2024-4-10
在加拿大最早的 New Brunswick 博物館裡，看到下面這一張照片。照片的主人，是一個端坐了裹着小腳帶着耳環的中國大媽，膝蓋上抱着一個歐洲男孩。這張像應該是在照相館或者展銷會上擺拍的，大媽未必一定是小男孩的保姆。
博物館的注釋說明是，不知道這個女子姓甚名誰（Perkins Child and an Unidentified Chinese Woman），可是有下面一些附註：
A. Fong
Chinese
c 1865
albumen print carte-de-visite
10 cm x 6 cm
Collection of the New Brunswick Museum (1989.113.14)
於是便想起，前不久剛看過的那本《中國女人梅阿芳》（The Chinese Lady, A Fong Moy）來：
梅阿芳者，中國女人，十九歲，身高四英尺十英寸，鞋長四英寸，不知何地人也，1834年12月入境美國。看一看，五毛錢。和阿芳一起入境的，還有一位名叫阿童的精明的少年翻譯。
於是就有了下面這個被杜撰了的故事：
In 1834 Afong Moy was the first recognized Chinese woman to arrive in America. Through the course of her travels across the country, she became the first Chinese person to receive wide public acclaim and national recognition. While her fame was short-lived, she introduced Americans to China through her person and the goods she promoted.
During the 17 years of Afong Moy’s visible presence in America, her treatment as a Chinese woman varied over time. When she first arrived, the public generally responded to China in a positive way. On the edge of patrician orientalism, the perceived Orient was one of exoticism, beauty, dignity, and revered history. The Carnes merchants, Francis and Nathaniel G., and the ship captain Benjamin Obear, who brought Afong Moy to America, took advantage of this perception, using the sensual stimulus that came from marketing China trade goods with an exotic. They played on, controlled, and mediated the public’s consciousness of her visual difference—her bound feet, Chinese clothing, and accessories—all to promote their goods.
In the second phase of her experience in the later 1830s, Afong Moy made a transition from a promoter of goods to that of spectacle. During this time, she experienced the conjoining of two worlds—that of the market and the theater. Afong Moy operated simultaneously as entertainment, edification, and billboard. Her new manager occasionally set her against a panoramic backdrop of an illusionistic oriental scene, thus highlighting her cultural exceptionality through her clothing, objects, and images.
After a heart-rending, eight-year interregnum out of the public eye, Afong Moy once again took to the stage in the late 1840s and early 1850s. P. T. Barnum, the master marketer of difference, became her manager. He recognized her promotional value as the only Chinese woman in America whose bound feet, clothing, objects, and experience signified an orientalist presence that might titillate the American public. Afong Moy’s time in America provided an additional benefit to Barnum: she no longer needed an interlocutor. Though occasionally she required an interpreter, her language skills were likely sufficient for most audience interactions. On stage she provided evidences of her dissimilarity from the use of chopsticks to the demonstration and explication of Chinese religious rituals.
於是我認為，最前面博物館裡的那一張照片，就是梅阿芳在1851年第二次復出的時候給拍照的，時年三十六歲，這也是目前在博物館裡所能看到的梅阿芳的唯一的照片。而且在這時候，一個更年輕的17歲的中國女孩，潘亦可（Pwan Ye Koo），也被帶進了美國和公眾的視野。
潘亦可的可貴之處，也是她的殺手鐧，是她的小腳，只有兩寸半，比三寸金蓮，還三寸金蓮！
而且和潘亦可在一起的，也不是她一人，而是一個完整的團隊。有翻譯、女傭、教師爺、和一男一女兩個孩子。於是，梅阿芳就很快失去了市場，隱姓埋名不為人知了。
如果真如附註中所說，照片拍於1865年左右，梅阿芳50歲。年老色衰，也是正常的。
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