Asian

“ Physical Traits of the Asian Race.—As the last mentioned adjective intimates, the prevailing color is yellowish, tending in different regions toward a brown or white, but never reaching the clear white of the western European. The hair is straight, coarse and black, abundant on the head, scanty on the face, almost absent on the body. The stature is medium or undersized, the legs thin, and the muscular power inferior to that of the Eurafrican race. ”

“ During the observance of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, we celebrate the cultural traditions, ancestry, native languages, and unique experiences represented among the more than 30 ethnic groups from Asia and the Pacific found here in the United States. We also recognize millions of Asian/Pacific Americans whose love of family, hard work, and community has helped unite us as a people and sustain us as a Nation. ”

“ In this situation it becomes vital that our own country orient it's policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than to pursue a course blind to reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet their right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support, not imperious direction. ”

“ But as soon as the Syro-Christians were in the minority and the Christians of European stock in the majority, persecution and intolerance commenced, and the word of the great Oriental Prophet Jesus Christ was sadly mutilated and misunderstood by that superior race, the “Whites.”
But even then you could not rid yourselves of our subtle Asian influence. I know your gifts of energy and your spirit of progress; but we men of Asia have a power of resistance and a capacity for rapid recuperation which you can never fathom. ”

“ It isn’t a matter of skin, I tell you, it isn’t a matter of color; it is a matter of character, of mind and of social fitness—the difference between the negroes and the Asian. Asia can teach us a great deal. And some of us are just beginning to suspect it. Sên King-lo’s ancestors were gentlemen, and were scholars and statesmen and artists when yours and mine were living in a tadpole state of human existence. We have risen—you and I. The darkies can’t rise—not an inch higher than they have. We never—if we’ve got a sane hair on our head—can treat the negroes as our equals ”

“ Over time, other immigrants journeyed to America from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Asian Subcontinent. Today, Asian/Pacific Americans are one of the fastest growing segments of our population, having increased in number from fewer than 1.5 million in 1970 to approximately 10.5 million in 2000. ”

“ The topic of the day is "Pan-Asianism," but before we touch upon the subject, we must first have a clear conception of Asia's place in the world. Asia, in my opinion, is the cradle of the world's oldest civilization. ”

“ In the vast solitudes of Asia, whence the Indian races migrated to this continent, so far as the loneliness of savage deserts and endless plains might exert an influence, we should expect to find the same general character. But the Asians are almost universally pastoral—the Americans never ”

“ True, that, compared with Japan, China is no "menace" to America. But though China is the root of our problem, there is something in the nature of the true Oriental that makes him charming, jovial, childlike and lovable. Japan is, of course, not truly Oriental. Japan is essentially Malay, mixed with some Oriental and a little Caucasian. But in the two and a half years of my residence in Japan I did not once come across a white person who had that same unexplainable admiration for the native that is the outstanding characteristic of white men in China. ”

“ Asia, Captain Gray, for all our American investigations, is a mystery to us. We think we have removed the veil from its history, and we have only detached a thread. The religion of Asia is built on its past. And religion is the pulse of Asia. The Asiatics have taught their children that, from the dawn of history, they have been lords of the civilized world. What would be the result if it were proved that a white race dominated Central Asia before the Christian era? The traditions of six hundred million people who worship their past would be shattered. ”

“ No very long acquaintance is required with any Asiatic race, however, to satisfy us that their instincts and ours are by no means the same—in fact, that they are at opposite poles. We shall lay no stress upon the redundancy of honorific terms in all Asiatic languages, some of which in this respect are indefinitely more elaborate than the Chinese. ”

“ Now I can assure my young friends in England that Asia is worth seeing and studying. There are many, many features in the character and the social life of the Asiatic which deserve our admiration, although there are also others which will rouse our compassion and instigate us more greatly to love our own country and to cling the more closely to our own religion and institutions. What will strike us most is the difference of opinion and of view we meet at every step in the interior life of the Asiatic. ”

“ We know, too, enough of Asiatics in general, and of the Chinese in particular, to feel secure that much of what we know, and much of what we possess, would be to them of inestimable benefit. True, for many centuries they have lived without assistance from the Western world, and there must have been considerable value in the laws and customs by which such an enormous mass of human beings could have been held together for so long a period. ”

“ Her toy dinners and playhouse teas offer her the first experiences in the entertainment of guests. With her dolls, she takes her first lessons in the domestic relations and affections.
No science has ever originated and been carried to any degree of perfection in Asia. There is no reason why this statement should cause the noses of Europeans and Americans to twitch in derision and pride, for there is another fact equally momentous in favor of the Asiatics,—viz., no religion that originated outside of Asia has ever been carried to any degree of perfection. ”

“ The Asiatic, from the dawn of his reason, is nourished with the marvellous, trained to credulity, and prepared for mysticism, the bane of practical life; in short, he imbibes from his infancy a superstition from which he never frees himself, always prone to interpret every unusual phenomenon as a miracle. No sort of study enables him to correct his first impressions, or to enlighten his ignorance; natural history and experimental philosophy are not cultivated in Asia. ”

“ The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed.... It contributes much to these feelings that Southern Asia is and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life. The great officina gentium. Man is a weed in these regions. ”

