Posted: January 5th, 2018 | No Comments »
In 1915, or thereabouts, Eunice Tietjens was staying at a Christian mission station in Wusih (Wuxi) in Jiangsu…clearly she had a servant of a certain age with bound feet…
My Servant
The feet of my servant thump on the floor.
Thump, they go, and thump – dully, deformedly.
My servant has shown me her feet.
The instep has been broken upward into a bony cushion. The big toe is pointed as an awl. The small toes are folded under the cushioned instep. Only the heel is untouched.
The thing is white and bloodless with the pallor of dead flesh.
But my servant is quite contented.
She smiles toothlessly and shows me how small are her feet, her “golden lillies.”
Thump, they go, and thump!
Wusih
Posted: January 4th, 2018 | No Comments »
This poem was written around 1915 when Tietjens was visiting Wusih (Wuxi) in Jiangsu near Shanghai…at the time the notion of the dandy was as much about refined habits and leisurely hobbies as it was (as I think is more common today) mostly about appearance and dress….
The Dandy
He swaggers in green silk and his two coats are lined with fur. Above his velvet shoes his trim, bound ankles twinkle pleasantly.
His nails are the longest.
Quite the glass of fashion is Mr. Chu!
In one slim hand – the ultimate punctilio – dangles a bamboo cage, wherein a small brown bird sits with a face of perpetual surprise.
Mr. Chu smiles the benevolent smile of one who satisfies both fashion and a tender heart.
Does not a bird need an airing?
Wusih
Posted: January 3rd, 2018 | No Comments »
Around 1915 Tietjens, staying at a Christian mission nearby, visited the Hanyang Arsenal and Iron Works in Wuhan, built in 1893 as a major contribution to the notions of the Self-Strengthening Movement….
New China: The Iron Works
The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and glow; gigantic machinery clanks, and in living iridescent streams the white-hot slag pours out.
This is to-morrow set in yesterday, the west imbedded in the east, a graft but not a growth.
And you who walk beside me, picking your familiar way between the dynamos, the cars, the piles of rails – you too are of to-morrow, grafted with an alien energy.
You wear the costume of the west, you speak my tongue as one who knows; you talk casually of Sheffield, Pittsburgh, Essen…
You touch on Socialism, walk-outs, and the industrial population of te British Isles.
Almost you might be one of us.
And then I ask:
“How much do those poor coolies earn a day, who take the place of carts?”
You shrug and smile.
“Eighteen coppers. Something less than eight cents in your money. They are not badly paid. They do not die.”
Again I ask:
“And is it true that you’ve a Yamen, police judge, all your own?”
Another shrug and smile.
“Yes, he attends to all small cases of disorder. For larger crimes we pass the offender over to the city courts.”
**
“Conditions” you explain as we sit with a cup of tea, “conditions here are difficult.”
Your figure has grown lax, your voice a little weary. You are fighting, I can see, upheld by that strange graft of western energy.
Yet odds are heavy, and the Orient is in your blood. Your voice is weary.
“There are no skilled laborers” you say, “Among the owners no cooperation.
It is like – like working in a nightmare, here in China. It drags at me, it drags”…
You bow me out with great civility.
The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and glow, gigantic machinery clanks and in living iridescent streams the white-0hot slag pours out.
Beyond the gate the filth begins again.
A beggar rots and grovels, clutching at my skirt with leprous hands. A woman sits sorting hog-bristles; she coughs and sobs.
The stench is sickening
To-morrow! did they say?
(Hanyang)
Posted: January 2nd, 2018 | No Comments »
Written during Tietjens’ (who was an American) visit to Shanghai sometime before 1917…the Shanghai Municipal Police’s Sikh Branch was established in 1884. Sikh policemen wore red turbans.
The Sikh Policeman: A British Subject
Of what, I wonder, are you thinking?
It is something beyond my world I know, something I cannot guess.
Yet I wonder.
Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate them with an automatic hatred – the hatred of the wel-fed for the starved, of the warlike for the weak.
When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with the drawing back of your silken beard, from your white teeth.
With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short gutturals.
You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be of them you are thinking.
Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master whom you serve.
No more do you know of us the “Masters” than you know of them the “dogs”.
We are above you, they below.
And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect and splendid, lithe and male.
Your scarlet turban frames your neat black head,
And you are thinking.
Or are you?
Perhaps we are only stung with thought.
I wonder.
Shanghai
Posted: January 1st, 2018 | 1 Comment »
written sometime before 1917 during a visit to Peking….
The Altar of Heaven
Beneath the leaning, rain-washed sky this great white circle – beautiful!
In three white terraces the circle lies, piled one on one towards Haven. And on each terrace the white balustrade climbs in aspiring marble, etched in cloud.
And Heaven is very near.
For this is worship native as the air, wide as the wind, and poignant as the rain,
Pure aspiration, the eternal dream.
Beneath the leaning sky this great white circle!
Peking
Posted: December 31st, 2017 | No Comments »
Written sometime before 1917 in Hwai-yuen (Huaiyuan), Anhui where Eunice visited, probably with the well-established Presbyterian Mission in the town….Tietjins (who had not been in China long at this point) was obviously quite shocked by the poor state of the beggar, refers to him/her only as “it” and suggests (as was believed of most beggars at the time, and was true of some) that the beggar had been professionally maimed to increase their income opportunities….
The Beggar
Christ! What is that-that-Thing?
Only a beggar, professionally maimed, I think.
Across the Narrow street it lies, the street where the children are.
It is rocking back and forth, back and forth, ingratiatingly, in the noisome filth.
Beside the body are stretched two naked stumps of flesh, on one the remnant of a foot. The wounds are not new wounds, but they are open and they fester. There are flies on them.
The Thing is whining, shrilly, hideously.
Professionally maimed, I think.
Christ!
(Hwai Yuen)
Posted: December 30th, 2017 | No Comments »
The Story Teller
In a corner of the market-place he sits, his face the target for many eyes.
The sombre crowd about him is motionless.
Behind their faces no lamps burn; only their eyes glow faintly with a reflected light.
For their eyes are on his face.
It alone is alive, is vibrant, moving bronze under a sun of bronze.
The taut skin, like polished metal, shines along his cheek and jaw. His eyes cut upward from a slender nose, and his quick mouth moves sharply out and in.
Artful are the gestures of his mouth, elaborate and full of guile. When he draws back the bow of his lips his face is like a mask of lacquer, set with teeth of pearl, fantastic, terrible…
What strange tale lives in the gestures of his mouth?
Does a fox-maiden, bewitching, tiny-footed, lure a scholar to his doom? Is an unfilial son tortured of devils? Or does a decadent queen sport with her eunuchs?
I cannot tell.
The faces of the people are wooden; only their eyes burn dully with a reflected light.
I shall never know.
I am an alien…alien.
(Nanking)
Posted: December 29th, 2017 | No Comments »
I thought I’d kick off 2018 on China Rhyming with some poetry…specifically from Eunice Tietjens and her largely forgotten and hard to find 1917 collection, Profiles from China, Sketches in Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior….the poems, which appeared in a variety of journals and magazines including (Harriet Monroe’s always keen on Chinese-related work) Poetry, The Seven Arts, The Chicago Evening Post, The Graphic, and The Little Review. Tietjens wrote of Chinese scenes and people as well the treaty port of Shanghai and colony of Hong Kong. I’ll try to pair the works with relevant photographs from the period as we progress…
Tietjens, born in 1844, was an American poet and journalist. She was a correspondent in France during WW1 for the Chicago Daily News while her poetry began to appear around the same time championed by Monroe’s Poetry journal. She was a great traveller and visited Japan and Taiwan (and elsewhere) as well as China.
I’ll dive in for a couple of weeks sampling her poems with some images and we’ll see if we can’t restore her reputation from obscurity a bit….
