The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 12 | Article ID 2984 | Dec 01, 2008

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Ashes of the American Raj in China: John Leighton Stuart,Pearl S. Buck, and Edgar Snow

Charles W. Hayford

Ashes of the American Raj in China:John Leighton Stuart, Pearl S. Buck,and Edgar Snow

Charles W. Hayford

In a minor skirmish in the history wars,or what might be ca l led “ashesdiplomacy,” Chinese authorities finallyallowed the ashes of America’s lastambassador to China before 1949, JohnLeighton Stuart (1876-1964), to beinterred next to the graves of his parentsi n H a n g z h o u(http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/19/asia/bury.php), the southern Chinese citywhere he was born.

Earlier this fall, local authorities inZhenjiang, a city on the Yangzi known forits vinegar, opened a Pearl Buck Museum(http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20081019_China_dedicates_Pearl_Buck_Museum.html) in the house where Buck(1892-1973) spent most of her firsteighteen years. The ashes of anotherhistoric figure, Edgar Snow (1905-1971),are divided between the Hudson Riverand a spot by the Nameless Lake on thecampus of Beijing University, which hadbeen the campus of Yenching University.

Leighton Stuart was president whenSnow taught there in the 1930s.

Buck at home in Zhenxiang as a child

Buck’s The Good Earth (1931) andSnow’s Red Star Over China (1937) werethe two most influential American bookson China before the war, but Stuart wasthe most eminent American in China inthese years. He built Yenching from aparochial missionary seminary in 1919into China’s most illustrious privateuniversity, spent the war years in aJapanese internment camp, and becameAmerican ambassador to China in 1946.

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Buck Museum Zhenjiang

Stuart and Buck had much in common.Both were both raised in provincialYangzi valley cities by missionaryparents; both learned Chinese beforeEnglish; both returned to China asmissionaries but declined to follow theproselytizing strategies of their fathers;both felt that they were at least as muchChinese as American; and both weredevastated when their two countrieswent to war in 1950. Snow came toShanghai 1929 and soon decided to makeChina his career.

All three played roles in an informal butreal American Raj in China partlymodeled on the British Raj in India andpartly reacting against its imperialarrogance and racism.

This Raj developed in the early twentiethcentury after the Boxer Rebellionprovoked not only a ruthless alliedintervention but also the Open Door

notes. Diplomatically, the Open Doorasked the other great powers to maintainfree trade in their zones of influence;culturally, the Open Door echoed thefamous goals President McKinley set forcolonial rule in the Philippines: “To uplift,civilize, and Christianize.” The Open DoorRaj assumed that when the doors wereopen and restraints removed, Chinawould naturally follow the American patht o d e m o c r a c y , p r o s p e r i t y a n dChristianity.

By the 1920s diplomats, missionaries,soldiers, and entrepreneurs haddeveloped a Sino-American web ofAmerica-in-China schools, colleges,missions, hospitals, newspapers,businesses, and government advisersprotected by extraterritoriality andgunboats. Many “mishkids” went to theStates for college before coming home toChina for their careers, as did Chinese“returned students” recruited throughAmerican schools or businesses.

Both Chinese and Americans of the Rajwere interpreters who presented ormaybe created China for Americans.Henry Luce grew up in a missioncompound in Shandong, but aftergraduating from Yale in 1918 stayed onto found Time Magazine, a major supportfor Chiang Kai-shek. Starting with YungWing, who graduated from Yale in 1854,Chinese students recruited throughmission schools came to Americancolleges (though the country soon put anend to Chinese immigration). OwenLattimore, raised in Tianjin, saw from his

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travels in Central Asia that frontierinteractions were basic, not peripheral, inthe historical formation of China. Thediplomats John Paton Davies and John S.Service, both raised in Sichuan, returnedto China in the 1920s to join the ForeignService and eventually take the blame for“the loss of China.” [1]

Buck and Stuart returned after college inspite of doubts. Stuart later wrote that itwas “difficult to exaggerate the aversion Ihad developed against going to China asa missionary.” Unlike the missionaries hegrew up with (one of whom was PearlBuck’s father), he had no tolerance for“haranguing crowds of idle, curiouspeople in street chapels or temple fairs,selling tracts for almost nothing, beingregarded with amused or angry contemptby the native population, physicaldiscomforts or hardships, etc.” [2]

China’s nationalism after World War Itransformed the Open Door Raj. ChiangKai -shek’s 1926-1927 NorthernExpedition sparked anti-imperialistviolence which many westerners saw asthe return of Boxer xenophobia. PearlBuck and her family were rescued fromNanjing on a U.S. Navy ship left overfrom the Spanish-American War, andthen spent a year in Japan. Because ofthis first hand view, during the war sheopposed demonizing the Japanese as apeople. Many missionaries neverreturned to their China posts after thewar, but those who chose to stay had tocome to terms with the new Nationalistgovernment.

