinese public opinions in the previous part was still contestable and hard to confirm, here we could see the demonstration of a more “concrete” opposition force which had so tangibly hindered the arrival of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Apparently, the resentment in the Pacific Coast was now deepened by the failure of all these legislation attempts, and a notable tension had evolved between the state and the Federal government. As the California politicians could do nothing but to reiterate their arguments of why should the state have the right of self-protection from the “invasion” of Chinese, the Federal Court insisted that the power of prohibiting Chinese emigration should lie and retain on the national government’s hand, and any state’s legislation regarding the Chinese should respect and comply with the national constitution as well as the international treaty. The deadlock added the frustration that had already been widely felt in the society, which was a crucial factor of why did the anti-Chinese sentiment soon become volatile in the end of the decade, and the state-federal conflict had now given populism a good reason to rise.

 

The agitation of the Workingmen’s Party vs the denunciations on “hoodlumism” in nationwide newspapers

 

No historians specialized in the topic of Chinese exclusion would have denied the significance of the Workingmen’s Party of California (WPC) to the final victory of the anti-Chinese campaign in America. The only question left is that if it was sufficient for a single party, which had established for less than a few years with only moderate success in the past elections of the California state and municipal, to alter a nationwide foreign policy which had been implemented for more than a decade and was tangled with countless commercial interests from different sectors of the American society. In view of this, some people had argued that the restriction of Chinese immigrants had already become a national consensus due to the severe labor competition in the country, while others inclined to interpret the outcome as the result of effective propagandist war waged by the WPC. And the argument here I offered, is that instead of a sheer overwhelm in public opinions which forced the federal government to act at last on the immigration issue, it was the continuous radicalization of the polemics of both anti-Chinese and anti-exclusionist sides in newspapers, which had become far too belligerent and even suggestive to national instability in the late decade, that prompted the nation to revise its policy as a sort of “appeasement” to the coast. To prove my point, I would now examine some of the prominent examples of the WPC’s anti-Chinese discourse and also its counterpart, to which I name them as the “anti-hoodlumist’s opinion”, through the newspapers of the late seventies. While past scholarship had often only focused on the newspapers of California, my following writing will also incorporate newspapers from the eastern states in America, in order to better illustrate the overall picture of national opinions toward the issue as well as the potential danger of the polemics between the aforementioned two adversaries.

 

On 8^th May, 1878, a full page report was given in the New York herald to the newly risen WPC’s leader, Denis Kearney, a man who was later known for his inflammatory speeches toward the Chinese immigrants in history. The report was objective and rich in detailed, as it provided an almost all-rounded portrayal of the man’s background, appearance, proposition, associates, and manner, and had even included a direct interview with Kearney himself. And from the reporter’s quotation, we could see the excerpt of a speech given by Denis Kearney in an occasion of which he was about to be arrested, and this speech was considered by the reporter as an exemplar of his “extraordinary” language,

 

“I am glad to see the cooks at San Francisco preparing to make fishballs. At the outset we had a great deal to say about powder and bullets, but this was so disagreeable to our rulers that we changed it to fishballs and coffee. We want you to make these fishballs, and when they are ready we will fire them for you. Someone said to me this morning, ‘you are going to cut our throats.’ I told him, ‘I don’t care a damn whose throat is cut so long as it is not mine.’”[28]

 

Aside from the staggering metaphor of “fishballs”, his menacing message was also explicit as he pointed out that the existing anti-Chinese sentiment was very likely to resort to violence if their demands were still not meet by the federal government. Without the slightest hint of fear, he even instructed his supporters with the following words,

 

“We are going to use force now to carry out our plans... How many of you have muskets? That’s good. Form yourselves into a military organization, and when the next steamer comes are you ready to march down to the wharf and stop the leprous Chinamen from landing? I will make all the necessary preparations and buy up all the second hand guns we can get.”[29]

 

Even so, there was no lack of intense denunciations among the newspapers of the same period toward this new rise of “hoodlumism”. For examples, an article titled as “Kearneyism” in the Weekly Trinity journal, wrote that “the most insane mutterings of the Paris Commune slink away into shadow in the bright glare of the more beastly threats and venomous denunciations of Kearney and his gang… Free speech in that city seem to be utterly crushed by the freedom allowed the mob”.[30] The previous report of the New York herald also suggested that there was actually a resemblance between Kearney and Robespierre. Moreover, in the next year, an article from the Jackson standard of Ohio described the situation of California was no different from a fallen state, as it started by saying “San Francisco, a brave city, hardly dares utter her mind on the Chinese question, when her sandlot orators threaten conflagration, riot and murder... Anti-Chinese clubs crack the defiant whip of lawlessness over the heads of California’s Mayors, Governors, and Senators”.[31] And a report from the Gold Hill daily news of Nevada in 1880, even prophesied bloodshed in California,

 

“According to all the latest news from San Francisco, that sinful city with the golden gate is no very agreeable place to live in at the present time. The ‘agitators’ are agitating worse than ever, and the ‘unemployed’ employ their time parading the streets, men and women, in procession demanding work and bread, and yet arrogantly dictating to business people as to whom they shall employ”

