“The Question of Hu” is a novel wrote by Jonathan Spencer, a British-born American historian. The book tells a story of John Hu, a Chinese widower who is a lowly but religious Catholic, accompanied a French Jesuit missionary Foucquet in 1722 as a copyist and assistant, on a journey to France. During the journey, Hu acted bizarrely and ended up confined in a lunaitc asylum in Charendon. My goal in this paper is to explain that Hu is not truly insane, his problem is a result of misunderstanding ,refusal of understanding, and isolation from the West. Upon Hu’s departure, he has been placed in a isolated situation where his “companions speaks no Chinese”(Spence 30), and he “has learned no French yet”(30). The only Chinese speaker on the boat
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At the time of 1722, most people in Europe has never seen an Asian before. Thus, Hu is treated like an animal at a zoo. While he is out in the streets, people look him as one of the “freaks, exotics, topsy-turvy beings”(96) and is “accepted by the crowds, clustered around, cheered on their way with shouts and laughter.”(96) People don’t quite think he is a person like them, instead, he is just a clown to them. Therefore, they never think of communicate with Hu, leaving him more isolated, which intensified his abnormal …show more content…
He “puts the mattress on the floor and opens the window”(48), and has a continuously “silent struggle” with the servants when they try to replace the mattress and close the window. Therefore, people may think Hu is crazy. However, people never think that Hu is just trying to make things familiar, and his limitation of language makes him no way to tell the servants about it. Normally, Chinese bedsteads are not as high as European bedsteads, and Hu just finds “the bedstead too high”(48). At that time, there were many people who never traveled, and maybe they never interacted with people form another country. So they don’t understand that people from different countries do things differently. They think everything Hu is doing “wrong” is because there is something wrong with him instead of realizing it is just a different opinion because he is from a different country and a different
At the time of 1722, most people in Europe has never seen an Asian before. Thus, Hu is treated like an animal at a zoo. While he is out in the streets, people look him as one of the “freaks, exotics, topsy-turvy beings”(96) and is “accepted by the crowds, clustered around, cheered on their way with shouts and laughter.”(96) People don’t quite think he is a person like them, instead, he is just a clown to them. Therefore, they never think of communicate with Hu, leaving him more isolated, which intensified his abnormal …show more content…
He “puts the mattress on the floor and opens the window”(48), and has a continuously “silent struggle” with the servants when they try to replace the mattress and close the window. Therefore, people may think Hu is crazy. However, people never think that Hu is just trying to make things familiar, and his limitation of language makes him no way to tell the servants about it. Normally, Chinese bedsteads are not as high as European bedsteads, and Hu just finds “the bedstead too high”(48). At that time, there were many people who never traveled, and maybe they never interacted with people form another country. So they don’t understand that people from different countries do things differently. They think everything Hu is doing “wrong” is because there is something wrong with him instead of realizing it is just a different opinion because he is from a different country and a different