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The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism
Throughout the history of the United States, images of China have populated the American imagination. Always in flux, these images shift rapidly, as they did during the early decades of the twentieth century. In this erudite and original study, Karen J. Leong explores the gendering of American orientalism during the 1930s and 1940s. Focusing on three women who were popularly and publicly associated with China—Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, and Mayling Soong—Leong shows how each negotiated what it meant to be American, Chinese American, and Chinese against the backdrop of changes in the United States as a national community and as an international power.
The China Mystique illustrates how each of these women encountered the possibilities as well as the limitations of transnational status in attempting to shape her own opportunities. During these two decades, each woman enjoyed expanding visibility due to an increasingly global mass culture, rising nationalism in Asia, the emergence of the United States from the shadows of imperialism to world power, and the more assertive participation of women in civic and consumer culture.
The China Mystique illustrates how each of these women encountered the possibilities as well as the limitations of transnational status in attempting to shape her own opportunities. During these two decades, each woman enjoyed expanding visibility due to an increasingly global mass culture, rising nationalism in Asia, the emergence of the United States from the shadows of imperialism to world power, and the more assertive participation of women in civic and consumer culture.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published June 25, 2005
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April 14, 2021
During the years leading up to WWII, there was a shift in American attitudes towards China and the Chinese people, and this shift is encapsulated by the China Mystique: a "romanticized, progressive, and highly gendered" idea of China that the governments of both nations played up in American popular culture to sway the public opinion positively on this nation-state and its people.
Karen J. Leong explores this through the lives of 3 women pivotal in embodying the China mystique: American missionary Pearl S. Buck, Hollywood actress Anna May Wong, and public figure, Mayling Soong. These 3 women were instrumental in how they shifted American understandings of Chinese people from the 1920s through the 1940s.
Spoiler alert: it's still racist and orientalist, but now Chinese people are humanized because Americans can see they're just like us!
Leong provides an autobiographical sketch with commentary on how each of the 3 figures contributed to the China mystique in ways that served to elevate them in the public sphere, but also served to overshadow and smother them, in other ways. This is the major takeaway I took from this insightful study- that participating in idealized constructions of what white people believe about your race will only get you so far before you're caught in a catch-22.
It will never give you lasting freedom, respect, or inner peace, and for me, a key takeaway of the China Mystique is that it is a call-in for the Asian diaspora to actively challenge orientalist stereotypes as much as we can.
Anna May Wong's life story is one I resonated with the most. As a Chinese-American woman, she was in an intersectional bind. She rebelled against one patriarchal culture by seeking feminist independence in another (White Hollywood). She sought to belong by trading on her differences (being told to burn incense in England to seem more mysterious Asian, considered European suave upon her return to the US), and feeling like she had to perform her culture to be "authentic" in the eyes of the outsider, while simultaneously watching white people put on yellowface and confidently embody minstrel caricatures of the Chinese experience.
Anna May Wong got her start playing the "evil sex vamp" in a time when it was illegal to depict interracial couples on-screen, where she was in films where whites played the lead asian roles that would be more sympathetically portrayed as well as more complex than the roles she would get offered (jealous OW, sex vamp, amoral seductress). I was so frustrated reading that for the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, the filmmakers didn't even allow Wong to audition for the lead female part!!
Reading about Anna May Wong's story is a reminder when we as Asian women perform our identity through an orientalist filter, it is playing a game where the cost-benefit analysis requires us to make a sacrifice on what parts of our humanity we'll deny to survive.
Mayling Soong, wife of Chiang Kai-Shek, is an interesting political figure. Sent abroad to the US for her education, Mayling returned to China with American ideas, and she was also Christian. She was a good PR charm at a time when the US was in a situation of being on the same side as China, but had a history of saying shit- characterizing Chinese people as the Yellow Peril, as alien, unable to assimilate, and banning Chinese immigrants from the country. The US needed to rehabilitate ideas of China to the public in order to sell them on their newfound war ally, and Mayling Soong was the perfect woman to help them do it.
