When East drew West
QUESTION
I recently saw an old Chinese-style drawing of the village of Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, by an artist called Wang Tao. What was he doing there?
Wang Tao is remembered not as an artist but as an important figure in 19th-century cultural exchange between China and the West. He was born in 1828, the son of a schoolmaster who gave him a thorough grounding in the Confucian Classics.
In 1849, he was taken on by Walter Henry Medhurst, of the London Missionary Society Press in Shanghai, to assist with a translation of the new Testament into Chinese. He remained at the press for 13 years, converting to Christianity in 1854.
During this time, as well as working with Medhurst on the Chinese new Testament (which came out in 1861), he produced translations with Medhurst’s fellow missionaries alexander Wylie and Joseph Edkins, of several English books on subjects as diverse as optics, the history of Western astronomy and trade between China and Britain. He also acquired a knowledge of printing and publishing that he would make use of in his later career.
Between 1850 and 1864, China was riven by a civil war known as the Taiping Rebellion. This arose out of an insurgency by a Christian sect called the god Worshipping Society, whose declared objective was to establish on earth a ‘Heavenly Kingdom of Peace’ (Taiping Tianguo) based on a form of Christianity.
The insurgents eventually occupied large parts of southern China, including Shanghai. In 1862, Wang Tao wrote a letter to one of the Taiping leaders suggesting that the Westerners might be willing to take the side of the Taiping Kingdom against the ruling Qing dynasty. When Qing forces recaptured Shanghai, this letter fell into their hands. To avoid arrest, Wang Tao fled by sea to Hong Kong, a British possession.
There, Scottish missionary James Legge, principal of the anglo-Chinese College, employed him as his assistant in the monumental task of translating the Confucian Thirteen Classics into English.
In 1867, Legge retired to his native Scotland, settling in Dollar, and invited Wang to join him to continue their joint work.
Wang travelled to Marseilles by ship, calling at Singapore, Ceylon, Penang, aden and Cairo, then by train to Paris, from Paris to London and on to Dollar. He took the chance to see the sights in all these places and recorded his impressions in a book called Jottings From Carefree Travels.
In the same year, he delivered a lecture in Chinese at oxford on the subject of cultural exchange between East and West. after three years of working with Legge, Wang returned to Hong Kong in 1870, where he continued to publish translations of Western works. Two books in particular, a Brief History of France (Fa-guo Zhilue) and a Record of The Franco-Prussian War (Pu-Fa Zhan Ji), caught the attention of leading figures in the Qing government and led eventually to a pardon for his indiscreet letter to the Taiping rebels.
In 1874, Wang acquired a printworks and set up the Xunhuan Ribao, the first Chinese-language newspaper financed by Chinese capital.
The paper advocated a programme of modernisation for China, including reform of the political system, railway construction and the building of shipyards and modern factories.
Leading statesman Li Hongjang, aware of Wang’s standing in China and the West, invited him to visit, and in 1882 Wang went back to Shanghai after 20 years away.
He published books in the fields of science and technology, economics, history, astronomy, politics and literature (including fiction). He died in 1897. Graham Healey, School of East Asian
Studies, University of Sheffield.
QUESTION
A plaque on the wall of an old warehouse in Hackney Wick, East London, says one of the first plastics was invented there. What was that plastic like?
THE Parkesine Company, established at Hackney Wick, East London in 1866, made Parkesine, the first man-made plastic, patented by alexander Parkes in 1856.
Moderately nitrated cellulose is called pyroxylin, a material which dissolves in several organic solvents. When applied to a surface, the solvents evaporate, leaving a thin, transparent film, named collodion, which found widespread use as a carrier for photosensitive materials. When a thick layer of collodion dried, the resulting material was hard, water resistant and somewhat elastic.
British businessman alexander Parkes (1813-90) focused his efforts on developing collodion as an industrial material. apprenticed to Messenger and Sons, brass founders of Birmingham, before going to work for george and Henry Elkington, who patented the electroplating process, Parkes gained considerable experience in working with natural polymers. He had worked with gum rubber, gutta percha trees (that produce latex) and chemically treated gum rubber. In 1846, he patented the cold cure process for vulcanising rubber, called by Thomas Hancock ‘one of the most valuable and extraordinary discoveries of the age’.
Parkesine was first exhibited at the 1862 London International Exhibition. Its inventor claimed it was a substance ‘partaking in a large degree of the properties of ivory, tortoiseshell, horn, hardwood, india rubber, gutta percha, etc, and which will . . . to a considerable extent, replace such materials . . . ’
But when mixing pyroxylin with various stiff oils, he used several solvents and when the solvents evaporated, the new plastic shrunk excessively. Combs became so warped and twisted they were useless.
other items produced by Parkes included medallions, salvers, knife holders, card holders and pens, but the material proved unreliable and Parkes’s company shut in 1868, after just two years’ operation.
Parkesine’s successors were Xylonite, produced by Daniel Spill (an associate of Parkes) in nearby Homerton, and Celluloid, from John Wesley Hyatt in the U.S.
Peter Shore, London E11.
QUESTION
Roy Keane caused a stir by saying ‘if Ashley Young is a Man United player then I’m a Chinaman’. My dad used this phrase. What other phrases have gone out of fashion?
FURTHER to earlier answers, one of my family’s old favourites was: ‘If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers.’ I’m in my 50s and tinkers were a distant memory even when I was a child.
Phil Brown, Whitchurch, Hants. In My schooldays, the expression ‘tanner Woolworths’ was used to belittle any present that another boy proudly showed off — but it’s doubly meaningless today.
Kenneth Adams, London. WHEn I was a child in the Fifties, my mum used to say when it was bedtime: ‘Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’
Colin Cartwright, Manchester.