Living on Gulangyu
For the queue's history we travel back to the island of Gulangyu 鼓浪屿 - not the most famous island around the globe, yet it has been of importance for the relations between foreign nations and China in the 19th century. The island, situated right off the coast near Xiamen
De Groot chose for an adventurous path in life, choosing to study Chinese and being appointed as a Chinese language interpreter in 1876.
De Groot arrived in China at a time when it was filled with nearly bald men wearing long tails. After the Qing dynasty (1636-1912) was established, the new Manchu rulers, who had come riding into China on horseback from the Northeastern plains, enacted a policy known as ti fa ling, 剃发令 in Chinese. This policy forced all Han Chinese men to wear the traditional Manchu hairstyle: the queue.
The queue hairstyle is characterized by an almost fully shaved head, with a long braid at the back. This was the preferred hairstyle for the Manchu ethnic group who lived in the northeast of what we now know as the People’s Republic of China. When the queue was introduced, there was profound resistance against the forced change of hairstyle. However, by the time De Groot found himself in Xiamen, the queue had been part of everyday life for over two centuries.
This resulted in a difficult situation for foreigners coming to China. Foreigners like De Groot, who lived mainly in the coastal region, could often maintain their normal attire, though it is not unimaginable that they adapted their looks to local contexts. Protestant missionaries deeper inland were known to do this: they would wear a fake queue to mislead locals into thinking they were fitting in more, so that they could take it off when they went back to Europe. This was in contrast to some Jesuit missionaries, who opted to grow a queue instead of wearing a fake one.
Turning to this specific example, we start in the middle, where the queue’s braiding is shown nicely. The thick hair was braided and grown as long as possible. The result was this queue, which measures an astonishing 138cm in length, likely being longer than the owner’s upper body, and dangling behind the owner’s back wherever he went.