The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures hosted a lecture by Dr. Ariane Knüsel, a scholar who researches Sino-Western relations in the contemporary setting, last Saturday, Nov. 5. 

In her lecture, titled “The Chinese Dragon and the Yellow Peril: The Evolution of Western Media Portrayals of China Since Opium Wars,” Dr. Knüsel traced back episodes of contemporary Sino-Western history to explain the evolution and persistence of the dragon caricature found in Western depictions of China, such as political cartoons. She also explored how the attitude of the West towards China varied by country and changed over time.

Dr. Knüsel first pointed out that a discrepancy exists in the understanding of the concept of a “dragon,” or “龍” in Chinese, between the West and the East. A Chinese or Japanese person would recognize the presence of a dragon to be benign, protecting, and even auspicious.

The image of the dragon in Europe, however, was a “popular evil figure,” Dr. Knüsel said. She used paintings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Period, such as “St. Michael and the Dragon” by Raphael, to demonstrate the West’s resentment towards the dragon.

Dr. Knüsel said that 18th-century Europe witnessed a craze for chinoiserie, a French term describing the imitation of Chinese motifs in Western art and architectural styles. Thi due to the efforts for interaction spearheaded by missionaries. She believes that the concept of the dragon as the representation of China thus entered the lexicon of Europe at this time.

“In the Qing imperial context, [the caricatures of] ‘long’ (‘龍,’ dragon) was prominent and omnipresent — this leads [European] diplomats and missionaries, who came back to Europe, to speak of these dragons as they see them,” Dr. Knüsel said. “There’s an association between China and dragons.”

It was during Europe’s second phase of imperialism at the end of the 19th century that the positive image of Chinese society during the Enlightenment period started to turn negative, Dr. Knüsel said.

“The Chinese were described as ‘white’ by most scientists; they were euphoric about Chinese society and [were] using it as a model,” Dr. Knüsel said. “But in the 19th century, this changed — we have had negative voices before, but they [became] dominant in the 19th century.”

The punctual arrival of the theory of Social Darwinism, she said, “led to this idea that the Chinese are yellow and not ‘white’ anymore.”

According to Dr. Knüsel, the negative caricature of the dragon served as the justification for the colonial activities in China. She said that after the Boxer Rebellion, an attempt to counter the “spheres of influence” established by Western powers, was likely when the association between China and the dragon caricature was established.

The Boxers’ destruction of telegraph cables cut off communication from the East to the West — and Europe, worrying about its expatriates far away, “started to invent rumors of what happened to the Chinese,” Dr. Knüsel said. 

“White men and women are being done to death with every hideous circumstance by hordes of yellow savages,” she quoted from an issue of the Daily Mail in July 1900.

She went on to explain how Western artists began to depict China in a variety of fashions. Portrayals from European countries diverged into two parallel themes: the dragon and the “yellow peril.”

“[In France], the images of China were a lot more positive than in Britain, for example. The media seems to have been a lot more dominated by Jesuit missionaries, which tended to be fairly positive in general,” Dr. Knüsel said. Meanwhile, Britain, dominated by intellectuals and business interests, “wanted imperial control of China because that meant access to the Chinese market.”

Dr. Knüsel displayed an 1895 illustration, titled “Peoples of Europe, Guard your Dearest Goods,” from the German magazine Lustige Blätter. In the drawing, St. Michael, a patron saint of Germany, was depicted as leading other European nations against Asia. Asia was represented as a flaming Buddha on a dragon.

Another example was a French cartoon from the satirical newspaper Le Rire, in which the Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi was given the typical “slanted eyes, long fingernails, and yellow skin” and a protruding “sharp tooth.” Dr. Knüsel said that these physical traits were typical of cartoons depicting Asian people at the time.

Knüsel continued on to the World War II era. As war loomed, the previous caricatures of the Japanese as the “civilized Asiatic” and those of the Chinese switched places, she said.

“It’s absolutely clear [that] you have this differentiation between China, the ally, and Japan, the threat,” Dr. Knüsel said. “The ‘yellow peril,’ the visual imagery — they are very much now visible on posters against Japan.”

She explained that the friendship between the West and China ended abruptly when China fell to communism. 

“Once China [becomes] the People’s Republic of China, there’s a very interesting change in the dragon cartoons,” Dr. Knüsel said.

At the end of the lecture, Dr. Knüsel said that the evolution of the dragon caricature was revealing of the political and social changes in the West over time. However, Western portrayals of the dragon said very little about actual Chinese culture, according to Knüsel.

“Dragon cartoons about China tell us a lot more about the country in which they were produced than about China,” Dr. Knüsel said.