Charles Desnoyers: Centennial Gala in Philly Inspired Today's China

Charles Desnoyers is associate professor of history and director of Asian Studies at La Salle University. His book on Chinese observer Li Gui is called, A Journey to the East (University of Michigan Press, 2004)

'July 4th is the day on which Washington founded the nation. The evening before, at 7:30 p.m., the vice president and the mayor of Philadelphia attended a banquet with the exhibition officials of various countries, after which they took carriages to sightsee. The lamps of all the streets and thoroughfares lit up the heavens and the sound of guns shook the earth. There were hundreds of amusements on hand, and the exploding fireworks and flags draped everywhere all contributed to the festivities. ... The next three days saw similar scenes of celebration, and it was undeniably a very grand affair."

It was indeed. This was the Fourth of Fourths, America's centennial Independence Day, the continent's biggest celebration yet, held amid America's first world's fair, the Centennial Exposition of 1876. But the description above was not from an American observer. It was instead from Li Gui (1842-1903). His report on his visit to America, A New Account of a Trip Around the Globe, remained a favorite handbook of foreign technology, exotica, and adventure for generations of Chinese readers, including a young Mao Zedong.

The account of Li Gui, the official Chinese observer of the event, provides us with an opportunity to reflect on some seldom recognized Chinese connections with our region that spring from that time....

Li Gui's memoir of our city and the fair became the first in-depth treatment of the cutting-edge technologies so eagerly sought by China's first modernizers. Li visited all of the major exhibition halls and most of the lesser ones, and offered astute commentary on the advantages and disadvantages of a staggering number of objects and machines for use in China....