Asian Cultures in Binghamton's Local History

In this episode, we are joined by Xinyuan Qui, PhD Candidate in the English Department at Binghamton University and a current Public Humanities Fellow sponsored by IASH and Humanities New York, to discuss her ongoing project tilted "Asian Cultures in Binghamton's Local History" that seeks to uncover the ways in which Asian cultures have been represented in the Binghamton area. She is collaborating with the Bundy Museum in downtown Binghamton to uncover the extent of Asian artifacts in its collection and what that says about Asian cultural representation and understanding in the area. 

Her exhibit opens April 5, 2024 with an event  at the Bundy Museum from 6-9PM, and it will run for a few weeks.

Transcript

Joshua Kluever: 0:00

Welcome to Confluence humanities in the public sphere, and IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss the various public humanities projects on Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere. I'm your host, Josh Kluever. US culture has always been the combined product of new ideas and people's coming into the United States. immigrant communities bring their traditions, music and artwork, and they add to the ever expanding mosaic of society. However, cultural artifacts also entered the US as commodities, and were bought by wealthy and middle class Americans as a way for them to experience far off places. This was especially true for Asian countries like China and Japan. But what kind of cultural representation or misrepresentation did these artifacts create once they were plucked from their historical context? Joining me today is Xinyuan Qiu, to a PhD candidate in the English department at Binghamton University, and a current public humanities fellow sponsored by iash and humanities New York to discuss her ongoing project titled, A Lost Chapter in Local History. Binghamton's Forgotten Asian Connections that seeks to uncover the ways in which Asian cultures have been represented in the Binghamton area. She is collaborating with the Bundy Museum in Downtown Binghamton to uncover the extent of Asian artifacts and its collection, and what that says about Asian cultural representation and understanding in the area. Xinyuan thank you for joining me.

Xinyuan Qiu: 1:31

Well, thank you so much, Josh, for inviting me here. I'm so happy to be here to talk about my project.

Joshua Kluever: 1:38

Well, I'm glad that you're here. Let us begin by just having you briefly explain for us what your public humanities project is, the goals you have for this project and how you first got interested in the topic,

Xinyuan Qiu: 1:52

of course, so this project brewed since last winter, the project mainly focuses on artifacts like you just introduced of Asian culture connections in the bonding museum. So basically, the project is composed of three parts. The first is to make a catalogue of all ideally, all the artifacts that are either imported from East Asian or more broadly Asian countries, or have employed elements from their cultures in their designs. The catalog is to list what is there and add information like brief description like where are they are produced, there are regional countries and what specific cultural elements are involved in their designs. When the catalog, I mean, the disruption and identification is finished, we'll add that to their existing existing online catalog so that whenever people who are interested in the museum search for the webpage, they can have access to these specific descriptions of artifacts. And the second part of it is an exhibit that will come in this spring. The purpose is to draw the attention of local both local residents of beam 10 and students, faculty, and people on Bloomington campus. And to question like, What is there already in the local culture about Asian countries and their cultures? And what that's tell us? And I think that's an interesting question to think about, like, the artifacts and its local communities. My original goal is to let local communities especially Asian immigrants to realize that there are these artifacts already in the Bantu museum. And to create by such realization, I want them to have a sense of belonging that a lot of people still believe that all Benton's immigration, like Asian immigration starts very late and the earliest record of Asian immigrants is only maybe decades ago. But it's not really the case by looking at these artifacts. And another purpose of the exhibit is to draw different communities together by looking at this exhibits, to stimulate discussions and conversations among these communities. So that's, it's not just me as a curator telling them something, but by showing these artifacts to them. I want to draw them into a discussion or conversation, which is like a Communication at the cultural level so that people from different communities can express themselves like that by seeing the artifacts, they may have, you know, their own interpretations and they want to share that with other people. That's what I call cultural communications, which I find meaningful. And the third part which has related to exhibit is this, you know, community building discussions among different communities. This is a basically, the the major components of my project. And what caught my attention to this museum and its collection is really by chance. I taught a class in fall 2021, called representing Asia, and a student in the class, who is also an artist visited this museum. And she asked me whether I have ever been to the museum because there was a good collection of Asian artifacts in the room. And I was so surprised to know that but because I had never been there by then. So after the conversation with the student, I went to the museum and I was so thrilled and surprised to find so many artifacts related to Asian cultures and countries. That's what drew me to start doing this project. Yes,