“ Though Asia has been the mother of the world, and has sent out so many and so eminent races, it has not been to the depletion of the parent country. In race, figure, color, manner of life, nationality, religion, political and social bonds of union, forms of government, culture, language, it is so richly diversified, that no continent, viewed historically, can be compared to it. Asia seems to have been created to send forth its fruitful scions of life to all the other great divisions of the earth. ”

“ But when all is said and done, have not Asiatics just as much right to rejoice in the sunshine, such as it is, of the West as Europeans have to bask in that of the East? Is not the life of a Tartar, a Mongol, or a Mandarin really as sacred as that of a native of France or of England? ”

“ The vast empires into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names and images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse. ”

“ THE CHINESE FEAST OF THE DEAD.
Weird and Ghastly Scene in a Chinese Temple at Midnight.—The Story of Concatenation Bill.—The True History of the Great Indian Fight on the Gila.
What a strange, peculiar people are these Chinese! Dwelling among us, they are not of us; but are born and grow up, and toil and die here in the midst of the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century, just as they have been being born and growing up, and toiling and dying, for ages on ages, in the "Central Flowery Empire" on the other shore of the blue Pacific. ”

“ Even if it could be made to appear probable that, in the first ages of the world, Asia—and in Asia, Persia, was the centre of civilisation, yet it must be granted, that, so far as authentic history reaches, the picture of the Asiatic nations is uniform in its character and colouring. Asia has indeed produced some races distinguished by a fierce energy, by romantic courage, by loftiness and richness of imagination. ”

“ Consequently we expect to make the Asiatic exhibit the special point; we want to exhibit all the products of Asia and the Indian Archipelago, the Philippines, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Australia, New Zealand, and Formosa, and so we will have the first Asiatic expression of commerce on so large a scale, showing unity of language, racial features, religion and customs, for we can collect from all those peoples and realize a unifying of the Oriental Nations, and enlighten the world as to the Oriental essence, thought, ideals,—past and future. ”

“ The more recent studies of ancient Chinese culture show that a somewhat parallel condition existed in Asia. Apparently, then, we have a more isolated people in the New World who did not travel the road to higher culture so rapidly as their relatives in Asia, the connection between whose centers of development having long been broken by climatic changes and later almost completely blocked by hordes of primitive hunter and fisher-folk. ”

“ Thus with the exception of a little folklore the literature of Indo-China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and Manchuria Literature,
art, science.is mainly Indian or Chinese. The chief original literatures are Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, Arabic and Persian. The Japanese have produced few books of importance, and their compositions are chiefly remarkable as being lighter and more secular than is usual in Asia, but the older Chinese works take high rank both for their merits and the effect they have had. ”

“ No written language has ever been or is now understood by so many people as the Chinese. The Chinese were a civilized people centuries before the Japanese had, even according to their own uncertain legends, emerged into the light as an empire. If we accept the opinion which seems most reasonable, that the Japanese came over to the Japanese islands from the continent by way of Korea, and belong to the Mongol tribes of central Asia, then we must assume that the Japanese were closely related to a large section of the Chinese. ”

“ Those women, whose profession is publicity, are an important part of the social structure of every Asiatic race I have known, except only the Parsi race. To ignore their existence, when travelling through Asia in person, or with pen, is stupid. To slink by the strong position that they hold in the East, the big significance of their firm placement in the East, and the several lessons they will not fail to teach us, if we do not fear to learn, is prudish. ”

“ Our nation has the great middle region of the best continent of the world, and our people are descendants from the most vigorous races. Western Europe, (p. 229) over-peopled, sends us her most energetic sons and daughters, in numbers augmenting with each succeeding decade. Asia is beginning to send forth a portion of her surplus population to our shores. Though of inferior race, the Eastern Asiatics are industrious and ingenious cultivators and artisans. ”

“ At a correct Chinese dinner the women look on from behind a trellis work. The Chinese hold that the seat of the human understanding is the stomach.
A well-conducted Chinese funeral is the most gorgeous sight in Asia. It may seem to us a little tinselly, but that is a mere matter of taste; but I, who make bold to like the Chinese, can’t claim that they have in all things a superabundance of taste. ”

“ Within this generation, a new Asiatic power has suddenly appeared in a part of Asia far removed from the region in which the wise men of old lived and studied, and the might of that nation is even now checking the progress of huge and haughty Russia. But brilliant as has been the meteoric career of Japan, there is another race in Asia, which, though now moving more sluggishly, has possibilities of development that may in time make it a dominant factor in the future of the world. ”

“ The dense population of South-East Asia, comprising the Burmese, the Siamese, and especially the Chinese, shows a type of complexion and feature plainly related to the Tatar or Mongolian, but the general character of their language is different. The Chinese language is made up of monosyllables, each a word with its own real or grammatical sense, so that our infant-school books in one syllable give some notion of Chinese sentences. ”

“ They do not realize that in Asia the average brain is not one whit inferior in quality to the average European brain; that history shows Asiatics to be as bold, as vigorous, as generous, as self-sacrificing, and as capable of strong collective action as Europeans, and that there are and must continue to be a great many more Asiatics than Europeans in the world. ”

“ And, also impromptu, the love-making of Asia which is a trifle indelicate to Western ears and prejudices; the correct method of procedure being for the gallant man to tilt his turban or fur cap to a rakish angle—to show that he is a fast man—to tease his mustaches to the sharp points of a single, well-waxed hair, to shoulder his ashen stick, and to stalk about with a nonchalant, devil-may-care air until he sees a lady whose eyes seem to roll invitingly behind her veil. ”