USS Pigeon

Yenching, in Stuart’s vision, was to be aWestern liberal arts university withChinese characteristics, that is, not amissionary school but a Christian one.Christianity, after all, was universal, notAmerican. In the 1920s the universitystayed independent of the governmentbut established its nationalist credentialsby recruiting the finest Chinese scholars,innovating the study of China’s classicswith modern scholarly techniques, andengaging students in patriotic service toproduce a cosmopolitan middle class withresponsibility for the new nation. In fact,however, perhaps the nation in Stuart’simagining resembled the architecture ofthe Yenching library, a western structurewith Chinese touches.

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Yenching Library

The vision in the writing that Buckproduced in China was remarkablysimilar to Yenching’s vision. Bothembraced China’s cultural autonomy andclaimed a right to participate in China’snationalism; both opposed revolution,which they neutralized by defining it asviolence and destruction; both justifiedgradual change by rooting it in tradition.

The Good Earth is a more political novelthan readers at home realized. WangLung “the farmer,” as Buck calls herprotagonist, dramatized her skepticismabout the missions of three men whoeach wanted to change China. The firstwas her father’s evangelical mission; thesecond was the scientific uplift mission ofher agronomist husband, John LossingBuck; and the third was the peasantrevolutionary mission of Mao Zedong,whose 1927 Autumn Harvest Uprisingtook place only a few hundred miles fromwhere she wrote.

A committed feminist, Buck does presentthe farm fami ly as oppress ivelypatriarchal, but she does not preach.China had to change on its own, with nomention of Christianity. What is morestriking is that even in the face of massstarvation and political chaos, Buckrefused to entertain the need fortechnology, land reform, or breaking thepower of rural elites. Her construction ofa key turning point in the plot is a majorfailure of intellectual responsibility. Afterdrought has driven the family to the bigcity, Wang finally regains his land byluck, not by solving structural problems:Wang is just fine using the wisdom andhoes of his ancestors. [3]

Home on furlough in 1932, Buck asked aluncheon of mission supporters at NewYork’s Astor Hotel “is there a place forforeign missions?” She was nearly put ontrial for heresy when she complained thatAmerica had sent missionaries “so coarseand insensitive among a sensitive andcultivated people that my heart has fairlybled with shame. I can never have donewith my apologies to the Chinese peoplethat in the name of a gentle Christ wehave sent such people to them.” She soonleft China and her husband to returnpermanently to the States. [4]

The invasions of the 1930s transformedChina’s patriotic agenda from one offighting western imperialism to one ofresisting Japan. Americans in China werenow allies not imperialists. Edgar Snowmoved to Beijing, where he taughtjournalism part time at Yenching.

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President Stuart asked him to preparelectures on fascism in the world and healso edited an anthology of short storieswhich Buck arranged to have publishedby her new husband, Richard Walsh. RedStar Over China (1937) fit into the newpatriotic agenda by reconceptualizingChina as a country where popularnationalism, even revolution, wereessential in order to fight Japan. NeitherYenching nor Buck is mentioned in thebook, perhaps because neither promotedthis agenda.

Buck’s anti-imperialism is dramatized intwin biography-memoirs of her parentspublished in 1936. These are among themost deeply thoughtful and arrestingbooks written about the Americanexperience in China, and I am mystifiedthat they have been out of print for solong. The Exile, drafted just after hermother died in 1921, tells her mother’sstory. In this version, her father,dedicated to “the Work,” scarcelyrecognized the existence of his wife orfamily and failed to understand aperilous, unyielding China which yieldedhim few converts for a lifetime ofproselytizing. Her mother, with herhumanistic religion based in the arts ofeveryday life, changed the hearts of herneighbors and Chinese friends. Shelearned from China yet regretted comingas a missionary, wishing she had insteadstayed at home to civilize her own people.Fighting Angel, written in 1936, told herfather’s story but condemned his missionas “imperialism of the spirit” and as partof the “astounding imperialisms of theWest.” These two stories explain her

withdrawal from China to become amissionary who tackled the racism,sexism, and imperialism of her owncountry. [5]

The Pacific War destroyed the Open DoorRaj; Japan’s defeat changed China’sagenda back to what it had been in the1920s: nationalism and anti-imperialism.When he was named Ambassador toChina, he could speak Chiang Kai-shek’sZhejiang patois but Stuart could not getthe Nationalists to reform or negotiate asettlement with the Communists, anumber of whose leaders were Yenchinggraduates. In the end, his insider statusand American power were irrelevant.