Joshua Kluever: 6:26

it's such a complex project. There's so many different parts to it. I think. I know a lot of people are going to get to experience the exhibits and go and see all of these artifacts. But I think the the untold hero of this project is the archival work that you're doing and making it searchable for the future so that you know people now but also students and community members in the future, will be able to go online and actually see what's there at the Bundy Museum. That's such an incredible part of public humanities is making it accessible to future generations that they can also go and experience this exhibit. So that's an incredible thing that you're doing. This is an auditory podcast. But can you kind of give an example of some of these materials that you're working with? Are they porcelain? Is it furniture, what what kind of materials are will be on display at the Bundy? Sure,

Xinyuan Qiu: 7:23

the major categories will be on display will be porcelain, of course, personal and vessels, furniture, and there will be paintings or prints. And also there will be some other artifacts for domestic users. For example, there is a clock, I'm trying to bridge this gap between visual and audio. So I'll try my best. There is a clock that is meant to be placed on the mental place, you know, the place above the fireplace at home. And I find this piece really interesting because it was produced in my hometown Tianjin, that is the north part of China, and also a port city. After some research with experts. We date this clock to around late 19th century and early 20th century. So it's a it's an exquisite piece of work with flowers and birds painted on their surface, the glass surface of the clock. And there is a horse standing right on top of the whole clock architecture. What is most interesting about this piece is the words behind the clock. So it's like a panel full of Chinese characters. And it read that the horse had trademark which means the brand, the manufactory of the artifact, and around the trademark it says please choose domestically manufactured goods. And then there was a paragraph completely in Chinese characters, or manufactury is located in Tianjin County, Hebei province, and we manufacture table clocks in the latest styles and exquisite wall clocks whose time can say can stay accurate for eight days without the need to correct a great variety of materials are employed in making the clocks more sturdy, enduring and exquisite than the important ones. So upon the release, they have won popularity and fame sold in various cities and ports to meet social needs or strive for more progress. If you wish your clocks in a particular style. If you would customize the clock according week, we would customize the clock according to our needs, the variety of clocks we are capable of pitfall of manufacturing is beyond the limited space here, were looking forward to serving you and please look for our horse hat trademark. There are pieces of information that draw my attention first is about the status of Tianjin in the late 19th century and early 20th century. So that was the time when Imperial and cloned that closed nest moves start started invading China. So before that was an East war, especially China and the west at work completely separated and imperialism and these colonial lysing moves kind of pushed the door open. And Tenjin was one of the city's ports set his open up because of the invasion, because of their loss in the war. And then the city became a there are there were manufacturer manufacturer Reese rising in the city to produce certain goods for both domestic consumption and export. So I think the description here by emphasizing, you know, the port city status of tanjun, and the location itself is telling the story of this imperialism, and west east encounters not not really peaceful, but full of violence and force. And second, I think there is a national mood, or say field sentiment expressed in in the very four words, encircling the trademark, like please choose domestically manufactured goods is like domestic versus foreign. So we want to protect our domestic manufacturers against the invasion of the the outside. So by putting this on the exhibit, I hope it can tell a story of our history behind the artifact. And to show a picture of the west east encounter is like an episode of it.

Joshua Kluever: 12:29

That is a great example of a artifact from the late 19th century. But do you have any examples of some of the artifacts, perhaps more contemporary time period that you're also going to include in this exhibit

Xinyuan Qiu: 12:43

Another artifact I'm particularly interested in, it's a painting in the style of ukiyo e by a BU student, a former abuse student, it's in the style of ukiyo E. And it shows a woman a Japanese woman in the Japanese traditional costume that is kimono. She's standing in front of a painting that is when goals are the starry night. And in his hand, very interestingly, she's holding a smartphone. So I think a lot of interesting things are playing out here in the painting. The first is Van Gogh, which is like a representative of advanced Western painting, and the woman in kimono, which it which I mean who stands for a traditional culture of the East, that that is the Japanese culture. This is like the ancient versus the modern, the West versus the east or encountering the east. And also there is tradition versus modern technology. Look at the smartphone in her hand. And this traditional genre of painting, Western painting, the traditional costume and traditional genre of ukiyo E, all these become a kind of medium for the smartphone. So there's also a clash between modern development of technology and traditions, traditional art forms. So by putting this on exhibit, I want to show the audience rather than I want to tell them something I want to fuel some discussions among the audience like what when you see these different types of things, the Melosh they're meeting each other, which indicates and interactions between different cultures different times. And I want the audience to realize we are standing at a similar standing point which has an interaction In Team 10, there are also different cultures that are is the, you know, mainstream American culture, and so many rich cultures from different countries brought by immigrants, then what do we do when we stand together? So I think that will be an interesting question for audience. Like I said, I want to stimulate cultural communications. I think that's the starting point for that.

