The Yellow Peril: Dr. Fu Manchu and the Rise of Chinaphobia

<p>An entirely new perspective on current scaremongering about China's global ambitions, and on the Western media's ignorance of Chinese culture</p><p>A hundred years ago, a character who was to enter the bloodstream of 20th-century popular culture made his first appearance in the world of literature. In his day he became as well known as Count Dracula or Sherlock Holmes: he was the evil genius called Dr. Fu Manchu, described at the beginning of the first story in which he appeared as &quot;the yellow peril incarnate in one man.&quot;</p><p>Why did the idea that the Chinese were a threat to Western civilization develop at precisely the time when China was in chaos, divided against itself, the victim of successive famines and utterly incapable of being a &quot;peril&quot; to anyone even if it had wanted to be? Even the author of the Dr. Fu Manchu novels, Sax Rohmer, acknowledged that China, &quot;as a nation possess that elusive thing, poise.&quot;</p><p>And what do the Chinese themselves make of all this? Is it any wonder that they remember what we have carelessly forgotten-the opium wars; the &quot;unfair treaties&quot; that ceded Hong Kong and the New Territories; and the stereotyping of Chinese people in allegedly factual studies?</p><p>Here cultural historian Christopher Frayling takes us to the heart of popular culture in the music hall, pulp literature, and the mass-market press, and shows how film amplifies our assumptions.</p><p> </p> 60 illustrations in color and black-and-white