 

“The city is threatened with grave danger. A riot may break out at any moment.... If a conflict begins it will result in the speedy death of Kearney and every other prominent leader of the sandlotters... It is yet hoped that the danger may pass away, but the best informed men do not believe that bloodshed can be averted”. [32]

 

Obviously, the prophecy was unfulfilled, but it shows that how close the country once was to the outbreak of a disastrous domestic clash. In short, as for the nationwide image for the WPC and Denis Kearney of that time, we can see that there was a persistence of negative commentaries in the newspapers of both the eastern states and western states. The anti-Chinese agitators were frequently called as a tons of unemployed “hoodlums” who took hostage of the whole California state for their own political purpose and at others’ expenses. Moreover, some opinions even tended to label them as communistic in nature, and analogies were also frequently made between them and the notorious Robespierre or the Paris Commune.

 

Conclusion

 

It is undeniable that the anti-Chinese agitation was surely making its way in pressuring a response from the government to its political demand in the late seventies. For example, before the final passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act, there were already attempts from the Congress to restrict further Chinese immigration, namely the Fifteen Passenger Bill in 1879 and a 20-year ban proposal in 1881 in which its content was very much alike to the 1882 one except for a double of its effective years. Notably, both legislation were actually able to pass the House and Senate without breaking much of a sweat, and their failures at the end were only caused by the vetoes of the two US Presidents, Hayes and Arthur respectively, which were both from the Republican Party.[33] We could see the resistance of the anti-exclusionist side was waning, especially when the November elections in 1878 had given the Democrats control of both houses, for whom had proven itself to be a more sincere helper in restricting Chinese immigration than the Republicans, which had objectively placed the US presidents in a very isolated position upon the matter.[34] In fact, after the two Chinese restriction bills were vetoed, both Hayes and Arthur were heavily criticized by the public opinions of the west. President Arthur was even burn in effigies throughout the whole California when news was released, and his decision was not sustained by many of his Republican comrades as they all thought that he was going to make the party lose all the coming elections in California, which is also a crucial reason of why he eventually backed down to the 1882 Act.[35] Nonetheless, it is never appropriate for us to understand the sequence of events as a mere impact-response paradigm and to simplify the act just as an outcome of the labor competition and ingrained racist culture of America, as we shall not overlook the existence as well as the effect that the afore-discussed anti-exclusionist force had toward the national politics of the seventies. This force, which had once been even able to fend off the exclusionists’ anti-Chinese efforts until the end of decade, had unpremeditatedly generated a state-federal conflict between the Pacific states and the federal government. To prevent further escalation of this conflict, the Chinese Exclusion Act thus became the only option left for the federal government to unstitch the tension.

And it might be best to sum up the paper’s argument by contrasting two documents which were both produced in the end of the 1870s,

 

“I am not afraid of the unconstitutionality of that law - and why? Because the man that tests its constitutionality stands in danger of losing his head... If Selby dares to test the Anti-Chinese bill, the trouble will come as suddenly as the firing on Fort Sumter. The Supreme Court will not declare it unconstitutional. I will go farther, and dare the Federal authorities to declare it unconstitutional”, a Sandlot speech given by Dennis Kearney on 15 February 1880, after the drawn up of the new California State Constitution.[36]

 

“But the fact is, the anti-Chinese legislation of the Pacific coast is but a poorly disguised attempt on the part of the state to evade and set aside the treaty with China, and thereby nullify an act of the national government. Between this and “the firing on Fort Sumter,” by South Carolina, there is the difference of the direct and indirect—and nothing more”, the verdict of the case Baker ct al. v. Portland on 21 July 1879.[37]

 

Though not a direct address to each others, the rhetorical revisit of “the firing on Fort Sumter” here illustrates the strained relation between the state and Federal government in the late 1870s, which could possibly lead to another constitutional crisis since the end of the Civil War. The “Chinese question” presented here was no longer merely a local issue in America, but rather a critical topic which was directly connected to the national stability in the coming years. Therefore, to say precisely, the final passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act was in fact a compromise made by the federal government in the objective of easing up the state-federal tension that had sustained throughout the 1870s.

4 May 2020

Footnotes:

[1] The Daily Alta California of 27 April 1852. From (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18520427.2.8&srpos=22&dliv=none&e=------185-en--20-DAC-21--txt-txIN-Celestials----1852---1)

[2] The People of the State of California v. George W. Hall, the California Supreme Court, 1854. From (https://cite.case.law/cal/4/399/).

[3] Mark Kanazawa, Immigration, Exclusion, and Taxation: Anti-Chinese Legislation in Gold Rush California, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 786.

[4] Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.40.

[5] Wellborn, Mildred, The Events Leading to the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California, Vol. 9, No. 1/2(1912-1913), pp. 49-58, 1913. Rhoads, Edward J. M., “White Labor” vs. “Coolie Labor”: The “Chinese Question” in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, Journal of American Ethnic History, Winter 2002, Vol.21(2), pp.3, 21.