Growing up in a Christian household, Mayling was seen to hold similar values to the US, and because of her US education and values, she was considered to modernize China by being herself - strong and powerful woman in the public realm. She did tours in the US to raise funds for WWII, yet Mayling also experienced backlash or limitations with this perception of herself and in tandem, China, where she was considered to be, at times, mysterious/seductive by US politicians, as well as domineering/too powerful, by Chinese politicians. Leong describes Mayling as a woman motivated to demand respect in ways that would be taken as high-handed or dramatic, although she may have been reacting from seeing her own parents debased and considered second-class citizens in the American missionary community.
And we get to Pearl S. Buck. She is an example of the progressive white woman who does more than good, whose so-called progressive politics are no different in impact than that of her conservative opponents. Ultimately, Pearl helped to humanize Chinese people by considering them ancient people of the earth, a very sentimental idea of Chinese people as simple, noble in suffering.
Pearl S. Buck is SO problematic. Some things I noted:
Pearl S. Buck considered herself a minority in China, which is only true if by minority, she means she is part of the elite. She was a part of the American missionary cottage industry that was protected by American troops. Hello! Are there any Chinese missions in America proselytizing about Buddha or the Way?
Pearl S. Buck is also an example of a white person speaking for a person of colour, creating and adding to stereotypes of people of colour that ultimately work to dehumanize them through stereotypes. Even if the stereotypes are "well intentioned" or "positive", they are not real. I found it quite telling that Pearl S. Buck was particularly keen to know if her book felt authentic and wanted the support of Chinese people for her book, The Good Earth.
Pearl S. Buck also projected this idea of herself as Chinese in the American public where she was more reticent or unaware of American culture, even though in her private letters it's clear she has an understanding of what's impressive or good e.g. being quoted in the news about not getting the significance of having her book chosen as a book club selection but then matter-of-factly discussing the good news in a private letter. I also got confused by how Pearl considered herself Chinese American. Anywayssss.
The China Mystique is a great look into American orientalism in the WWII era.
Karen J. Leong explores this through the lives of 3 women pivotal in embodying the China mystique: American missionary Pearl S. Buck, Hollywood actress Anna May Wong, and public figure, Mayling Soong. These 3 women were instrumental in how they shifted American understandings of Chinese people from the 1920s through the 1940s.
Spoiler alert: it's still racist and orientalist, but now Chinese people are humanized because Americans can see they're just like us!
Leong provides an autobiographical sketch with commentary on how each of the 3 figures contributed to the China mystique in ways that served to elevate them in the public sphere, but also served to overshadow and smother them, in other ways. This is the major takeaway I took from this insightful study- that participating in idealized constructions of what white people believe about your race will only get you so far before you're caught in a catch-22.
It will never give you lasting freedom, respect, or inner peace, and for me, a key takeaway of the China Mystique is that it is a call-in for the Asian diaspora to actively challenge orientalist stereotypes as much as we can.
Anna May Wong's life story is one I resonated with the most. As a Chinese-American woman, she was in an intersectional bind. She rebelled against one patriarchal culture by seeking feminist independence in another (White Hollywood). She sought to belong by trading on her differences (being told to burn incense in England to seem more mysterious Asian, considered European suave upon her return to the US), and feeling like she had to perform her culture to be "authentic" in the eyes of the outsider, while simultaneously watching white people put on yellowface and confidently embody minstrel caricatures of the Chinese experience.
Anna May Wong got her start playing the "evil sex vamp" in a time when it was illegal to depict interracial couples on-screen, where she was in films where whites played the lead asian roles that would be more sympathetically portrayed as well as more complex than the roles she would get offered (jealous OW, sex vamp, amoral seductress). I was so frustrated reading that for the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, the filmmakers didn't even allow Wong to audition for the lead female part!!
Reading about Anna May Wong's story is a reminder when we as Asian women perform our identity through an orientalist filter, it is playing a game where the cost-benefit analysis requires us to make a sacrifice on what parts of our humanity we'll deny to survive.
