Misreading the Chinese character

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Starting in 1767 with the first portrayal of China and the Chinese on stage in the American colonies, Williams (theater, Ohio State U.-Newark) traces the evolution of such portrayals from harmless buffoons to hardened criminals. He argues that though the manifest content varied widely from play to play, the portrayals all sprang from the Euroamerican need to maintain a race-based separation from the Chinese. He ends the year after US law limited Chinese immigration to a trickle.