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📘 Headland's Chinese children

You open a 1901 book from Fleming H. Revell. The frontispiece is labelled CHINESE BROWNIES AT PLAY: four children in a courtyard, and the man who put them there wants you to see real little folk, not a type. The title page names Isaac Taylo

4
lessons
~20 min
to learn
Adults
level
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What you’ll learn

  1. The man at the windowPlace Headland as a Methodist science professor in Peking with a Revell audience, and separate this book's street door from the court door that arrived through his wife.The 1901 title page names Isaac Taylor Headland of Peking University. Smithsonian and Columbia give 1890 and Marian Sinclair, 1894. The preface admits a wall and still asks you to see real little folk.
  2. How he bought the nurseryState Headland's method: a paid nurse, rival collectors, and English meter, and keep his later total of 600 as his claim.Mrs. Yin sold rhymes at five hundred cash. Vitali and Smith widened the net. He names three difficulties. You are reading his English, not a nurse's mouth.
  3. The playground as argumentRead the games chapters as an argument against Western writers, collected on mission grounds, with a girl who can stop the record.Gulick asked for play. Chi ran Forcing the City Gates until the boys were red. Miss Young had to come for the girls. Seventy-five games in one city is not China.
  4. How to read him nowKeep great happiness / small happiness as reported words, hear the kindness and the ranking together, and go ask who holds the camera.The glimpse is real. The country-sized claim is not. Tonight, pick a picture of someone else's children and name the person behind the lens.

Questions this course answers

What two jobs does Headland's 1901 preface try to do at once?

The first sentence says no thorough study is possible until the wall of exclusiveness comes down. The last sentences say the same sunlight fills East and West, and ask far-away mates to see real little folk. Both jobs are on the same page.

Match the source Headland names to what he says it gave him

Headland names his doors. Mrs. Yin is the paid nurse. Vitali and Smith are other collectors. Chi is the playground leader. The later total of 600 is Headland's own claim.

Put Headland's own path in the order the records support

Smithsonian and the Columbia finding aid: Mount Union 1888, China October 1890, marriage 11 June 1894, Methodist Peking University through 1907. The book itself is Revell, copyright September 1901.

What price does Headland say he paid Mrs. Yin for each rhyme?

Headland writes five hundred cash, about three cents. Six hundred is his later rhyme total. Seventy-five is his Peking game count. Eighteen is his count of provinces.

In your own words, why does a book that wants you to see real little folk still need two readings?

The kindness and the ranking travel in the same paragraph. You keep the panting boys and the girl who stopped a dirty game. You do not upgrade a Methodist courtyard into China.

When Headland writes that he collected more than 600 Chinese rhymes, what is the honest move?

He names Mrs. Yin, Vitali, Smith, and Miss Chalfant, and he names Peking and Shandong. The 600 is his later total. The method is what you can check.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • Isaac Taylor Headland, The Chinese Boy and Girl, New York, Chicago, Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Company, copyright September 1901. Title page: of Peking University, author of Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes. Preface: the wall of Chinese exclusiveness; glimpses; same sunlight East and West; real little folk, human like themselves. Nine chapters from The Nursery and Its Rhymes to Stories Told to Children. Mrs. Yin and five hundred cash (about three cents) a rhyme; more than fifty Peking rhymes in one summer; Baron Vitali about 250; Arthur H. Smith more than 300 from Shandong; Headland's later claim of more than 600 and five Little Pig versions; three difficulties (unprinted, coarse, metrical English). Luther Gulick / Pratt / Psychology of Play; Chi; Forcing the City Gates as answer to writers who said Chinese sports lack exertion; Miss Effie Young and the girls' games; more than 75 games in Peking; the cut at seven; Mr. Hsin and the toys; Fifteen Magic Blocks on Filial Piety Lane; great happiness / small happiness. Project Gutenberg ebook 522, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/522 ; Wikisource validated text, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Boy_and_Girl
  • National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Isaac Taylor Headland, 1859–1942, Missionary, Author, and Academic, biographical sheet, 29 February 2016. Born Freedom, Pennsylvania; Mount Union 1888; Boston University School of Theology, ordained 1890; arrived China October 1890, American Methodist Episcopal Mission; professor of science at Peking University, 1890–1907; married Marian Sinclair, a practicing physician in Beijing, 1894; Court Life written through her connections; Chinese Mother Goose (1900); letters at Burke Library, Columbia. https://asia.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Headland-Isaac-Taylor.pdf
  • Gregory Adam Scott, finding aid, MRL 6: Isaac Taylor Headland Papers, [1890?]–1939, The Burke Library Archives, Columbia University Libraries / Union Theological Seminary, prepared April 2010, updated 2014. Born 16 August 1859, Freedom, PA; A.B. Mount Union 1888; China October 1890; professor of science at Peking University; married Marian Sinclair 11 June 1894, physician to aristocratic families in Beijing, and treated the Empress Dowager Cixi (the finding aid's wording; Headland's own Court Life is narrower). Died 2 August 1942, Alliance, Ohio. https://library.columbia.edu/content/dam/libraryweb/locations/burke/fa/mrl/ldpd_8516138.pdf
  • Isaac Taylor Headland, Court Life in China: The Capital, Its Officials and People, New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1909. Preface: for twenty years and more Mrs. Headland has been physician to the family of the Empress Dowager's mother, the Empress' sister, and many of the princesses and high official ladies in Peking; social as well as professional visits; they were constant callers at our home; I am indebted to my wife for much of the information. Project Gutenberg ebook 523, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/523
  • Isaac Taylor Headland, Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, Fleming H. Revell, c. 1900. The companion volume named on the 1901 title page and in the preface (the Chinese Mother Goose). Internet Archive scan, https://archive.org/details/chinesemothergoo00head

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