Mayling Soong, wife of Chiang Kai-Shek, is an interesting political figure. Sent abroad to the US for her education, Mayling returned to China with American ideas, and she was also Christian. She was a good PR charm at a time when the US was in a situation of being on the same side as China, but had a history of saying shit- characterizing Chinese people as the Yellow Peril, as alien, unable to assimilate, and banning Chinese immigrants from the country. The US needed to rehabilitate ideas of China to the public in order to sell them on their newfound war ally, and Mayling Soong was the perfect woman to help them do it.
Growing up in a Christian household, Mayling was seen to hold similar values to the US, and because of her US education and values, she was considered to modernize China by being herself - strong and powerful woman in the public realm. She did tours in the US to raise funds for WWII, yet Mayling also experienced backlash or limitations with this perception of herself and in tandem, China, where she was considered to be, at times, mysterious/seductive by US politicians, as well as domineering/too powerful, by Chinese politicians. Leong describes Mayling as a woman motivated to demand respect in ways that would be taken as high-handed or dramatic, although she may have been reacting from seeing her own parents debased and considered second-class citizens in the American missionary community.
And we get to Pearl S. Buck. She is an example of the progressive white woman who does more than good, whose so-called progressive politics are no different in impact than that of her conservative opponents. Ultimately, Pearl helped to humanize Chinese people by considering them ancient people of the earth, a very sentimental idea of Chinese people as simple, noble in suffering.
Pearl S. Buck is SO problematic. Some things I noted:
Pearl S. Buck considered herself a minority in China, which is only true if by minority, she means she is part of the elite. She was a part of the American missionary cottage industry that was protected by American troops. Hello! Are there any Chinese missions in America proselytizing about Buddha or the Way?
Pearl S. Buck is also an example of a white person speaking for a person of colour, creating and adding to stereotypes of people of colour that ultimately work to dehumanize them through stereotypes. Even if the stereotypes are "well intentioned" or "positive", they are not real. I found it quite telling that Pearl S. Buck was particularly keen to know if her book felt authentic and wanted the support of Chinese people for her book, The Good Earth.
Pearl S. Buck also projected this idea of herself as Chinese in the American public where she was more reticent or unaware of American culture, even though in her private letters it's clear she has an understanding of what's impressive or good e.g. being quoted in the news about not getting the significance of having her book chosen as a book club selection but then matter-of-factly discussing the good news in a private letter. I also got confused by how Pearl considered herself Chinese American. Anywayssss.
The China Mystique is a great look into American orientalism in the WWII era.
October 20, 2012
Karen Leong has a really interesting thesis, but unfortunately her book doesn't live up to it. Now, sometimes you read books by academics and you are like, "well, I hope you get tenure soon because you are Not a Writer" - and I know it is kind of shitty of me to want everyone who writes a book to be a Writer, because they are not (oh . . . philosophy, why are you the way you are) and they shouldn't have to be, should they? No, no, books are infinite, they contain multitudes. Or anyway, they are finite and contain multitudes, which is still pretty cool, right?
I think that the biggest problem is the way Leong gets sucked into biography instead of analysis. Not that there isn't analysis, but rather that she relies a great deal on telling us what happened instead of telling us why it was important. Which would be a fine strategy for a novel, but I think we can all see why ambiguity is an asset in a work of fiction and a demerit in a work of nonfiction. Right? We can, can't we? So sometimes it read like, "Mayling Soong did x, y, z which had effect a on the China mystique" - a concept articulated less clearly than I would have liked - without any connection between the assertions. I think this is less of a flaw in the section on Pearl S. Buck, although I know very little about Pearl S. Buck external to this book and this one Anchee Min interview (apparently Anchee Min is kind of down with Pearl S. Buck?), and so I couldn't really evaluate that. But: as a white woman and an AUTHOR, Buck's position re: creating CHINA in the United States is more obvious, it needs less explaining in order to justify a position because it's fairly easy to fill in the blanks with the standard comments on privilege and white people and white womanhood. That's ground well-trod. So, ideologically or thematically, the Buck section is the clearest.