[6] Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.40.

[7] Ibid. P.57.

[8] Ibid.

[9] San Francisco Evening Post, Jan 6, 1877. Quoted from Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.58.

[10] Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.60.

[11] United States. Congress. Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration. (1877). Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration: February 27, 1877.--Ordered to be printed. Washington: G.P.O., p.vi.

[12] Ibid. P.viii.

[13] Ibid. P.iv. Also Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.87.

[14] Ibid.

[15] The New York herald. [volume], March 01 and Sept 08, 1877. The Silver state. [volume] (Unionville, Nev.), 08 Sept. 1877. Chicago daily tribune. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.), 08 Sept. 1877.

[16] The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]), 24 Jan. 1878. The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]), 01 March 1879. The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.), 18 Jan. 1878. The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio), 31 Jan. 1878. Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.), 18 Jan. 1878. National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)), 18 Jan. 1878. Daily Los Angeles herald. [volume] (Los Angeles [Calif.]), 20 Jan. 1878.

[17] The New York herald. [volume], March 01, 1877.

From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030313/1877-03-01/ed-1/seq-10/)

[18] Further details of how the Chinese took passage from Hong Kong to arrive at America could be seen from a report of The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vermont.), 22 April 1876.

[19] Senate Misc. Doc. No. 20, 45th Cong., 2d sess., 4, 9. Quoted from Elmer Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.88.

Also from (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3985848&view=1up&seq=653). See also The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]), 24 Jan. 1878. From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093109/1878-01-24/ed-1/seq-4/)

[20] Arizona citizen. [volume] (Tucson, Pima County, Arizona), 16 Sept. 1876. From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014896/1876-09-16/ed-1/seq-2/)

[21] Elmer C. Sandmeyer, California Anti-Chinese Legislation and the Federal Courts: A Study in Federal Relations, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Sep., 1936), pp. 191.

[22] Referring to The Burlingame Treaty, 1868. From (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Burlingame_Treaty). The Civil Rights Act of 1866. From (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1866) The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1868. From (https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv).

[23] Amendments to the Codes of California, 1873-4, 241-243. Senate Report No. 689, 44 Cong., 2 sess., 201-207, 1167. Both from Elmer C. Sandmeyer, California Anti-Chinese Legislation and the Federal Courts: A Study in Federal Relations, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Sep., 1936), pp. 195, 198. Article XIX, the California State Constitution of 1879. From (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:California_State_Constitution_of_1879.djvu/19)

[24] In Re Ah Fong, 3 Sawyer 144-161, Sept. 21, 1874. From (https://cite.case.law/f-cas/1/213/)

[25] Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275, March 20, 1876. From (https://reenactments.aabany.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/7.-22-LCW-FINAL.pdf)

[26] Ho Ah Kow v. Matthew Nunnan, 5 Sawyer 552, July 7, 1879. From (http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Ho_Ah_Kow_v._Nunan)

[27] In re Tiburcio Parrott. United States Circuit Court for the District of California, March 1, 1880. From (https://cite.case.law/f/1/481/). In re Ah Chong. United States Circuit Court for the District of California, June 9, 1880. From (https://cite.case.law/f/2/733/6722760/)

[28] The New York herald, 08 May 1878. From

(https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030313/1878-05-08/ed-1/seq-5/#date1=1875&index=9&rows=20&words=Dennis+Kearney&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=New+York&date2=1882&proxtext=Dennis+Kearney&y=14&x=12&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1)

[29] Ibid.

[30] Weekly Trinity journal. [volume] (Weaverville, Calif.), 23 March 1878. From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025202/1878-03-23/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1875&index=6&rows=20&words=hoodlums+Kearney&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1882&proxtext=Kearney+hoodlums&y=13&x=12&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1)

[31] The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio), 20 Feb. 1879. From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038180/1879-02-20/ed-1/seq-1/)

[32] Gold Hill daily news. [volume] (Gold Hill, N.T. [Nev.]), 27 Feb. 1880. From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84022046/1880-02-27/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1875&sort=relevance&rows=20&words=hoodlum+Kearney&searchType=basic&sequence=0&index=15&state=&date2=1882&proxtext=Kearney+hoodlums&y=13&x=12&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=2)

[33] Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California, University of Illinois Press, 1939, p.93.

[34] Ibid. P.90

[35] Daily Los Angeles herald. [volume] (Los Angeles [Calif.]), 30 April 1882. From (https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042459/1882-04-30/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1872&index=8&rows=20&words=Arthur+Chinese&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=California&date2=1882&proxtext=Arthur+Chinese&y=12&x=15&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1)

[36] The Daily Alta California of 16 February 1880. From (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18800216.2.18&dliv=none&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1)

[37] Baker ct al. v. Portland, United States Circuit Court for the District of Oregon, July 21, 1879. From (https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0002.f.cas/0002.f.cas.0472.3.pdf)

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