Chang Ta-Jen: 'China in London'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') depicts Chang Ta-Jen — Chinese diplomat and diarist, born Peking, 1848 — seated on a bentwood chair, absorbed in reading what appears to be a folded Chinese-style document. He wears layered Qing court dress: dark mandarin jacket over saffron robe and aquamarine undergarments, embroidered slippers, and a scholar's cap with button and queue. The caption reads 'China in London.' The accompanying Vanity Fair text is condescending in the characteristic register of the era: praising Chang as an exception to what it calls the educational failings of 'sons of Han,' while lamenting his London diary was 'unfortunately' published only in Chinese. The chromolithograph itself plays the figure relatively straight for Ward, yet the exaggerated spectacles and beard participate in the period's stock visual shorthand for Chinese physiognomy. Chang represents Britain's fitful diplomatic engagement with Qing China at a moment of post-Boxer Rebellion recalibration.