BUT, let's be honest, I don't really care about Pearl S. Buck or Mayling Soong (quick: who's your favorite Soong sister! Mine's Qingling.) I am here for Anna May Wong, light of my life and fire of my loins [not really] [but she is pretttttty cool though, jsyk]. There will never be enough written about Anna May Wong and it would have been cool if Karen Leong hadn't made the weird choice to take most of Wong's public statements in good faith. WHY do biographers (this isn't really a bio, but movie on) do this? I realize much of it results from a dearth of materials about the subject, but seriously: knowing what we know about the studio system, about early Hollywood (about CONTEMPORARY Hollywood), about how people of color have to function in order to survive in a corrupt and white supremacist system, why would you decide to take probably-studio-directed-statements at face value? Would you do that for a book on Gloria Swanson or Mary Pickford? YOU WOULD NOT. Why would you do this for Anna May Wong? And, if you decide to do so, why wouldn't you offer some sort of . . . I'm hesitant to say "justification" - I suppose what I mean is some sort of methodology.
Anyway, it fills a niche. I wish it had been less cursory - but it is quite short, so.
Now I sound like Bernard Black, I guess. W/e.
I think that the biggest problem is the way Leong gets sucked into biography instead of analysis. Not that there isn't analysis, but rather that she relies a great deal on telling us what happened instead of telling us why it was important. Which would be a fine strategy for a novel, but I think we can all see why ambiguity is an asset in a work of fiction and a demerit in a work of nonfiction. Right? We can, can't we? So sometimes it read like, "Mayling Soong did x, y, z which had effect a on the China mystique" - a concept articulated less clearly than I would have liked - without any connection between the assertions. I think this is less of a flaw in the section on Pearl S. Buck, although I know very little about Pearl S. Buck external to this book and this one Anchee Min interview (apparently Anchee Min is kind of down with Pearl S. Buck?), and so I couldn't really evaluate that. But: as a white woman and an AUTHOR, Buck's position re: creating CHINA in the United States is more obvious, it needs less explaining in order to justify a position because it's fairly easy to fill in the blanks with the standard comments on privilege and white people and white womanhood. That's ground well-trod. So, ideologically or thematically, the Buck section is the clearest.
BUT, let's be honest, I don't really care about Pearl S. Buck or Mayling Soong (quick: who's your favorite Soong sister! Mine's Qingling.) I am here for Anna May Wong, light of my life and fire of my loins [not really] [but she is pretttttty cool though, jsyk]. There will never be enough written about Anna May Wong and it would have been cool if Karen Leong hadn't made the weird choice to take most of Wong's public statements in good faith. WHY do biographers (this isn't really a bio, but movie on) do this? I realize much of it results from a dearth of materials about the subject, but seriously: knowing what we know about the studio system, about early Hollywood (about CONTEMPORARY Hollywood), about how people of color have to function in order to survive in a corrupt and white supremacist system, why would you decide to take probably-studio-directed-statements at face value? Would you do that for a book on Gloria Swanson or Mary Pickford? YOU WOULD NOT. Why would you do this for Anna May Wong? And, if you decide to do so, why wouldn't you offer some sort of . . . I'm hesitant to say "justification" - I suppose what I mean is some sort of methodology.
Anyway, it fills a niche. I wish it had been less cursory - but it is quite short, so.
Now I sound like Bernard Black, I guess. W/e.
August 12, 2025
This book did not share any new information or data that I have not read elsewhere. In defense of the author, this book is from the early 2000's, and much of her material has been expounded on in other works.
December 15, 2010
This is a collage level book not for the general reader or even those who focus on Asian Americans. I found the prose very uneven and, especially in the first two chapters, thick. The chapter about Mayling Soong is disappointing if one read the recent biography "The Last Empress" and also finding two historical errors. The Chapter on Pearl Buck was interesting if one is willing to plow through it. Only the chapter about Anna May Wong was worth reading because there has never been enough written about her and the early history of Chinese Americans in Hollywood.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews