The Heathen Chinee

"The Heathen Chinee", originally published as "Plain Language from Truthful James", is a narrative poem by American writer Bret Harte. It was published for the first time in September 1870 in the Overland Monthly. It was written as a parody of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (1865), and satirized anti-Chinese sentiment in northern California.

The poem became popular and was frequently republished. To Harte's dismay, however, the poem reinforced racism among his readers instead of challenging it as he intended. Nevertheless, he returned to the character years later. The poem also inspired or influenced several adaptations.

The narrative of the poem focuses on a Chinese immigrant character named Ah Sin who is playing the card game euchre with two white men on August 3 of an unspecified year. "Truthful James", one of the men who narrates the poem, observes that the other white man, Bill Nye, is cheating with a stacked deck and cards up his sleeve. They both seemed to think Ah Sin was childlike and did not understand the game. Nevertheless, Ah Sin plays well and soon puts down the same card that Nye had dealt to the narrator. Thinking their opponent is cheating, Nye fights Ah Sin and discovers he has several decks hidden in his clothes.

Mark Twain later recalled that Harte initially wrote the poem "for his own amusement", without intending to publish it. According to Twain, he "threw it aside, but being one day suddenly called upon for copy he sent that very piece in." In writing the poem, Harte echoed and, therefore, lampooned Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1865 verse tragedy Atalanta in Calydon.Ambrose Bierce claimed Harte originally sent it to him to include in his San Francisco-based News Letter, but he suggested it was better suited for Harte's own journal, the Overland Monthly. It appeared there under its original title, "Plain Language from Truthful James" in the September 1870 issue. Its adapted name, "The Heathen Chinee", came from a republication in a Boston newspaper in 1871.

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