Routledge Advances in Arl' and Vlsuul Studies Representations of Pain

in Art and Visual Culture

Edited by
Ethics and Images of Pain
Edited by Asbjern Grenstad & Maria Pia Di Bella and James Elkins
Henrik Gustafsson

2 Meanings of Abstract AI't

Between Nature and Theory
Edited by Paul Crowther and
Isabel Wunsche

3 Genealogy and Ontology of the

Western Image and its Digital
Future
John Lechte

4 Representations of Pain in Art

and Visual Culture
Edited by Maria Pia Di Bella and
James Elkins

R u I d
l~yltHI t rnn I ,r lip
NIWVIIIIK IIINIHIN
 OUt Very Own Chinese Postcards ham Hell 109
originally consisted of a total of eight. The last set if of four postcards
8 Our Very Own Chinese labeled "Farming Series," which is probably also incomplete.' I will not
draw on the images from the bird or farming sets in this essay, as they do
Postcards From Hell not share in the iconography of bodily suffering of the two other series.
Still, it is worth noting that anodyne scenes of birds and peasants were
Timothy Brook considered to possess the same capacity to provide the West-the implied
audience of these productions-with a visual vocabulary that expressed the
essence of that famously essentialized zone known as the Orient.
This essay is not about the representation of pain in Chinese art. It is not
even about the Orientalization of pain, though that is certainly an impor-
tant element in understanding how these images came to be produced.
Rather, it is about the capacity for charged images of corporal suffering
Images of Chinese bodies undergoing torment gained a certain notoriety to slip-sometimes unintentionally, sometimes clandestinely-across cul-
in Europe and North America in the early years of the twentieth cen- CUres. This slippage can occur as soon as the images are produced, and
tury, when China was at its nadir and the West at the pinnacle of its indeed can be part of the intention driving their production. It can also
ascendancy. Reproduced in hand-painted watercolors, as private photo- happen later, when the objects are removed from their original sphere of
graphs, and on postcards, these images purported to give Western view- .irculation and frozen in museum exhibits, where the unintended viewer
ers a direct glimpse into the brutality of a distant, alien world. These who happens to encounter them may be induced to take them as standing
pictures had largely disappeared from circulation by 1920 as China began in for a particular culture, in this case China, without realizing the distance
it reemergence as a political power in opposition to Western hegemony. the images have traveled.
Delegitimized as tasteless curios from a more condescending era, they Let us begin with the images. There are gory scenes in both the Buddhist
were removed from the walls and sideboards where they had once been Ilell and Punishments series, as one would expect, yet these postcards are
displayed as souvenirs of a sojourn that someone-missionary uncle? not notably distressing to view. The figures are carefully choreographed,
consular cousin?-made to the Far East. nnd the depictions are stylized, even cartoonish. Unlike the postcards of
Some of these leftovers from an earlier generation managed to survive photographs showing Chinese executions popular among Europeans early
in the attics of families whose members had once had ties to China, and ill the twentieth century, these watercolors do not provoke visceral reactions
some of these have subsequently been donated to libraries or anthropology of horror or distress in the viewer. Nor does it seem that they were intended
museums as historical cultural artifacts. Given the egregiously Orientalist Ill, Despite subject matter that should call forth a charged emotional reac-
aura that emanates from these images of the Chinese body in pain, they are I ion, these cardboard images exude a simplicity, a naive artificiality, even
generally regarded today as likely to be offensive to polite and/or Chinese I quaint charm, that relieves the viewer of the anxiety normally excited by
sensibilities. Rarely put on public display, they are left in the purdah of stor- I' 'garding the pain of others. These are not objects wielding the power to
age along with many of the images discussed in the other chapters of this hock; nor do they strive to occupy aesthetic heights that could elevate them
book. The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British 10 the enchanted realm of fine art. This is not to say that these images have
Columbia, which received in donation two sets of hand-painted postcards nor been expertly and intentionally produced, but the intention, it seems,
of tormented Chinese bodies from the early twentieth century, has opt cl was to create nothing more than stereotypes: to exemplify, perhaps even to
for the tasteful middle course of sequestering them in a display drawer of IPIlU e, but not to reveal or shock.
Chinese artifacts, which has to be opened by the visitor in order for th ' Hy placing these objects on display, albeit inside a drawer that has to be
objects to come into view. opened to make them visible, the MOA has authorized them to be viewed,
These sets consist of eight cards each and were all painted by the sarn ' Illld in consequence, authorized them to be interpreted. In effect, visitors
artist. One set is labeled by hand in English as Buddhist Hell Series. TIll' lurvc b 'en invited to regard these paintings as signs of the culture that pro-
other is labeled Punishments. They d id not a rriv at the M A a Ion but dliced th m a century ago, which of course is Chinese culture. This is what
came as part of a donation that incl udcd post 'a rds from I'WOmol' ' S .ts b 1IIIISl'IIII1S do: th 'y .nlist obj cts to act a visibl traces, or even fetishes, of
the sa me Cl rtist. One is Cl trio of '::1 rds I 'pi 'I'i 1111. hi rds id 'Ill i (i ' I [l , 'ol'd I)llWlhing 1'11:11'is nbs 111', usually in SP"" and always in time. In the cas'
ing 1'0 S .nson: a ll'lngl ic :1I1d n n ':l/1.k, ':1 .h nsso'illlvd wirl: winter, nn I I III ilH'~' 01 it' 'I \ 1111' ':q n .iry for f'l'isi1iz:Hiol1 is purri .ulnrly srrouu, giv .n
,hi .krn rrprcs 'IHing SI !'inl\; liI(' dOllbling ('01' winur ,11/'.1\('1'11.111111till', nit', Ill!' \lIvillltioll I!I vu !'lId, III I lu I i'lilll\.' 10,'11 .h irn '/" • 011' W I 10 ('S 'lJ ('
110 Timothy Brook Our Very Own Chinese Postcards From Hell 111
the closed hermeneutic space that museum display can sometimes induce, at least strongly suggest that the postcards were originally in the ownership
often innocently, is to insert a label that draws the viewer's attention to of a missionary or the relative of one.
provenance, and in the case of historical objects, to the steps by which For a maker of visual Chinese artifacts for foreign consumption a cen-
objects were removed, often randomly and sometimes violently, from the tury ago, the subjects of the two sets of paintings on which I focus in this
cultures they are now made to stand in for. But this is usually not done. essay were not randomly chosen. The body degraded and the body in pain
The label highlight an object's originary home, positioning it at the point were representational cliches feeding the popular end of the foreign mar-
farthest from the museum along the circuit it has traveled (which is also the ket for images of China at the turn of the twentieth century. The casual
point to which it can never return). The object's physical point of departure museum visitor who happens to pull out the open-storage drawer in which
is thus the museum's narrative point of departure for explaining what the the cards are laid out will not know this. He or she will take them to be
object is, without significant reference to the relay of desires that caused the transcriptions of Chinese taste, if not of Chinese reality. This misreading
object to end up in the museum. Every object comes with a biography more is a common problem in anthropological and historical museums, which
complex, and more compromised, than the cultural or national history it generally have only a limited number of objects with which to work, and
is enlisted to narrate. Its passage through time and space left unnoted, the around which curators can construct only so much interpretive scaffolding.
object stands in only for the culture from which it was extracted, not for The sensationalism of the images in the Buddhist Hell and Punishments
the practices that induced the extraction. series might alert the viewer that these are not neutral samples of a Chinese
The postcards on which I focus in this essay proclaim an unmistakably popular aesthetic but the projection of certain fixed ideas about Chinese
