Chiang Yee: the Silent Traveller from the East

359 Pages·2010·1.775 MB·English

by  Da Zheng

Chiang Yee:
The Silent Traveller
from the East
(cid:2)

Chiang Yee:
The Silent Traveller
from the East
(cid:2)
A Cultural Biography
Da Zheng
foreword by arthur c. danto
rutgers university press
new brunswick, new jersey, and london
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zheng, Da, 1953–
Chiang Yee : the silent traveller from the East, a cultural biography / Da Zheng.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–4693–3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Chiang, Yee, 1903–1977. 2. Chinese American authors—Biography.
3. Chinese American artists—Biography. 4. Chinese—United States—Biography.
5. Chinese —England —Biography. 6. Asian diaspora. 7. Chinese in
Literature. 8. China—In literature 9. Exiles’ writings, English—History and criticism.
10. Travelers’ writings, English —History and criticism. I. Title.
CT1828.C5273Z47 2010
920.0092951073—dc22
2009020396
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2010 by Da Zheng
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer
Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as
defi ned by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typesetting: Jack Donner, BookType
Frontispiece: Chiang-Yee in England. Courtesy of Deh-I Hsiung.
To my family

C O N T E N T S
Foreword: Chiang Yee as I Knew Him, ix
by Arthur C. Danto
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxiii
A Note on Romanization xxvii
1 Chinese Childhood 1
2 Revolutionary Era 17
3 Civil Servant 31
4 No Longer in Need of a Bench 48
5 “Another C. Y.” 65
6 “The Thing Has Come at Last” 83
7 “My Own World” 99
8 Oxford Years 109
9 “My English Christmas” 130
10 To America 147
11 Americanized 170
12 “Invisible Pains” 190
13 Home 208
14 Family and Love 225
15 China Revisited 239
16 Homeward Bound 252
Notes 267
Primary Sources 295
Writings by Chiang Yee 297
Index 301
Illustrations appear between pages 134 and 135.
vii

F O R E W O R D
chiang yee as i knew him
Arthur C. Danto
Chiang Yee—poet, painter, scholar, and exile—was a literary presence in the
West during and after World War II, when, as “The Silent Traveller,” he wrote
and illustrated a number of popular books, initially about picturesque sites in
England, but ultimately about many of the great cities of the West as seen by a
cultivated Chinese stranger, struck by objects and practices that the natives took
for granted. The illustrations alone assured him a certain reputation—it was as
though he painted western motifs without changing the style that identifi ed the
artist as Chinese. This even brought him to the attention of the great art historian
Ernst Gombrich, who saw in these orientalesque sketches support for one of his
major theses: that a painter “tends to see what he paints rather than to paint what
he sees.” There was a similar charm in the prose in which he wrote his travel
books, which were marked by a gentle curiosity and a wry humor; and he was
pleased to describe, at his own expense, his struggles with the various cultures
he encountered. One of his favorite anecdotes concerned seeing two newspapers,
each describing an important fi re on its front page. One said that a building had
burned down, the other that the same building had burned up. How could it be
both? How could one learn a language in which burning up and burning down
meant the same thing? Or was there a difference between them? I can still hear
him laughing at his own joke.
In addition to the Silent Traveller books, Chiang Yee published several books
on aspects of Chinese culture, including some memoirs of his early life. On the
jacket of one, he depicted three stages in his growing up, marked by differences in
his haircut. The book described a form of life that was vanishing from the face of
the earth. The China in which he came of age was kept alive only in the memoirs
of an exile like himself. For reasons personal as well as political, however, he
remained in exile more than forty years, during which time China itself changed,
convulsively and profoundly, so the China he embodied and which he wrote and
lectured about was becoming a very different country than the one he had left.
ix