John Leighton Stuart and Zhou Enlai, 1945

Mao wrote famously and unfairly in 1949

Leighton Stuart is a symbol of thecomplete defeat of U.S. policy ofaggression. Leighton Stuart is anAmerican born in China; he hasfairly wide social connections and

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spent many years runn ingmissionary schools in China; heonce sat in a Japanese gaol duringthe War of Resistance; he used topretend to love both the UnitedStates and China and was able todece ive qu i te a number o fChinese.... [6]

When Stuart returned to the US, ColdWar America, like Mao, was hostile to theidea that someone could love bothcountries. Almost forgotten, Stuart diedin 1964 without seeing China again.

Edgar Snow and Pearl Buck did not faremuch better. Snow moved to Switzerlandand continued to write about China,returning to China in 1960 and then forthe last time in 1970. Buck was suspectbecause of her racial liberalism and anti-imperialism but generally moved on toless provocative (and more lucrative)topics. With the Korean War in mind, shewrote in her 1954 memoir, My SeveralWorlds: “Over and over again in recentyears Americans have said to me withreal sadness that they cannot understandwhy the Chinese hate us ‘when we havedone so much for them.’ Actually, ofcourse, we have done nothing for them.They did not ask us to send missionariesnor did they seek our trade.” [7]

Snow and Mao Zedong in 1936

When Snow was dying of pancreaticcancer, just before Richard Nixon’s 1972trip to China, Zhou Enlai dispatched ateam of doctors to his Swiss home, butwhen Buck applied for a visa to China,she received a letter explaining that “inview of the fact that for a long time youhave in your works taken an attitude ofdistortion, smear, and vilification towardsthe people of China and its leaders, I amauthorized to inform you that we cannotaccept your request for a visit to China.”Buck directed that her gravestone haveno English, only her name in Chinesecharacters. [8]

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Buck grave

The return of Stuart’s ashes and theopening of the Pearl Buck Museum havesomething to do with local autonomy andtourist dollars, but they also are part of anew nationalism which, at least when it isnot in panic mode, is more relaxed andeclectic. China’s patriotic hall of famenow includes strange team-mates:Confucius, Buddha, the QianlongEmperor, and the basketball player YaoMing. Once the American Raj in Chinafollowed the British Raj in India onto thea s h h e a p o f h i s t o r y(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_heap_of_history), this nationalism couldeventually accept not only Edgar Snow,who favored Mao’s revolution, but alsoPearl Buck and John Leighton Stuart,who doubted Mao but loved China.

The experiences of Buck, Stuart, andSnow suggest pointers for understandingtoday’s frustrated nationalism in SouthAsia and the Middle East: national self-determination comes before all else; theneed for flexibility in dealing with insults

and outrages; the futility of enforcingliberal values militarily; and the benefitsof allowing time to pass.

NOTES

[1] “The Open Door Raj: Chinese-American Cultural Relations, 1900-1945,”in Warren I. Cohen, ed., Pacific Passages(Columbia University Press, 1995):139-162; William T. Rowe, “Owen,Lattimore, Asia, and ComparativeHistory,” Journal of Asian Studies 66.3(2007): 759-786.

[2] Quoted in Philip West, YenchingUniversity and Sino-Western Relations,1916-1972 (Harvard University Press1976): 24, from John Leighton Stuart,Fifty Years in China: The Memoirs of JohnLeighton Stuart, Missionary andAmbassador (New York: Random House,1954).

[3] Charles W. Hayford, “What's So BadAbout The Good Earth?” Education AboutAs ia 3 .3 (December 1998) : 4 -7 .www.aasianst.org/EAA/hayford.htm(http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/hayford.htm)

[4] Pearl S. Buck, “Is There a Case forForeign Missions?” Harper's 166 (1933):144.

[5] Fighting Angel (New York: John Day,1936 ; repr in ted , Norwalk , CT :

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EastBridge, 2008): 76, 302.

[6] “Farewell, Leighton Stuart!” SelectedWorks Volume IV (Peking: ForeignLanguages Press, 1969): 433-440

[7] Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds(John Day, 1954): 199-200.

[8] Peter Conn, Pearl S. Buck: A CulturalBiography (Cambridge University Press,1996): 373

Material in this article has beenadapted from my Introduction toPearl S. Buck, The Exile (NewYork: John Day, 1936; reprintedNorwalk, CT: D’Asia Vue Reprint

Ser ies , Eas tBr idge Press ,forthcoming) and Fighting Angel(New York: John Day, 1936;reprinted Norwalk, CT: EastBridgePress, forthcoming).

Charles W. Hayford is Visiting Professor,Department of History, NorthwesternUniversity. Among his works are “TheStorm over the Peasant: Orientalism,Rhetoric and Representation in ModernChina,” in Shelton Stromquist and JeffreyCox, ed., Contesting the MasterNarrative: Essays in Social History(University of Iowa Press, 1998):150-172.

Recommended citation: Charles Hayford,“Ashes of the American Raj in China:John Leighton Stuart, Pearl S. Buck, andEdgar Snow” The Asia-Pacific Journal,Vol 50-5-08, December 9, 2008.