The Chinese in Peru: Historic and Cultural Links

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Notes

¹Although the subject is debatable, I begin this essay discussing briefly this controversy following the example set by Joseph Needham (1901–95), who treated it in his Science and Civilization in China; Vol. 1: Introductory Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1954); Vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought (1956); Vol. 3: Mathematics and the Science of the Heavens and the Earth (1959); Vol. 4: Physics and Physical Technology; Part 1: Physics (1962), Part 2: Mechanical Engineering (1965), and Part 3: Civil Engineering and Nautics; Vol. 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology; Part 1: Arts of Peace and War, and Part 2: Chemical Discoveries and Technology; Vol. 6: Biology and Biological Technology; Vol. 7: The Social Background.

²Li is defined by the Webster Dictionary as a “traditional Chinese measure of distance, today standardized at 500 meters (547 yards).”

³Gustave Schlegel, Fu-Sang Kouo, le pays de Fu-Sang. Extrait du Toung-Pao, 3.2 (Leiden: Brill, 1892) and Richard Henning, Terrae Incognitae, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1956). According to the Buddhist monk Hwi-Shin, there were many “fu-sang” trees, from which the inhabitants derived food, clothing and paper for their art of writing as the plant henequen in Mexico.

⁴Cf. Gustave Schlegel, Fu-Sang Kouo, 3.2:127, and Wheeler Pires Ferreira, “Domesticación de los camélidos en los Andes centrales durante el período precerámico,” Journal de la Societé des Americanistes 64 (1977): 155–56.

⁵Joseph de Guignes (1721–1800) worked at the Royal Library as interpreter of the Eastern languages and as Syriac professor at the College de France. His Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs (1748) gained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and cooption in 1754 as an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions. While researching for his Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756–1758), he came across the Fusang story, and in 1761 identified the country with Mexico. He taught Chinese to his son Christian Louis Joseph (1759–1845), who became consul to Canton for 17 years and prepared a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary (1813) for the French government.

⁶See Paul Gallez, Predescubrimientos de América (Bahía Blanca, 2001), 61-64, and Joseph de Guignes, Le Fou Sang des Chinois est el l'Amerique? Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (Paris, 1761), tome 28. In the 19^th century, Guignes's assertion was supported in Edward Payson Vining, An Inglorious Columbus or Evidence that Hwishin and a Party of Buddhist Monks of Afghanistan Discovered America in the Fifth Century (New York: Appleton, 1885). For this work, Yale University awarded Vining an honorary M.A in 1886.

⁷This was the conclusion also reached by William Clewlow (School of Archaeology, University of California) and James Moriarty (Department of Anthropology, University of San Diego). See Frank J. Frost, “The Palos Verdes Chinese Anchor Mystery,” Archaeology 35.23 (January/February 1982). See http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf021/sf021p03.htm. Date of access: 10/10/2005

⁸Fang Zhongfu (Beijing Research Institute of Maritime Transport) concluded in 1980 that the stone anchors found in California offer new evidence in the study of ancient trade between China and America.

⁹Gustavo Vargas Martínez, Fusang. Chinos en América antes de Colón (Mexico: Edición Trillas, 1980), 34 passim. Vargas Martínez is a Colombian historian, graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. While a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia y de la UNAM, he has also published a Bibliografía de Leopoldo Zea (México: FCE, 1992). América en una mapa de 1489 (México, 1996), and other works.

¹⁰Joseph de Guignes, Récherches sur les navigations des chinois de côté de l'Amérique et sur quelques peuples situés a l'extrémité de l'Asie: ‘Le Fou-Sang des chinois est-il l'Amerique?’, Memoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 28 (1761): 505–25.

¹¹Jaime Errázuriz Zañartu, Cuenca del Pacífico: 4.000 años de contactos culturales (Santiago: Universidad Católica de Chile, 2000). Compare his findings with Michael D. Coe, “Directions of Cultural Diffusion [Review of Robert Meggers's ‘The Olmec Heartland: Evolution of Ideology’], in Science 45.3759 (1966): 155; 184–86, and Robert J. Sharer, Regional Perspectives of the Olmec (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 68–82.

¹²As the Han dynasty lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD, while the Mayan civilization lasted from 300 BC to 800 AD, they were contemporary for over 400 years. Peruvian place-names have also been advanced in defense of the connections between China and ancient Peru. Eighty-nine Peruvian names pronounced as though they were Chinese characters with distinct meaning have been found, along with 118 Peruvian geographical names that are similar to Chinese toponymies. Cf. Jaime Errázuriz (2000), Francisco A. Loayza, author of Chinos llegaron antes de Colón (Lima, 1948), and Germán Stiglich, Diccionario geográfico del Perú (Lima, 1922).

¹³Gustavo Vargas Martínez, Fusang. Chinos en América antes de Colón, 52–55.

¹⁴While the Inca's device is still named quipo, the ancient Chinese qi pui, in today's Mandarin is pronounced chie sheng.

