(This is grandfather Roland Li-Marchetti’s grandfather.)
@dirchansky says the photographer belongs to the Jasvoin Family: Ясвоин.
The blog post says:
Over four generations, Jasvoin photographers went from a small town in Lithuania to the Courts of the last three tsars of Russia and to studios throughout the Europe. … Abram and Wulf moved to St. Petersburg, where they became official photographers in the Imperial Court of the Romanov family.
If you speak Chinese or Russian, perhaps you can provide some info on this picture? Supposedly he was vice roy of Fujian (Fukien) province around 1880. I am wondering whether it would be possible to match up his name with this list of Fujian Governors. I see there is one 李 Li on the list.
Note that LI Tsao Tien is the romanisation my French speaking grandfather used (also Fou-Kien instead of Fujian).
On Mastodon, @dirchansky said they asked some friends and the text in Chinese says 畄貽景忠 (a four character name that doesn’t match Li Tsao Tien); 光偖二十一年三月初五日 (a date); 光緒 is a real period (1875-1908) during the Qing dynasty but 緒 doesnt match the character in the image (the one in the image has a different radical 偖), but maybe it is a variation in writing? 光緒二十一年三月初五日 according to wiki is 1895 3rd month, day 5, see 光緒 - 維基百科，自由的百科全書
I heard from somebody else via a friend that xu 緒 for the Guangxu 光緒 reign period is strange, actually no such character. Could be that there was a taboo against using xu 緒? However, late Qing officials were rather careful. Qing secret agents were everywhere at the time. If LI Tsao Tien recommended his son for university positions, then the care he took was expected.
@dirchansky also says:
畄貽景忠 seems to be liú yí jǐng zhōng (in standard pinyin) and seems to better match (I think?) your dad’s name if we are expecting variations in romanization because of dialect, but IDK if those years would check out 😂. The more popular characters I’ve seen for Tien (again standard pinyin) are 天 and 田”
The years would check out, I think. He was in France and England around 1880 and 20 years (more or less) his son arrived in China, so this is all within the time period we’re talking about.
What confuses me, though: I thought the family name was 李 but 畄 or 留 would perhaps indicate that either, 李 is wrong, or the author of those characters was not family and just wrote down what they heard? How strange. See 李, 畄, and 留.
A friend of a friend says that the photo may be a souvenir given by LI Tsao Tien to his son LI Jingzhong, especially since the father uses only his son’s given name.
@dirchansky also found the Wikipedia list of Min-Zhe viceroys. Wikipedia has lists of everything, it’s amazing. Unfortunately the Li names don’t seem to match up: there is 李鶴年 Li Henian, but 鶴年 doesn’t match LI Tsao Tien. Did he have another name?
Looking for other ways to write his name, I found these notes on Chinese Romanization Conversion:
Chinese Romanization Conversion
+--------+------------+------------+ | Pinyin | Wade-Giles | Example | +--------+------------+------------+ | zao | tsao | 遭, 早, 造 | | dian | tien | 颠, 点, 电 | +--------+------------+------------+
There is a Chinese Wikipedia page on Li Henian, 李鶴年 (清朝), where they list him as 1827年－1890年. That precludes him being related because LI Tsao Tien is the father of LI Tching Tchoung who was born 1879-12-04 and the son went to China with his mother to meet his father 25 years later… So LI Tsao Tien was alive around 1905.
He even arranged a job for his son:
LI Tsao Tien fait-il nommer LI le français Professeur-Doyen de la faculté de langue française de l’Université de Pékin.
His identity remains a mystery, however. It seems increasingly unlikely that we was in fact a viceroy, even though my grandfather called him:
… mon grand-père paternel, Vice-Roi de la Province du Fou-Kien.
So maybe he was viceroy later in life? There is a 李興銳 Li Xingrui, but the Wikipedia page says he died in 1904.
I think the next step should be to figure out what LI Tsao Tien’s name was in Chinese characters, and then we might have other ways to search for him.
After all, my grandfather also says:
le grand-père, qui était également ministre impérial de la marine chinoise
All of this according to the unreliable memories of what LI Tching Tchoung told my grandfather.
I’m not so sure what that would mean. It seems that it was mostly in development and lost in all engagements around that time.
Military of the Qing dynasty: Navy
Now, pursuing the naval line, I started wondering about Li Hongzhang. He did a tour of Europe. Even his face looks close enough! The one on the left is from 1895, the one on the right from 1896. Maybe they were related in some way?
Pretty unlikely, though. Li Hongzhang died in 1901! Perhaps if his son arrived when he was 20 (1899) instead of 25 (1904), that would have left him enough time to arrange a job for his son.
LI Tsao Tien fait-il nommer LI le français Professeur-Doyen de la faculté de langue française de l’Université de Pékin. Il devient, dans la foulée, inspecteur des chemins de fer du KIN-HAN (Pékin-Hankeou) ce qui lui permettra de se déplacer pour aller à la chasse. Il devient également journaliste pour la Gazette de Pékin (revue d’informations de langue française). En passant il sera représentant et membre à vie du Touring Club de France en Chine. Pour couronner le tout il sera officier de la garde impériale où il sera rapidement promu colonel du premier régiment de la dite garde.
Wikipedia talks about his visit to Europe, but it was not in 1877/1878 but a years later:
In 1896, Li [Hongzhang] attended the coronation of Nicholas II of the Russian Empire on behalf of the Qing Empire and toured Europe, Canada and the United States, where he advocated reform of the American immigration policies that had greatly restricted Chinese immigration after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (renewed in 1892).
I mean, a great opportunity to take that picture in St. Petersburg in 1895, perhaps? But still. I guess he didn’t tell his son about all his achievements. 🙂
Perhaps there’s a list of dignitaries from China that attended the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. There’s no Chinese representative listed on the Wikipedia page, unfortunately. So was he just an observer?
Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria
I skimmed the complete Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday, the 3rd of January 1888 that lists everything that happened at the Jubilee. No Qing emissary is mentioned.
Supplement to The London Gazette of Tuesday, the 3rd of January 1888
Here’s another data point: he arranged for his son to have a senior position at the french faculty of the Peking University:
LI Tsao Tien fait-il nommer LI le français Professeur-Doyen de la faculté de langue française de l’Université de Pékin
But apparently, modern universities came into existence in 1905, says Ulrich Theobald:
Only from 1905 on the Qing government allowed the creation of “modern” universities and provincial parliaments. – Qing Dynasty 清 (1644-1911)
Then again, Wikipedia has this to say about Peking University:
Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its first royal charter by the Guangxu Emperor. – Peking University
There still is some potential overlap!
So, if LI Tsao Tien was alive in 1905, he was not Li Hongzhang, even though he looked eerily similar and one was in St. Petersburg in 1895 and had a picture taken by the Tsar’s photographer and the other was at the coronation ceremony of the Tsar.
How did he die? Wikipedia says:
In 1901, Li [Hongzhang] was the principal Chinese negotiator with the foreign powers which captured Beijing. On 7 September 1901, he signed the Boxer Protocol ending the Boxer Rebellion, and obtained the departure of the Eight-Nation Alliance at the price of huge indemnities for the Chinese. Exhausted from the negotiations, he died from liver inflammation two months later at Xianliang Temple in Beijing.
I’m still not entirely convinced that they are *not* the same, but I’ll say it’s pretty unlikely.
I asked @dirchansky about inner names and all that, but the problem with claiming that Tsao Tien is an inner name is that it would be strange to put that after the family name.
Yes, in Chinese and esp in that time period and when you’re of higher social class, there’s your birth/given name (from your elders), courtesy name 字 (you can have multiples of these) and art name 號/号 (for artsy ppl) The guy you linked to has a bazillion nicknames! Courtesy names usually don’t include the family name. Inner names used by family are a real thing, but also don’t don’t if you’d include the surname in that either...
The same friend of a friend I mentioned above also said he had found the following:
In June 1904, Li Tsao-tien, the Taotai and Minister for Foreign Affairs in Yunnan, sent a letter to the Governor General inquiring about French options for educating his two sons, who were 22 and 16 years of age. – The Chinese Diaspora in South-East Asia, by Tracy C. Barrett, 2012
That would set the birth year of the older son to 1882, just off by three years.
From Wikipedia: “Under the Qing, they were overseen by a circuit intendant or tao-tai…” Some more information: History of the administrative divisions of China before 1912. Sadly, Yunnan is very far from Fujian, so I’m not sure what to make of that.
History of the administrative divisions of China before 1912
