Sometimes you have to be silent. Not someone needs you. So I am silent. Up to clenched jaws, which you remember only when your facial muscles begin to reduce … But here it fell out of the Chinese Internet, and it’s a pity to ignore the Chott, because it’s entertaining. I share.
So, the second half of the XIX century, Jiangxi province (according to other sources - Fujian province), Wuyuan county, Hong Guan village, where Zhang Shichai was born on December 20, 1841 (詹 世 釵; south-minded Englishmen called him Chang Woo Gow), a famous under the nickname "Chinese giant". The legend says that a month after birth he weighed like a six-year-old child, and at the age of two he was such an impressive height that the mother had to make excuses in front of unwitting witnesses, why is it suddenly a big fellow asks for breast …
European citizens hungry for the show found him in 1865 at an ink factory somewhere near Shanghai and decided to carry around the world like a curiosity (his height by that time was 2.48 cm). They got to the point that Zhang learned ten (!) Foreign languages, cut off his braid, put on a frock coat and even got himself a British wife - Catherine Santley from Liverpool, who bore him three children.
Promotional video:
After leaving, ahem, the stage, around 1878, Mr. Shichai opened an Oriental Bazaar Chinese tea shop in Bournemouth, selling antiques, Chinese bronze and silks along the way. He died in 1893, having outlived his wife for four months. In the title of the obituary they wrote: death of a famous giant.
Some sources indicate that Zhang was 319 cm tall, but this is not the case; the reason for the discrepancy lies in the difference in the translation of measures - Chinese and English.
As contemporaries assured, Zhang's abnormal growth was not a consequence of illness. According to the fellow countrymen of the giant Han, both his father and his brothers were all taller than two meters. The house of their family was called “the house of the giants”, 长 人 之 家 (it is interesting that both “tall” and “long” are translated from Chinese into Russian; “house of long people” J).
But there were other giants in China in the 19th century …
The Chinese write that in this photo of 1876 we see an unnamed Qing giant and an unnamed Englishman, but in fact it is a Chinese giant Chonkwicsee and companions. Photographer - A. U. Burman.
1894, Yunnan province, the giant Zhang Yanming 常 严明 2.41 m tall. Photographer - Australian J. E. Morrison.
1900, Jiangsu province. Giant Lika Erdun with photographer James.
A couple of photos from the period 1894-1912. The author is the same Morrison. Loved the big.
People surprise …