Hey Marvel, what’s up with Sun Wukong’s Manchu queue in a story set in modern/future China for a comic book published in 2019?
Not only is it plain racist by reinforcing a stereotype of China from over a hundred years ago, ignorant by giving the character a hairstyle from a different ethnicity, but even more problematic because the Manchu queue is a symbol of systematic racism, oppression, and both cultural and actual genocide to many Chinese. Hundreds of thousands of people died to unsuccessfully oppose the Manchu queue when it was first ordered in the 17th century, and many more died so they never have to wear it again in the last century.
Here’s a panel from The New Agents of Atlas published in the year 2019 (this year!), where the dude with the queue is Sun Wukong, a modern character who takes on the power of Chinese legendary character Sun Wukong aka The Monkey King.
Here’s the wiki entry of the Manchu queue for the history behind it:
The controversial July 1645 edict (the “haircutting order”) forced adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into the queue hairstyle which was worn by Manchu men, on pain of death.[57] The popular description of the order was: “To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair.”
For the Han Chinese, however, it was a humiliating reminder of Qing authority that challenged traditional Confucian values. The Classic of Filial Piety(Xiaojing) held that “a person’s body and hair, being gifts from one’s parents, are not to be damaged”.
The order triggered strong resistance to Qing rule in Jiangnan and massive killing of Han Chinese. Li Chengdong, a Han Chinese general who had served the Ming but surrendered to the Qing,ordered his Han troops to carry out three separate massacres in the city of Jiading within a month, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. At the end of the third massacre, there was hardly a living person left in this city.Jiangyin also held out against about 10,000 Han Chinese Qing troops for 83 days. When the city wall was finally breached on 9 October 1645, the Han Chinese Qing army led by the Han Chinese Ming defector Liu Liangzuo , who had been ordered to “fill the city with corpses before you sheathe your swords”, massacred the entire population, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people.
Fastforward to the 19th and 20th century, the image of the yellow peril with the Manchu queue was the main image used to depict Chinese people during the height of racism against the Chinese. It’s an image that was continued throughout the 20th (and apparently 21st) century.
It’s why during the Cold War, when Fu Manchu was created as a revived symbolism of the Yellow Peril, he still had a queue even though Chinese people had long cut off their queue and embraced the modern world.
Also, I’m personally offended that whoever drew this panel thinks Shang-Chi or any mortal or immortal or god or alien can take any version of Sun Wukong’s staff from him.
To repent for his arrogance, Sun Wukong offers the Buddha to guard the monk Tang Sanzang’s pilgrimage. Expecting some troublemaking, the Buddha gifts the monk an irremovable circlet; with a special sutra, it can tighten around Sun Wukong’s head!
