nwasianweekly.com
Dec. 30, 2006

The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, The “Marvelous Chinese Conjurer,” by Jim Steinmeyer. Published by Carroll & Graf, 2005.

Twin gunshots rang out onstage at London’s Wood Green Empire, 10:45 in the evening of March 23, 1918. Two Chinese riflemen pulled the triggers of two muzzle-loader rifles while across the stage, their master, Chung Ling Soo, stood holding a plate over his chest. Impressive and impassive in tunic and silk pants, Chung ruled sovereign over British magicians. This was his “Condemned to Death by the Boxers” illusion, rarely performed and fraught with terror for the audience and oftentimes the performers too. The trick usually ended to tumultuous applause as Chung displayed the two rifle bullets seemingly caught on his plate. That night, though, one of the trick guns malfunctioned. The platter shattered and the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer crumpled to the boards. A dark stain spread over his torso — a corporeal metaphor that manifested the spillage and spread of his many secrets.

The man who died early next morning had no Asian blood leaking from his pierced heart. He began life as William Ellsworth Robinson in New York state, though in almost 57 years of life, the world knew him successively as “William Robinson, Man of Mystery”; Achmed Ben Ali, an hirsute Arabian wizard in white robe and Egyptian headdress; the similarly bearded Nana Sahib, “East Indian Necromancer in Oriental Occultism”; Hop Sing Loo; and finally Chung Ling Soo, a Scottish-Chinese spellbinder.

Much of his act came from an actual Chinese magician, Ching Ling Foo (born Chee Ling Qua), who became his fiercest competition (and mysteriously failed to show up for a magician’s duel). Soo spoke not a word onstage, pretended to understand only Chinese and employed a revered Japanese assistant as his “translator” for press conferences. He left one wife for a female assistant, married his assistant, then left her for a mistress and raised three children with that last woman. As the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer, he ruled music hall entertainment in England, Australia and Europe over 18 years, replete in hastily assembled Chinese costumes sometimes obliviously worn backward, or fetched from a woman’s wardrobe.

In our modern era of authenticity and (rightful) pride in ethnicity, Chung Ling Soo manifests as an embarrassment. In his own much more slippery time, the disguised Robinson found himself not only accepted as authentic by largely uninformed audiences, but also praised by nonwhites who knew his Caucasian core. “At the Queen’s Theater,” Steinmeyer writes, “... Chinese immigrants cheered the performances and sent gift baskets of food backstage. ... They were not fooled, but they were satisfied. ... Chung Ling Soo was proud and artistic on stage ... and the Chinese community pragmatically accepted the prestige he brought to the role.” —Andrew Hamlin

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