Black Kunlun Slaves in Premodern China

Source

Kunlun figure discovered in the tomb of a Chinese woman in Tang-era Chang'an (850 CE), capital of that dynasty. Kunlun by the T'ang period often meant 'black Africans,' as in, people from the eastern coast of Africa (from the Juba River to Cape Delgado and perhaps Madagascar). Black people went from a mere philosophical abstraction to actual beings walking the streets of Guangzhou, serving wealthy Chinese masters (and Arab, Persian, and sometimes other foreign traders active in that cosmopolitan port (yet not too cosmopolitan because the movement of foreigners was highly restricted).

Of course, to the pre-modern Han Chinese, who are a perfect example of historical non-European forms of whiteness (they perceived themselves as such), often used the word 'kunlun' to describe darker peoples of Southeast Asia (such as the Malays or Javanese) and South Asia (Sri Lanka, Malabar, etc.), but these 'kunlun' slaves (kunlun originally referred to the far west, to the Kunlun mountains of Tibet, and therefore connoted remoteness) slaves were described as having dark skin, curly hair, 'black as ink,' etc. Lexical evidence would suggest an origin for these 'black slaves' in eastern Africa, likely arriving in China on the ships of Arabs and Persians and purchased by some wealthy Chinese in Guangzhou and other ports of the empire. Thus, blackness was associated with servility, inferiority, etc. centuries before the coming of Europeans in East Asia. Indeed, revulsion towards the allegedly cultural deficiencies of the various types of 'kunlun' often emphasized their blackness, particularly Zhu Yu's writings in the Song dynasty.

Yet, in short stories from the T'ang era, these black slaves could be brave, courageous, resourceful, and show some sign of assimilation into Chinese society. The Chinese Confucianist universalist ideal (basically, anyone could become civilized if they accepted and assimilated into the Middle Kingdom's 'superior culture') could seemingly apply to fictional black slaves, but in the Song dynasty these black slaves were seen as bestial and semi-human, at best. Chinese knowledge of eastern Africa and 'black people' from Africa is certainly interesting and the Guangzhou black slaves certainly deserve more attention, just as the Jews of Kaifeng and other ethnic and religious minorities in pre-modern China get. Furthermore, this area of study reveals how some East Asian stigmatization and stereotypes of blackness (and not just dark-skinned Asians, but people from Africa directly) predated European modern racism by several centuries, although culture more than skin color remained the major reason for Chinese disdain and revulsion towards 'blacks' though they had no direct experience or ties to blacks beyond word of mouth via Arabs and Persians. Indeed, Zhu Yu describes converting the slaves from a raw food diet to cooked food (cooked food being seen as essential to any civilization by the Han), which is certainly exaggerating the diets of Africans while also speaking to the capacity of black slaves to be 'civilized' (but they supposedly still couldn't learn to speak Chinese??).

Indeed, as Sino-African relations become more complex in the 21st century world, and sometimes in surprising or new ways (check out this), learning more about how Sino-African contact and exchange worked before the rise of the West will certainly draw more interest from scholars and the general public. My main source for this has been Wyatt's The Blacks of Premodern China, and expect a follow up post later today or tomorrow.