Afong Moy

Afong Moy (c. 1815-??) was the first Chinese American woman. She was so first that she was known in the US in the 1830s as simply “the Chinese lady”. From 1834 to 1848 she was a museum exhibit and later a P.T. Barnum sideshow along with Tom Thumb. In 1850 Barnum got rid of her in favour of a new Chinese lady, Pwan Yee Koo. After that there is no record of her.

She arrived on Friday October 17th 1834 in New York. The New York Daily Advertiser reported:

“The ship Washington, Capt. Obear, has brought out a beautiful Chinese Lady, called Juila Foochee ching-chang king, daughter of Hong wang-tzang tzee king. As she will see all who are disposed to pay twenty five cents. She will no doubt have many admirers.”

Captain Obear reportedly paid her father to take her to the US for two years.

By the time she was put on exhibit a month later, the ticket price had been doubled and her name changed to the catchier “Afong Moy”.

New Yorkers had already seen Chinese men: there was no Chinatown yet, but there were Chinese sailors. And Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous Siamese twins, had been there in 1829 on their world tour.

Product placement: Moy was exhibited by Frederick and Nathanial Carne, brothers who imported goods from China. They showed Moy living in a room decked out with the very Chinese goods they sold: hanging lamps, illustrated screens, paintings, porcelain vases, cushioned chairs, mirrors, ornamental boxes, curiosities, etc.

For 50 cents you could see Afong Moy eat rice with chopsticks, sing, count in Chinese, wear Chinese clothes, answer questions through her interpreter, Atung, and, the highlight of the show, walk. She could not walk well: her feet had been bound since she was a little girl. Doctors in Philadelphia measured her feet: they were only four inches (10cm) long. At first she would only show her naked feet to doctors, but later, when the ticket price had been doubled to a dollar (a day’s pay in those days), she showed them to all ticket holders. In later shows she also spoke English, which some found strange.

Part of the 1836 New Orleans ad.

The New-York Mirror refused to have any part of it:

“We have not been to see Miss Afong Moy, the Chinese lady with the little feet; nor do we intend to perform that universal ceremony … The lovely creatures were made for anything but to be stared at, for half a dollar a head.”

Human zoos in the West were yet to reach their height.

She went to the main cities along the coast, from Boston to New Orleans, and probably up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers all the way to Pittsburgh.

In Washington, DC she met Congressmen and President Andrew Jackson, who:

“wished her … the power to persuade her countrywomen to abandon the custom of cramping their feet, so totally in opposition to Nature’s wiser regulations.”

We do not know if she ever made it back home, to Canton (Guangzhou) in the south of China.

– Abagond, 2017.

See also:

• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2017
• human zoos
• other human exhibits:
  • Ota Benga
  • Sarah Baartman

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