Choi Afock

Choy Chun Ng also known as Choi Afock was a merchant and interpreter, as well as the earliest recorded Chinese person to visit Sweden.

Early life and career
Choy Chun Ng was born sometime in 1763, and was a merchant from Guangzhou (then known as Canton ) in south-eastern China (then the Qing dynasty).

Fade into obscurity and rediscovery
Although Choy's visit and subsequent six-month stay in Sweden made him a well-known person in the country, his story would eventually fade into obscurity. He would only appear for the first time in Swedish literature in 1916, exactly 130 years after he initially arrived in the country, in the multi-volume "Svenska folkets underbara öden" (The wonderful destinies of the Swedish people) by historian Carl Grimberg, in which Grimberg writes passingly about the first instance of a Chinese person visiting the country without mentioning Choy by name.

It took more than 20 years before Choy was again mentioned in any academic literature, this time in a doctoral dissertation published in 1939 on art history, as he had been the subject of an etching by Swedish artist Johan Fredrik Martin (1755–1816). From 1939 to the early 1990s, Afock appeared sparingly in literature, being mentioned in an article published in the "Hudiksvallstidningen" (Hudiksvall Newspaper) in 1968, a biography of Count Knut Knutsson Posse (1755–1814) published in 1971, a biography of Jean-Jacques De Geer (1737–1809) (1737–1809) in 1987, and although he was not named, a 1992 article by Chinese historian Cai Hongsheng about the Swedish East India Company's trade relations with China, where it is also claimed that Choy was a Christian:

It has been seen on a visitor’s book (autograph) in the Fan Lun (Falun) museum of iron work that a Chinese from Fujian who was a follower of their (Swedish) religion (Lutheran Church) visited this place in the 54th year of the reign of Qianlong (1789). This man should be the earliest (Chinese) visitor to Sweden.

In 1998, Choy was the subject of a study by Swedish art historian Jan Wirgin in his book "Från Kina till Europa. Kinesiska konstföremål från de ostindiska kompaniernas tid" (From China to Europe: Chinese artefacts from the East India Company era), where he provided a detailed account of Afock's journey through Sweden as well as new sources.

In 2005, Taiwanese historian Chen Kuo-tung writes about Choy in his book "東亞海域一千年" (A Thousand Years in the Seas of East Asia), comparing him with other Chinese who visited Europe around the 17th and 18th centuries. Chen also writes about the physical remnants of Choy's visit to Sweden consisting of paintings and etchings of his person as well as a porcelain plaque decorated with his name, located today in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm.

The second half of the 2010s saw an increased interest in Choy amongst Western academics. He was included in the 2015 book "This Home Is Not A Home: European Everyday Life in Canton and Macao 1730–1830" by Swedish historian Lisa Hellman, in which Hellman argues that Choy's visit to Sweden and his status as an "exotic novelty" aided in advancing the social status of his patron Olof Lindahl, a supercargo working for the Swedish East India Company, within Swedish high society.

In 2016, Choy was also the subject of a study exploring the impact of Chinese goods and his visit on Swedish gendered relations by historian Jacqueline van Gent in her article published in the Scandinavian Journal of History.