¹⁵Alexander von Humboldt, Atlas geographique et physique du Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne (Paris: F. Schoell, 1811).

¹⁶The Diccionario de la Real Academia (DRAE 2001) defines ‘sangley’: “del chino sang-lui , a través del tagalo sanglay. adj. Decíase del chino que pasaba a comerciar en Filipinas. U.t.c.s.//2. Por ext., chino residente en Filipinas. U.t.c.s.“

¹⁷The DRAE (2001) has the noun ‘culi’ and does not register the widely Spanish translation of coolie as ‘cooli’ nor ‘culí’. The term ‘culi’ is defined “(del ingl. coolie, y éste del hindi kuli) m. En la India, China y otros países de Oriente, trabajador o criado indígena.”

¹⁸The Treaty of Tientsin, signed between China and Peru on June 26, 1874, should not be confused with the unequal Treaties of Tientsin imposed on China by the United Kingdom, France, Russia and the United States (June 18, 1858) to end the first part of the Second Opium War (1856–1860). These latter treaties opened eleven more Chinese ports to the foreigners, permitted foreign legations in Beijing, allowed Christian missionary activities, legalized the import of opium so that millions in China would become addicted, and forced the Chinese government to pay an indemnity of 2 million taels (38 grams) of silver to Britain as well as to France, and compensate to British merchants with 2 million taels of silver.

¹⁹Miguel López de Legazpi's galleys departed from México on November 1564 and reached the Phillippine Islands in February 1565, which were incorporated to the Viceroyalty of New Spain. He founded Manila in 1571.

²⁰Columbus was familiar with Marco Polo's long residence in China (1271–1292), but in 1492 apparently he thought the Great Kahn was still its emperor, and was not aware that the Yuan Mongol dynasty governed all China from 1279 until 1368, when it was ousted and replaced by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).

²¹During the Colonial Period the stores of Mercaderes St. in Lima were fully stocked with silk items, jewels, precious stones, porcelain, and clothing from China Cf. Anita Bradley, Trans-Pacific Relations of Latin America (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1942), 4.

²²These sangleyes traveled from Manila to Callao, via Acapulco-Panamá-Guayaquil and Paita. See Miguel de Contreras, Padrón de los indios de Lima en 1613. Intro. Noble David Cook. Paleographic transcription by Mauro Escobar Gamboa (Lima: UNMS, Seminario de Historia Rural Andina, 1968), 15: 547.

²³The first dictionary prepared by the Real Academia de la Lengua.”, known as Diccionario de autoridades (1726), registered the herb ‘té’ under the entry for ‘the’ and explains “Llámanla también cha.” Two of the meanings of ‘china’ are: a) “Planta, o raíz que se trae de la China“; y b) “cualquier pieza de loza fina, que viene del Reino de la China. 1 documentación … 1555.,” J. Corominas, Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Gredos, 1954).

²⁴Cf. Francisco J. Santamaría, Diccionario de mejicanismos, 1st ed. (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1959), Diccionario de autoridades (1726), Corominas (1954) and Colin Smith, M. Bermejo and E. Chang-Rodríguez, Collins Spanish-English/ English-Spanish Dictionary (Glasgow: Collins, 1971).

²⁵The original title of the report to the Viceroy of Nueva España was Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez, see Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Obras históricas 2, 2a ed. Ed. and intro. by José Rojas Garcidueñas (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1960), xxv; and Belén Castro y Alicia Llarena González, Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez, 1 ed. (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Servicio de Publicaciones ULPGC, 2003).

²⁶Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years 1799–1804, English trans. by Helen Maria Williams (London: Longman, 1814–1829).

²⁷Taking advantage of the national economic prosperity derived from the export of guano, oligarchic families obtained Congressional approval for the consolidation of domestic debt (national debt to local residents). By law the Peruvian Government compensated those who purportedly suffered financial losses from: a) their inflated number of black slaves enrolled in the armed forces waging the war of independence, and b) exaggerated material damages in their plantations and houses caused by contending armies.

²⁸Emilio Choy, “La esclavitud de los chinos en el Perú” [Book review of Watt Stewart, Chinese Bondage in Peru. A History of the Chinese Coolie in Peru], Revista de Folklore Americano 2.2 (October 1954): 161–68. Rep. in Tareas del Pensamiento Peruano 8 (June 1965): 45–53.

²⁹Humberto Rodríguez Pastor, “El inmigrante chino en el mercado laboral peruano, 1850–1930,” HISLA. Revista Latinoamericana de Historia Económica y Social XIII–XIV (1989): 95.

³⁰According to the 1876 Census, of the total Lima population of 225,800 inhabitants, exactly 190,252 were Peruvians and 35,322 foreign residents (11%). The last figure included 24,234 Chinese (68% of the foreigners, 11% of the total population, including 141 women).

³¹Fernando de Trazegnies, En el país de las colinas de arena, 2 vols. (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1994). It was translated into Chinese in 1999, as reported in Ac-Ko, “Sueños de arena: traducen al chino libro del canciller,” Ch'iao Pao 14 (October 1999), 1.

