Well, they didn't really. In Chinese mythology, the "Four Beauties" were beautiful women who were said to have brought about the downfall of empires, but it was mostly wishful thinking dreamed up by people in the early 19th century. That said, these women were important figures

When L. Frank Baum died in 1919, his Oz novels were continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson and illustrated by Baum's illustrator John R. Neill. Their very first collaboration, The Royal Book of Oz (1921) is set in China and there is plenty of imperialist yellow peril thinking going

Well, yes she is! She first appears in L. Frank Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), which was Baum's second Oz book and she appears in everything after that. It is well known on social media (Reddit, TikTok, Tumblr, etc.) and the trans community and

Baum did write in support of genocide. In an editorial of 1890, only five days after the murder of Sitting Bull, he wrote: “The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured

Is Dorothy in China? Meeting the Munchkins and they have shaved heads with tufts of hair and long beards? Hmmm, Qing dynasty Buddhist monks or Taoist priests? 身体发肤，受之父母，不敢毁伤，孝之始也

When Burroughs came to write his John Carter adventure novels, he had internalized much of what Baum was trying to do in the Oz books and in The Boy Fortune Hunters series (one of the six is set in China). Burrough's own first efforts were children's

Todd Gilman: “Aunt Em: Hate You! Hate Kansas! Taking the Dog. Dorothy.” TV synopsis: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.” Chinese peasant proverb: “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away”

Is it a coincidence that in 1900, when most of the earth’s peoples were under foreign domination, and disease wiped out more indigenous populations than at any other time in history, that European and American writers produced some of the finest fantasy and science fictions? The China of The

The classic Chinese epic, Journey to the West, is the tale of four travelers, or technically five: the Buddhist monk Xuanzang and his three protectors, Monkey King, Monk Pig, and Sand Monk, plus a white dragon prince who acts as the Xuanzang's horse. They experience many thrilling adventures

* 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act * 1890-91 L. Frank Baum’s racist editorials on Sitting Bull and Wounded Knee, Aberdeen, S. Dakota * 1891 The Baum family moves to Chicago * 1892 Baum joins the Theosophical Society * 1892 Renewal of the Chinese Exclusion Act (originally passed in 1882) * 1892 Pearl Buck born in the

Pearl Buck spent the first decades of her life in China and she was raised bilingual. Her childhood home was in Zhenjiang, a city on the southern banks of the Yangtze River. The house - below - is now a museum dedicated to her. However, it was not her original

Two bad girls, Anna May Wong (as Hui Fei) and Marlene Dietrich (as Magdalen, aka Shanghai Lil) in Shanghai Express (1932). The film came at a particularly sensitive time for China and initially it was banned there. It was the courtesans and racist lines like "Time and life have

The Wizard of Oz in China?

China adopted the Western solar calendar in 1911, but the traditional lunar calendar is still used for festivals such as the Chinese New Year. Chinese calendars usually show both solar and lunar. The 60-year cycle combines the 5 basic elements - metal, water, wood, fire and earth - with the

In L. Frank Baum's original novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, there is a chapter called “The Dainty China Country.” When it begins, Dorothy Gale and friends have encountered a Great Wall of China. Sitting on top, they are surprised to see a country of shining white, a

Empress Dowager CiXi in a photo (above) and in a painting (below) began as a concubine and rose to control the Chinese government for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. CiXi was popularly known as the "West Empress Dowager" (西太后) because she lived inside

Rudyard Kipling’s satiric poem, The White Man’s Burden was published in 1899 and it was a direct attack upon the U.S. annexation of the Philippines (its sub-title was “The United States and the Philippine Islands”). The cartoon above was in response. It was the same year Joseph

While we may not all agree on whether she looks Chinese or not, The Wicked Witch of the West shown here could pass for Chinese if compared with the racist cartoons of Chinese at the time. Primarily it's the Manchu pigtails and the apparel. Here's another

The Wizard of Oz as shown in the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The venerable con-man from Omaha, Nebraska. He leaves Oz at the end of Baum's novel, again in a hot air balloon. In later books, he is allowed to return to Oz to live. If the

L. Frank Baum's famous Woggle-Bug Map has the Emerald City at the center. Notice - it's admittedly hard to see - the NSEW compass point top right with East and West reversed? The controversy is solved - sort of - if the map is viewed from

The Woggle-Bug was once a regular insect living in a classroom who listened in to all the lessons. One day he became magnified and he stayed that way. Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated, this pompous creature opened the Royal Athletic College of Oz. He appears in The Marvelous Land of

The caption from the 1899 racist cartoon below reads: "The Yellow Terror in all his Glory." How did things get to this point? What with the "Yellow Terror," the "Yellow Danger," the "Yellow Peril," yellow journalism, yellow fever, yellow quarantine flags... Such

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz used to be one of the Great American Novels, right up there with Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. Not among the literati, of course, but among nearly everybody else. Indeed, it was clear-eyed librarians in the Twenties and Thirties, Fifties and

Notice the red Chinese lion entwined around the word OZ. This appears to be an imperial guardian lion known as shishi. Such stone lions can be seen in many places around China and they generally come in pairs, representing yin and yang. The male lion's paw sits on