Chinese identity. The scenes of purgatorial torment could not be mistaken .ulture seen from outside, but that assumes a knowledge that most viewers
for what goes on in a Christian hell, for example. So too the scenes of would not bring with them.
judicial torment conform to the archetype of "Chinese" cruelty that used The Buddhist Hell Series consists of eight scenes showing the punish-
to be much in fashion. The physical evidence of their Chinese point of ments the sinful could expect to receive for their sins before being permitted
origin is printed on the back of the cards: a Western-style stamp bearing 1'0 reenter the cycle of rebirth. "Purgatory" would have been theologically
the value of one cent (fen), the label (in Chinese) "Postal Administration more appropriate than "hell," but "hell" is the language of Protestantism.
Postcard," and direction for use, which reads, in translation: "This side The cards are not marked to be viewed in any particular order, though
is for writing only the recipient'S name and address. The other side is for nineteenth-century Chinese texts on purgatory would place them in the
writi ng the sender's information." As postcards were novelties in China following order." First comes the "Judgment Bridge" (1 in Figure 8.1), in
at the time, indeed throughout much of the world, such instructions were which an ox-headed demon casts a woman into the River Nai, the Chinese
necessary. The Qing Imperial Postal Administration which produced analogue of the River Styx, Next comes the "Midwifery Fiend" (2 in Figure
these cards came into being under that name in 1896, when the postal 8.1), a female demon (her gender is signaled by her little embroidered cloth
section of the China Customs Service, which had introduced a European- shoes) carrying a bloody and deformed birth. These are then followed by
style postal service to China in 1878, was separated out from Customs. s .enes depicting some of the bodily torments the evil could expect to suffer
The Qing dynasty came to an end in 1911, and so did the Imperial Postal for their sins. Referring to them in order by their English titles, they are
Administration. The artist has not dated the watercolors, but the medium "Strung Up" (3 in Figure 8.1), "Disembowelment" (4 Figure 8.1), "The
suggests they were painted in the first decade of the twentieth century, .hopping Knife" (5 Figure 8.1, depicting the archaic execution of being
or possibly in the opening years of the 1910s on leftover stock. As these rh pped in half at the waist), "Tongue Extractor" (6 Figure 8.1), "Oil Caul-
cards were not ever put through the postal system, we cannot date them dr n" (7 Figure 8.1), and "The Heated Copper Stake" (8 Figure 8.1).
any more precisely. For the purpose of describing them in this essay, 1 The eight postcards in the Punishments series depict less gruesome
shall use the date 1910. All the images are hand-painted, and each bears rccncs. They cohere to no native sequence, to my knowledge. Were we to
a brief title written by hand in both Chinese and English. vi .w them in order of the penal severity they carried in Qing law, they
According to the records of the MOA, the postcards were acquired in would be: "In the Cells" (9 in Figure 8.2), "Pilloried" (10 in Figure 8.2),
1960 as part of a donation from Union College. This informati n off rs "Th angue" (11 Figure 8.2), "Hand and Foot Bound Together and Corn-
little as to the cards' provenance, for not only is the identity of the original p ,11.d to Walk" (1.2 Figure 8.2, a torment that the Chinese title, jian mian-
owner unknown, but even that of the college i unc rtain. Th re have 1 '11 IJIII, "pi 'king 'ot [Oil," 'XI r ses more succinctly), "Beaten on the Lips" (13
many Union Colleges in North Am ri 'a. This may be rhc .anndinn l1iOI1 Il liigur' R. ) ••.. 1 d r-, I'I'iSOIl 'r Kn lin n hain" (14 Figure 8.2), "The
ColI g in La .ornl ., Alb .rrn , fouu led by Sev 'mh I ay 1\ lv ~lItists ill 1(47, :old Stool" (I Il 1"1/',111('H, ), n nd "Th' Iligh ,ng," subtitled "Capital
but' rh -n :Ignin it 11Inynor. 'I'll, liH'olol'i '11 ('11:11'11
't(,I' of \ Inion ;ollqt('s dol'S 1'11111.luurut " (If, 111'11',1111 H. ) 1\1' 'ording to 1 vnriu nt of the English title
112 Timothy Brook Our Very Own Chinese Postcards From Hell 113

~<J.~.N.JJ
1fI.;.t1l..J~
~
r~"
~~';CLjlJJ
'~.~e.~

5tiJ r 41~
4~ i "i:i.: .'

Figure 8.1 tlurldlJi'ltt('/1 Scones, .I

I . 11dl\llw 11( 1I"j 11\', ,Midwi ('I' Plrlld, t S(I'lI1l11 /11,1-1111'(
H.t (1'II11Iilllllld) tllldr/lii'l // 11 Se('/'I ' : 5. The :hoppil1J.l Knif·, 6. Tongue
Up, 4, I iSl'I1lIH1WI'IIl1\'III, I~ 'I"odlln'd 1'0111'1(' 01 lilt' MlINI'lIl11 01 AIIIIlI'opolol\ \ I (1'1'101" 7, (il :11111111011, H, Tilt 11 ',11\,11 ;OPP\'I' S( 11I', RI'II'O lucixl '()\II'I\'syof
llllivl'I'~i( IIr Ill'Iti,h {'Olllllilll.l, lill Mu 1'11111
III 111111111
IIII1I1Y, 1I11iv 'I i( 01 I11ill II 'ohlllllllll,
114 Timothy Brook Our Very Own Chinese Postcards From Hell 115

Figure 8.2 Punishments: 9. In the : 'lis, '10. Pillori xl, 1'1. Tit, ;nngLl', 12. I lnnd !lilt! 111,1j1ll'(' 11.2 (collt/III/od) Pl/l/i,IIIII('II/S: 't •. Beat n n the Lips, 14. Stake, Prisoner
Foot Bound 'I()g .rh 'I' nnd ;OI1lIl'11 'd ro Wl1lk, NI" H'11 W, 1~\'pl'Odll vd '(HII'l\,SY ot IIH' I 1I'i'lil111011 :htlil1, I . '1'111' '1111,'tool, I 1. 'I'hc Iligh ;:1g '. N'I.S84::1-w. Rcpr duced
Muscuu: (If i\lllill'ol nlollY, l lnivrr it of IIril i It :Ollllllhhl, 111I11'li'Nofllil' MII 1'11111111 1\1111111111111111',
,llllivI'I'sity or Ilrilish ;Ollllllbil1.
116 Timothy Brook Our Very urn Chinese Postcards From Hell 117

that appears on two of the cards, these are "legal punishments" in Chi- Why then would a Chinese artist produce such souvenirs of "China"?
nese law. The allegation of legality stakes a strong claim for determining Perhaps the question is pointles in a COl11l11 rcial environment in which
what the viewer's right relationship should be to what is viewed. It lodges painters happily manufactured whatever sold. Why should there be an inhi-
a direct indictment of the Chinese system of justice, declaring that what bition separating the artist from images that sold, if they were what Western
law in China allows, law outside China does not. To denote these acts as visitors to China were willing to pay for? Indeed, a tradition of manufac-
"legal" in China underscored their patent illegality by Western standards, a turing such voyeuristic objects for foreign consumers was fully established
view much repeated by nineteenth-century European observers of Chinese well over a century before these postcards were painted. What are termed
punishrnents.:' The English inscription thus invites the viewer to side with "export watercolors" representi ng daily life arose in Canton during the
Western law against Chinese: to regard what is "Chinese" as patently infe- .ighteenth century to meet a demand from foreign visitors for pictorial
rior to what is "Western." mementos to take back to Europe and North America.' These watercolors,
The conviction that Qing law accepted the torture of suspects was which survive outside China in the thousands, are not just inconsequential
widespread among foreign observers circa 1910. This perception was not knock-offs for visitors. They are curious hybrids of Chinese technique and
without some basis in reality, inasmuch as a magistrate was allowed to let European taste: visibly Chinese in their representational style, as they were
his officers torture a prisoner when he had a suspicion of the guilt of the supposed to be in order to assert the authenticity of their origin, yet not
accused arising from other evidence. The torturers had to keep within a set Ihe sort of images that Chinese artists would have painted for domestic
range of techniques and apply them according to precise legal standards, ·onsumption. They include scenes of everyday life as well as scenes of tor-
however, for what the law allowed, the law also limited. While magistrates rure and punishment-all of which nineteenth-century Europeans grasped
and torturers were obliged to act within a framework of strict expecta- ns enunciating the peculiarity of the Chinese, by turns quaint and dismal.
tions, cultural but also legal, much of what the postcards depict was not Export watercolorists could turn out the most elaborate scenes of torment
legally permitted. Nowhere did Qing law permit the cold stool or the high nnd execution that were utterly decontextualized from law as well as life.
cage, to cite the two most egregious examples. The Qing Code did impose Aseptic in their avoidance of gore and their depiction of affectless torment,
strangulation as the penalty for Iighter capital offenses and decapitation i hey appeared to demonstrate objectively how something was done. That
for heavier, but not in the lingering form that a contraption such as the something could be curing tea leaves, or it could be garroting criminals,
high cage would have caused. The magistrate who used such devices faced Without any attention to the affects attached to either. They were icons for
impeachment and a minimum sentence of exile if his victim died. foreigners, and foreigners bought them.
There is the additional consideration that the severest torments in Qing Are these postcards then simply more of the same-cheap export water-
judicial practice were banned by a sweeping legal reform introduced in 'olors produced for the low end of the market that simply confirmed West-
1905. In other words, not only were some of the scenes in the paintings of 1'1'11 fantasies about China? Before we rush to answer yes, it is worth noting
doubtful legality before 1905; by 1910 they were without any legal basis I hat whereas punishment scenes became standard fare in export water-
whatsoever. This painter did not feel constrained by actual legal context. rolors, scenes of hell did not. Some foreigners, notably missionaries, did