Joshua Kluever: 15:27

Everything you say there, especially going back to the going back to the clock example, the clock is a great example of historians getting a lot out of this exhibit where it becomes you said, dated the clock to around the late 19th, early 20th century, you know, there's the the open door policy being implemented on China and forcing open a lot of, you know, refined goods for, you know, European and American markets. And, you know, that's all wrapped up in this clock. Like, that's how it gets from tianzhen to Binghamton, is it was, you know, pried out of the Chinese market, because, as you brilliantly described on the back of that clock, it's made for a domestic Chinese consumer, it's not supposed to be sitting on a fireplace. It's in the Bundy Museum, and yet, it's here and you're able to tap into that that story. So brilliantly. And then by adding in that more modern artwork piece, it really does force conversation. And I hope that the listeners here are going to go and see your exhibit and get to be part of this conversation and get to see these different representations of Asian culture, and how they're being represented in this exhibit and what people are bringing to it. One thing when you were giving your talk at the i ash, I think you may have mentioned something that this whole process of uncovering these items was kind of like a treasure hunt, or a puzzle. Can you kind of go into like sometimes the difficulties of kind of figuring out when something was created? How did you find out like, when the clock was created? Or how did you find out who a certain artist is? For some artwork?

Xinyuan Qiu: 17:30

Yeah, of course. I mean, I also liked that term. It's like, there's a movie I think called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Exactly the same for my project is a fantastic artifacts and Where to Find Them, where to locate them. So this I need to thank a lot of experts in this this field. First of all, the Bundy Museum, there is the researcher, Tom, who works a who has been working on the collection for a long time and the Collection Manager, Jeff, who has been helping me along he he's like an asset to the whole project, he, he was so supportive, so encouraging, and prompting his replies to any requests I gave him. So what we did to like, how to find them is, we first took pictures of what might be relevant to the project, and upload them to the catalog to the online catalog. And there is a function, they're all called Search similar. So I use that function. Whenever I came across any artifacts that I didn't know, any information about, literally, I use that function. And by using the this function, I locate, I remember very clearly one artifact that's a friend, I, the only thing I can know is it's related to South Asian culture, because there was an elephant, you know, this stereotyping of their culture. So I searched and found there was another friend of the same design look located in the collection of another big museum. By that I can find the information regarding at least what the design is about, like what's there and the original location like it's where it was produced, and a ramp what here, if I remember correctly, clearly, it was a 16th century. So that's one of the sources I use. And another helpful resource is Julie one who is the librarian for East Asian Studies at BT In university, she introduced me to a friend of hers, who is a collector of antique artifacts. And we spent a whole afternoon last semester, looking through the collections and let the experts do the identification. He contributed a lot like numerous, we look through a series of prints, silk prints, and he identified on the time period, which was late 1970s, which is pretty recent. That's another story of the project. And he identified the Chinese calligraphy, on the prints what these characters are, and what patterns and mode motifs are those like, for us, trees, flowers, what specific type types they are, to give them names. Jeff, me, Julie and the advert. Mr. Ma, we went through the museum to see what's what was on exhibit, and then to see what's worth to be on my exhibit, since a very collaborative work, so I didn't work on my own, which killed some of the anxiety, because I really drew upon that sort of expertise of people who had have had experience in this in these fields. I think

Joshua Kluever: 21:33

it's a lesson for anyone doing these types of public humanities projects is you don't have to do it alone. There are other experts out there that you should be reaching out, especially librarians, and archivists. They're your best friend, when you're doing research, because a lot of times they know what they have, they've had the time in the years to also kind of work with this material. And so it's great that you were able to get this type of assistance, both from the librarians here on campus, but also outside experts as well. Can we pivot to kind of talk about this more, I guess, a conceptual question of why do you think there was so much interest in Asian artifacts in the Binghamton area? And perhaps what do we learn about Americans fascination with Asian culture, based on the materials that you're working with? Well,