³²Senator Luciano Castillo, assisted by Vicente Ugarte del Pino, future President of the Supreme Court of Peru, denounced in the Peruvian Congresss the oficial racially discriminatory policy. See “Cámara de Senadores,” El Comercio (Lima), 29 September 1954; “Senado,” La Nación (Lima), 29 September 1954; “Petición para que se permita el ingreso al Perú del doctor Eugenio Chang Rodríguez,” La Crónica (Lima), 29 September 1954; and “Por capricho de Odría se negó nacionalidad a hijos de asiáticos,” La Prensa (Lima), 11 September 1956.

³³“Exposición del Secretario de Política Exterior de la Cancillería, Embajador Oscar Maúrtua de Romaña, sobre perspectivas de la relación bilateral entre el Perú y China,” Oficina de Prensa y Difusión del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Lima, 17 February 2005. <http://www.rree.gob.pe/portal/boletinInf.nsf/%20mrealdia/BFE798B89B6A3D3105256FAC0066335C> Date of Access: 10/10/2005.

³⁴Mary Fukumoto, “Americanidad de los ‘nikkei’ en la Américas,” O Nikkei a sua Americanidade (Sâo Paolo, Brazil, 1986), 83.

³⁵These last two publications, founded in Lima in 1931 and 1999, respectively, are: Oriental, a monthly magazine, and Ch'iao Pao, a biweekly periodical.

³⁶ El Deber Pro-Indígena published 51 issues from 1912 to 1917. Pedro Zulen contributed until 1916.

³⁷Jorge Basadre, “La herencia de Zulen,” Boletín Bibliográfico (Lima, Biblioteca de la Universidad de San Marcos) 1.1 (March 1925): 2–6; and Jorge Basadre, La vida y la historia (Lima: Fondo del Libro del Banco Industrial del Perú, 1975), 187, 194, 244–48, 349, 352, 353.

³⁸Vere Gordon Childe (1892–1957), a prominent British archeologist, born in Australia and educated at Oxford, committed himself to historical materialism. He approached prehistory by way of comparative philology and was Director of the University of London's Institute of Archeology. His writings synthesized an overview of the culture history of the Western cultural tradition from a rational-utilitarian point of view: The Dawn of European Civilization (1925), Man Makes Himself (1951), What Happened in History (1942), and Progress and Archaeology (1944). Childe is perhaps best known for his interest and influence in the realm of social evolution theory, specifically how it comes about that small villages become urbanized.

³⁹Emilio Choy, Antropología e historia, 3 vols. (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1979). The first volume begins with an “Homenaje a Emilio Choy“ by Alejandro Romualdo, taken from Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana (Lima) 3 (1976): 7; “Emilio Choy y su influencia en el Perú“ by Manuel J. Baquerizo,” XI–XXV; and “Emilio Choy, un hombre del futuro” by Pablo Macera, XXVI–XXXIII. The book was reviewed by Ricardo González Vigil, “Obras de Emilio Choy,” Dominical de El Comercio (Lima), 11 June 1989.

⁴⁰See Luis Guillermo Lumbreras, La arqueología como ciencia social (Lima: Ediciones Histar, 1974), 152; Jorge Basadre y Pablo Macera. Conversaciones. Lima: Mosca Azul, 1974), 20–21. Alfredo Torero, El quechua y la historia social andina (Lima: Universidad Ricardo Palma, 1974), 215, n.6; Manuel Baquerizo, “Emilio Choy y su influencia en el Perú,” Síntesis, Suplemento Dominical de La Voz de Huancayo 7 and 8, 26 February and 3 March 1978; and Jesús Cabel,“El magisterio de Emilio Choy,” Oriental 53.609/610 (September–October, 1983): 9–10.

⁴¹Cf. Manuel J. Baquerizo, “Emilio Choy y su influencia en el Perú,” in Emilio Choy, Antropología e h istoria 1 (Lima: UNMS, 1979): xiii.

⁴²See Ana María Gazzolo, “Huellas de China en el cuento peruano,” El Comercio (Lima), 16 February 1986, C3, and Renato Sandoval Bacigalupo, “El tramo final de Siu Kam Wen,” El Nacional (Lima), 21 April 1986.

⁴³Béatrice Cáceres-Letourneaux, L'oeuvre de Siu Kam Wen à Lima. Réalité et imaginaire de la communauté chinoise du Pérou (doctoral diss., Université de Rennes II, Haute Bretagne, 1995); and by Maan Lin, Writers of the Chinese Diaspora: Siu Kam Wen in Peru (doctoral diss., Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. 1997).

⁴⁴Humberto Rodríguez Pastor, “Sangre china en rectorado sanmarquino: conversación con el doctor Manuel Burga Díaz,” Oriental 71.829–30 (2001): 24–25.

⁴⁵José María Arguedas, in Juan Larco, comp., Recopilación de textos sobre José María Arguedas (La Habana: Casa de las Américas, 1976), 433.