The theme was the caprice and cruelty of Chinese punishments, regard- 11'quire popular engravings of purgatory, but they were not the engravings'
less of whether these were actually practiced. The postcards show Chines ne .nded audience, nor was the genre one that most foreigners would have
others doing just the sorts of macabre things that others liked to do, in th ' /)one out of their way to acquire. Hell was for domestic consumption. Hell
allegedly real world at the hands of officers of the law as much as in an "ne belonged within the specific domestic religious context of the nine-
imaginary hell at the hands of devils. These were just the sort of thing that It, 'nth century, intended to warn people away from the evil deeds for which
depraved Orientals got up to; just the sort of thing that civilized Occiden- I h 'y would suffer terrible consequences after death. They were for public
tals could not condone; just the sort of memento to send back to Aunti ' dl. tribution by the anxiously pious, not for private collection by outsid-
Gladys to let her know you were in topsy-turvy land." 1'1-'. The interest that nineteenth-century missionaries showed in purgatory
These are some of the reasons why these watercolors cannot be taken \'11 'S arose from the hope that the Chinese theology of the afterlife was
as innocent representations of the "Chinese" legal world; or worscy as 'vi· I Ins' n ugh to the Christian version that it might provide a bridge across
dence of a "Chinese" cultural insensitivity to suffering. These a r not naive wh] .h to lead th ' pious from ne religion to the other. Images of judicial
representations of any existing reality. They ar at work 011 "11 .ntircly punishrn .nt ' I r .sscd rhc nlr rityof ,hin se culture; pictures of purgatory
different project in which the for ign view is .ornpli .ir: 1'11' cypi(i .nrion 0/ 11), il('d n priruiriv« I rcdisl ()~ili()1l 10 ;hriSI'inn .onv rsi n.6 The viewing
the culture of the orh r through rropcs that .onfirm the SlIlWl'iOl'ily of tilt, PIIICIi '('S of till' lIl1illil i ili,d, tllo\lp,II. 1(' itl,1 blended rh's . imag s rog th r,
.ulrur ' of rh« sd f, 1I illtil'l'd tlH' 11'11I 1'1'111 11) IIiIYI' 1111'1\(11-11 I I ninlilll horh H 'ri's in I'Iw
118 Timothy Brook Our Very Own Chinese Postcards From Hell 119
same style. They were linked signs that spoke in unison of the backward- only four exceptions in all the series, the artist has avoided painting eyes.
ness, violence, and moral depravity of the space over which the West sought He turns faces away whenever possible to get around the problem. When
spiritual and economic, if not outright political, dominion. he has to show eyes, he reduces them to slits. The four exceptions are not
Having plausibly reconstructed why the implied Canadian Protestant really exceptions, for all of them belong to the faces of the non-human
missionary who acquired the images might have done so, we might have tormentors in hell (2, 5, 6, and 7 in Figure 8.1). The demon with the most
been ready to end our Saidian analysis of the consumption of these pic- prominent eyes is the demented midwife. Here again, the artist repeats his
tures. But there remains a question that I was all too prepared to ignore or her stylistic signature, for they are drawn as a series of curves mounded
until brought up short by my art history colleague, Tsao Hsing-yuan. Who one on top of the other.
really painted these postcards? We have no direct evidence, but details in The problem with all these modes of representing eyes, cheeks, ears,
the paintings reveal more about the artist's identity than the naive viewer hands, toes, soles, and heads is that they are not part of the repertoire of
(I) was willing to notice. It is time "to look more closely. a Chinese painter. They are the eyes, cheeks, ears, hands, toes, soles, and
Let us start with details from the first card in the punishment series, "In heads of an artist trained in the European tradition. Each of these devices
the Cells" (9 in Figure 8.2). Look at the fingers: long, willowy, splayed, comes from the standard curriculum of how to depict a person that anyone
in the case of the upper figure delicately entwined around the bars of the who studied art in the West would have used without a second thought. If
cell. Now look at the toes of the lower figure. The big toe is prominently the painter of the postcards were Chinese, he would have to have been so
separated from the rest, turned ninety degrees to the others, which are thoroughly trained in Western technique as to have taken all these mechan-
also carefully delineated. The execution of the toes has been done to show ical quirks on board, and to have done so as consistently as he has. He
that the foot is straining. Indeed, the entire left foot is arched for the same would have had to abandon his Chinese brush habits: not impossible, but
effect, conveying the impression of someone standing on tip-toe. Now look even the best trained artist must sometimes let earlier habits leak through.
at the shape of the heads. Both are turned three-quarters away from the This does not happen in these paintings. The stylistic ticks of a conven-
viewer, relieving the artist of the burden of having to paint facial features, tional Western training resurface at every turn.
something this artist regularly avoids. Seen from behind, the artist has only There are other telltale signs that the painter was not Chinese. Con-
to model the overall shape of the head. This he does by overlapping two sider the water pipe in "Pilloried" (10 in Figure 8.2). Chinese paintings
ovals at ninety degrees to each other, a horizontal oval for the cranium and rarely depict smoking, and never does a water pipe appear. Western observ-
a vertical oval for the face and jaw. The curvature of the facial oval, even .rs regarded this sort of pipe as quintessentially Chinese, yet its use was
though we can't see the face, is emphasized by the prominent curving of the restricted to women, whose female/cool (yin) nature tobacco would have
ears and the cheeks. harmed unless the smoke had first been cooled. Not only has the painter
Now turn to "Pilloried" (10 in Figure 8.2). Here we see the same method put a woman's water pipe in a man's hand, but he has inserted it in a scene
for drawing a head as two overlaid ovals, with the cheeks of both faces in which it has no intrinsic place nor part to play in the drama. It is mere
prominently rounded. We see as well the extended articulation of fingers d .coration, a curious addition, something to engage the eye-more bluntly,
and toes, particularly the toes of the man in the stocks. What is even more nil artificial signifier of cultural location and nothing more.
striking about the figure sitting in the stocks is how the soles of his feet have H these paintings do have a "Chinese" look about them, it is because the
been drawn. The entire bottom of each foot is carefully edged in ink. In ov .rt stylistic posing goes the other way. These are watercolors by someone
addition, the toes have been splayed to fully expose the bottoms of the feet, who has studied Chinese painting techniques and who must have spent
which are contoured with curves to suggest the balls and heel of the left orne time in China exposing him- or herself to the visual references of
foot and the instep of the right. The precise outlining of soles is conspicu- .hinese pictorialism. Two examples will suffice, one appropriate to the
ous in other paintings in these series. In "Oil Cauldron," for example, the ubj et matter and one not. The first is the pattern of the flagstones on the
artist has visibly outlined the bottom of the victim's left foot, even though 'ourtroom floor in "The Cold Stool." The edges of the stones are depicted
half the foot is obscured by the demon's right forearm. 11 onornetrically, a lines running parallel to each other uniformly from
On to the next picture in the series: "Stake, Prisoner Kneeling n hain" lront t ba k, rath r than converging toward a vanishing point. This is a
(14 in Figure 8.2). Here two of the figures show their faces t the view r. 'h Ha 'I' risri typ of I' nd ring in hin se art, intended here to give the
The curved structure of their heads is prominent, as is th rotundity of rh ir I lillting a visunlly " hin .sc" quality. Y t rh x ution-wa h lines that
cheeks, and the convexity of rh ir MS. h br nsrs of rh ' 111:111 undergo- I1 I, away rownrd rhc I n 'I<of t h ' III II-is nor what a ~hil1 se paint I' would
ing rh 1'01'111 .nt also show rh, nrrisr's lu bit, of sugl'('stinf.\ volum« by . l1g IlI\VI' dOIH', 'I'h \ tilll', would 1)(' I hinly dl'I1WIl, nil I Oil' uuroduc xl, would
I