Xinyuan Qiu: 22:26

I think we can read the fascination with Asian cultures and artifacts in the larger context. I mean, the Bundy family lived in Benton in the Victorian period. And later, the house was inherited by someone else. And that was another story. But I think Western attitudes toward Asia, Asian countries were were complex and complicated, fluctuating. Starting from 18th century, the period I work on is there is a shift from pure fancy, like everything is gold in Asian countries, because they are so exotic, they're far away but land of treasures, to a this illusion, that they are less civilized than the West, once Well, travelers in 18th century who've been to Asian countries, they use a discourse like if you travel there, you will find that it's not what you imagined, because of this separation from the West, which is civilization, which has enlightenment. The East is so far behind. That's another discourse, but it's not like overnight fascination or fancy is changed into disgust. There are still fluctuation and oscillation. And I think the story can be related to what we have in Binghamton in the Bondi Museum in the Victorian period. I don't think the fancy is completely eliminated. There is still this fluctuation, and meant, like mixture of fancy and disillusion, and at the same time with the development of Western imperialist moves, getting Asian artifacts into one's household as a show off, as like a display of one's wealth, connection, and able ability like these people are able to travel to foreign countries. It becomes having Asian artifacts becomes a showcase like this Play of Western Power in a word. And at the same time, I think there is a sense of collecting for the sense of collecting, they didn't really want to know what is behind an artifact, like his history, or even the artisan ship, or the the high scales involved. They just want to click that and show their audience where their friends families, this is what I have, I'm able to do this without exploring further was behind. But I think with time changing, and the development of manufactory, more and more commodities are made as mimicking Asian or regional Asian artifacts. The first wave, let's say maybe these artifacts were important, originally from the country, of course, that was a kind of luxury. But later, domestically, artifacts were created in imitation of these artifacts, or travelers to Asian countries, they brought back some designs or motifs. And they can, artifacts were created in the US or European countries. That's another case, which still shows fascination with Asian cultures and artifacts, and blindness, in pursuing the trend, with less regard to what these cultures are about, or even without the knowledge of where these artifacts were originally from. It's just following the trend following the fashion and becoming fashionable, as like Western self fashioning of themselves and their households.

Joshua Kluever: 27:08

Yes, there is, I think, something deep in American culture just to consume and grab on to things and you can ask somebody why. And they say, just because I want to have it, you know, I have my own little collectibles and things, not to this extent. So I think there is something to American culture that is about this type of consumption and just collecting for the sake of collecting. But I think another important part of your project is, you know, you're aiming to push back against the recent rise and some anti Asian sentiment both in the United States more broadly, but in the Binghamton area. So, can you speak to some of your goals for you, oh, you hope that people coming to see this exhibit will take away from it,

Xinyuan Qiu: 27:57

this is related to what I just said, I mean, some people held the the habit of collecting for the sake of collecting and the exhibit intends to kill, you know, go against that mentality to tell people when you see this artifacts, what's behind it is about histories is about encounters week between different civilizations and cultures and peoples. And at the same time, I want to I mean, of course, there will be people of Asian descendants, where they are from Asian countries come to this come to this exhibit, I hope they can have a sense of belonging like badminton is not just you know, white Americans, they also have something here. And I believe they have some recognition in these artifacts, and I want them to talk with other people who are interested in this artifacts and beam to local history, but may not be as familiar was Asian cultures as them. So, by this kind of conversation, at least people can talk I think, start starting talking is the icebreaker of any misunderstanding or unties sentiment sentiments against a group or certain communities. So the first step has to get people realized they need to know something they are not unfamiliar with. And I at the same time, I hope they can raise questions like oh, I never thought of that. This is so curious what it what is it on then. And then they can read descriptions we provide there or talk to librarians, museum staff who are expert on these. Of course, I'll be there, there will be conversations. And more importantly, there will be conversations among the audiences. Another thing I am still aiming to do is I will create, in collaboration with the museum to create a brief catalogue of the things, highlighting the the artifacts I just talked about, that really tell about histories that people may have ignored. I will make them portable, which means they will be in brochures, or pamphlets so that whoever is interested can take them away and share them with their friends or families. Like I just visited this museum and I have something you might not have known. I think in this way we can circulate information and knowledge and further stimulate understanding. I think the first step is get people introduced to them use him get to visit and start talking with with each other and getting to know each other. We never know maybe they get acquainted. I mean, some of the audience. They're local to Bloomington, but they don't know each other and they get acquainted. This is like interactions among communities. That's what I'm looking for. Well,

Joshua Kluever: 31:42

I certainly hope that plenty of people take advantage of this exhibit and the you're successful in sparking these conversations, making people feel that there is a broader community, they do belong here. And that this is going to inspire conversations, and just friendship to really to emerge from this exhibit. So should want to thank you so much for joining me in this podcast today. And I will encourage everybody to go to the exhibit once it is available.

Xinyuan Qiu: 32:17

Thank you, Josh, for inviting me here. I'm so happy to talk about my project here. And when the exhibit is on, please everyone do go to the Baltic Museum and visited and talk to people there. Thank you.

Joshua Kluever: 32:29

Thank you all for listening. If you'd like to know more about Shin Juan's project, she'll be hosting an exhibit at the Bundy museum starting on April 5, please check it out. Once again, Confluence is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the humanities. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on your podcast app of choice and share it with family and friends. We'll be back soon with more amazing public humanities projects.