In his 1847 work Elements of Physiophilosophy, the German naturalist Lorenz Oken deployed the five sensory receptors to rationalize his racial classification system: the White race held the highest rank, with the eye assigned to them; the Yellow race was linked to the ear; the Red associated with the nose; the Brown correlated with the tongue; and the Black was placed at the bottom and epitomized by the skin. This hierarchical arrangement of sensory organs was adduced as evidence for the arbitrary categorization of cultural and ethnic identities. Long before and long after Oken’s work, sensory experiences have been persistently utilized to divide, distinguish, and discriminate against groups perceived as Others.

Within the framework of these established modern and Western sensory norms, Anglo-American sensory encounters with China are historically characterized by frictions, antagonisms, strategies, and taboo behaviors. In this session, Lingyan Liu investigates how the sounds emitted by Shanghai’s “coolie” laborers between the 1880s and the 1930s, especially their shouting and singing, troubled the British and American listeners residing in Shanghai International Settlement, who were forced to concede to the failure of their mission to civilize the soundscape. Additionally, she analyzed how these Anglophone subjects, and their acoustic aesthetic preferences, distorted and misinterpreted the sounds they encountered, often with punitive or violent repercussions. Zach Fredman discusses the deliberate efforts, made by the Chinese government between 1941 and 1945, to prevent American military personnel’s sensory receptors from being assaulted, in order to affirm Chinese conformity to American norms and to demonstrate that they deserved to be treated equally. However, the unpleasant sensory experiences of these American soldiers in China ultimately led to the deterioration of the wartime Sino-American alliance. And Chunmei Du illustrates how the American military in Tianjin and Qingdao orchestrated a meticulously planned public performance of their own bodily and sensory norms in October 1945, including visceral displays of intentional informality and dismissiveness, to exhibit their superiority and gain authority and respect from the defeated Japanese and Chinese spectators.

As a collective, we are engaging in a critical examination of the whiteness of sensory studies by extensively incorporating primary sources written in Chinese, which have been absent from much previous scholarship. Our approach is aligned with the guidance expressed in Andrew J. Rotter’s recent work Empire of the Senses, which advocated that all sides involved in sensory encounters should be treated “with the balance they deserve.” We are endeavoring to provide an alternative ontology of the five senses in a non-Western context, to expose the artificial nature of the racial, cultural and sensory hierarchies that have dominated us, and the field, for so long.