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Jean-Francois Foucquet's The Question Of Hu

1480 Words6 Pages

The Question of Hu is a book mainly talking about the labor dispute between a Jesuit missionary, who named Jean-Francois Foucquet, and his Chinese assistant, John Hu, the keeper of the gate at the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. The major theme of this book is about the question ‘why has Hu been locked up’? Foucquet was a priest, and was sent to China for mission activity between 1699 and 1721. He was recalled to Europe in order to meet with the Pope and report the situation of the mission in China. The reason why Foucquet needed a Chinese assistant to go to Europe with him is because Foucquet interpreted the Chinese classic The Book of Changes in Peking for about nine years, and after read many Chinese classics, he …show more content…

Spence mentioned a little in his book that Kangxi emperor tried to stop Chinese people from travelling oversea due to the national security concerns (Spence, p16). And Spence also said Foucquet worried about selecting a Chinese assistant because Canton only had few French boats came, and Foucquet only had a very short time to select his Chinese assistant before the French boats coming. Hu was one of the people who was willing to take risk. And Hu was the only person Foucquet could find in a very limited time. According to Foucquet notes mentioned in the book, he wrote:” It was either this Chinese or none at all (Spence, …show more content…

Spence uses a lot of words to express how insane Hu was. Some examples, Hu dreamed his mother was dead; Hu said he want to beg in France; and Hu began to speech in front of a crowed of Parisians with his flag, which had ‘men and women should be kept in their separate spheres’ logo on it (Spence,p82-84). Everything he did was been considered as insane by Foucquet and other European. However, what Hu did was not as unusual as European thoughts if they were happened in China. One question arises. Foucquet already lived at China for nearly twenty-two years, why he couldn’t understand Hu’s behaviors? There are two assumptions can explain it. Firstly, even though Foucquet studied Chinese classic for so many years, the reason he studied Chinese classic was only in order to find out the link between Chinese traditional text and the God. So that the mission activity could expand more successful and quickly in China. It did not means he agreed with ancestor worship and Confucian ritual in China. Second assumption is Foucquet knew that Hu was sane, the reason why he told other people that Hu was insane is because some of Hu’s behaviors were illegal in Europe at that time. Foucquet felt afraid about Hu’s misbehavior would influence his detained books as well as his reputation. As Cohen wrote in his book, between 1717 and 1727, Qing attempted to restrict trade again because of the national security concerns. Due to Kangxi only had

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