g'r:1ting ""'V'I'l, Now 'ol\si(\('I' t lu: (' ('S, 'I'll, \1" 1I0lhil\I\ hut slil ,With III ,,"111111('\1Url fOIIl" 10 till' h Ill' of t\w linll,
 120 Timothy Brook Our Very Own Chinese Postcards From Hell 121
The second instance of employing a "Chinese" visual device is more jar- their consumer, then; he is their actual producer who is not just imagin-
ring to a practiced eye. In "Oil Cauldron" (7 in Figure 8.1), we are shown a ing the Oriental but creating him. As a result, an unsuspecting museum a
demon plunging a sinful soul into a wok of oil set to boil on top of a stone century later has been induced to display the works as "Chinese," and in so
stove. To convey an impression of stonework, the painter has used the "Chi- doing innocently perpetuating the Orientalism that informed not just the
nese" visual device of angled lines running into each other, imitating the viewer's gaze but the artist's hand. Stripped of their real history by the pas-
crackle glaze on Chinese celadon. Crackle glaze was used in paintings, but sage of time and the ignorance of the donor, these sets of postcards-from
to portray ice, not stone. The result is visual incoherence. It conveys a "Chi- eviscerated bodies to winter magpies-have ended up standing in for Chi-
nese" impression, but is not something a Chinese painter would have done. nese culture, the various visual ticks of "Chineseness" being no more than
The artist may have slipped on these details, but he or she clearly was mechanical details spicing an essentially Western impersonation of what
familiar with Chinese iconography" especially in the purgatory paintings. China was and is about. These are not Chinese postcards from hell: they
The painter was not merely making these scenes up, but was drawing from are our very own mementos of the Western excursion into the enchanted
Chinese exemplars in illustrated religious tracts. The long hinged blade in territory of the East. .
"The Chopping Knife" in Figure 8.2 was standard equipment in this litera-
ture, as was the heated copper pillar in "The Heated Copper Stake." These
were imaginary executions, and one would have to know about them to NOTES
paint them. The scenes in the Punishments series are less easy to derive
from Chinese precedents. Possibly their closest antecedent, curiously, are 1. The cards are catalogued in the Museum of Anthropology as N1.584a-h
(Chinese Legal Punishments), N1.584i-l (Farming Scenes), N1.584m-o (Sea-
the illustrations of Chinese punishments that the English illustrator Percy
sons), and N1.584p-w (Buddhist Hell Series). They were accessed through
Cruikshank produced as propaganda for Lord Palmerston's electoral cam- the kind assistance of Elizabeth Johnson.
paign in 1857. Cruikshank concocted these images to whip up anti-Chinese 2. This is the order in which they appear in the 1863 edition of Yuli chaobao
sentiment preparatory to launching the second round of the Opium WarJ jingshi (The precious currency of the jade register to warn the age), a popular
Of the corporal penalties he depicts, all but "disjointing" appear among religious tract. On the Jade Register and its iconography, see Timothy Brook,
jerorne Bourgon, and Gregory Blue, Death by a Thousand Cuts (Cambridge,
the images in the postcards. ("Disemboweling" and "cutting the body in
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 122-151.
two," which feature among Cruikshank's drawings, do not appear among 3. For one example among many that could be cited, the American missionary
the Punishments postcards but are featured instead in the Hell series.) justus Doolittle (1824-1880) indicted China for its "spirit of reckless illegal
Cruikshank seems to have derived his images from export watercolors, cruelty," see Edwin Paxton, ed., Social Life of the Chinese: A Daguerreotype
and perhaps our watercolorist has done the same. That acknowledged, the of Daily Life in China (London: Sarnpson Low, Son, and Marston, 1868),
274.
"originals" from which either these or Cruickshank's images derived were
4. Officers of the law in North America in 1910 could be quite as vicious in
contrived for the export market, rather than "originally" depicting any- their handling of suspects as those in China, though what they did had to be
thing that anyone actually did. They all belong within a tight hermeneutic done off the record and out of sight. In the "East," the space represented in
circle into which nothing genuinely historical intrudes. these postcards, occlusion was denied.
The only element of these postcards that unambiguously comes from a 5. On export watercolors, see Carl Crossman, The China Trade: Export Paint-
ings, Furniture, Silver and Other Objects (Princeton: Pyne Press, 1972); and
~hinese hand is the calligraphy. Written in a style known as clerical script,
Craig Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours (London: Victoria and Albert
It has been done with a precision and confidence almost impossible for a Museum, 1984).
non-native calligrapher to achieve. Just as the hand that held the paint- 6. I attach the notion of primitivity to this predisposition because by the turn of
ing brush betrays its European training, so the hand that held the writing the twentieth century, most Protestants had abandoned the ghoulish visions
brush reveals its thorough training in Chinese calligraphy. A Chinese must of hell that still animated most Christian imaginations as late as the nine-
teenth century. At this late date, the plea for similarity thus contained within
have colluded in this counterfeiting. For their part, the English labels have
it a degree of condescension toward Chinese popular belief. On the political
a native feel. The script is looser, more casual, and from a different hand context of the domestic production and consumption of afterlife suffering,
entirely: possibly the artist's. see Brook, Bourgon, and Blue, Death by a Thousand Cuts, 143-145.
So what at first glance looks like a gallery of hin images of tor- 7. Examples from Percy Cruikshank's The Criminal Punishments of the Chi-
ture and the afterlife that a visitor to ,hina .ould send hon ' to fri .nds ill nese (London, 1858) are reproduced in Brook, Bourgon, and Blue, Death by
a Thousand Cuts, 188-189.
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