Talk:Chang and Eng Bunker

Movie Scripte
Added the proof via link that Gary Oldman already wrote the script and Douglas Urbanski will produce. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.182.162.253 (talk) 23:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I was just wondering if we had any information about when this movie would come out and how far along in the production process they were. I was especially curios as I see that the article describing Oldman having written the script and acquired rights to the novel was back in 2006, but now it is 3 years later in 2009. Any new info should be added. 98.208.38.255 (talk) 05:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Death expanation
Article needs to explain why the twins died on the same day.


 * Well, at the very least, if not separated at death (obviously not medically possible at that time or they'd do it while alive) then the living twin would die from infection in the dead twin, whose immune system shut down. For twins sharing more circulation than Chang and Eng, there would likely be increased stress on the living twin's organs as they try to continue to pump and filter the blood that used to be handled by two sets of organs.  It's normal for conjoined twins to die within days of each other.  &mdash; Laura Scudder &#9742; 19:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I would like to know why it says that Chang died from "Bronchitis, possibly from a blood clot". What does one have to do with the other? Nambio (talk) 09:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

From what I was aware, there was no actual reason for the second twin to die, at least so soon. It was more a nervous shock in reaction to the death that caused it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.81.199.107 (talk) 18:28, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Dumb question
I know this question sounds extremely dumb, but when one of them had sex, what did the other one do? Closed his eyes? Is there any info on their sexlife? --Thus Spake Anittas 18:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I wonder about that too. Miagirljmw14 Miagirljmw_talk 18:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

You will have a problem trying to find that out because I am supposing they were the only ones there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubbles250 (talk • contribs) 01:23, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Accounts that I have read state that when one twin was with his wife (sexually or otherwise), the other simply "zoned out" until the roles were reversed, and he was with his own wife. Other conjoined twins, such as Daisy and Violet Hilton, have said the same.Sarichkaa (talk) 21:31, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Sarichkaa 2 April 2009.

Obviously every session was a threesome. Jealous much? These guys were having wild sex orgies BEFORE it was in fashion. These guys were pioneers. Hugh Hefner could learn a thing or two from Eng and Chang. Nambio (talk) 09:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

official website
There's a link in the footer to the official website - how on Earth can dead people have the offcial website? Is it managed by their descendants? Anyway, their image after such a long time is now in public domain, so there is no legitimacy to call one site about them the official!

I'll correct this marketing buzzword. 83.9.19.149 13:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

descendents
I'd be fascinated to read about what happened to their 22 children, and how many descendents they have now, if there's any info on that available. --86.135.123.138 (talk) 15:05, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

They actually had 21 children. --Miagirljmw14 Miagirljmw~talk 01:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The question is still valid, and I'm curious, too - are there any living descendants of Chang and Eng? Jedikaiti (talk) 03:32, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, reportedly over a thousand living descendants, two of whom are notable enough to be mentioned in this article in their own right. See . --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:52, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Which is which?
Could a knowledgeable editor please add to the captions which is which? Tempshill (talk) 03:50, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. The one on their left (our right) was Chang. The one on their right (our left) was Eng. Recognizance (talk) 08:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * According to whom? —BarrelProof (talk) 03:20, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The lithograph shown in the article has labels within it that say Eng is on the left (our left) and Chang is on the right. The photo of the painting of them as young men is an exact horizontal flip of the lithograph, so that would indicate that the one on the left in the photo of the painting is Chang. However, on the lithograph picture, I see what appears to be hand-written signatures of Chang and Eng (or perhaps their names written in cursive by someone else), both above and below the picture. The handwritten "Chang" is on the left, with "Eng" on the right! Should we believe the label within the picture on the lithograph, or the handwriting above and below it? Why is the painting swapped right-to-left? (perhaps because they were referred to primarily as "Chang and Eng", so people would expect Chang to be the one on the left?) Either the lithograph is inaccurate or the painting is inaccurate (or the photo of the painting is flipped and the painting itself is different). —BarrelProof (talk) 03:14, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Racial issues.
The fact that they were Asian immigrants to the American South who married white women, owned black slaves, and had their bi-racial sons fight for the Confederacy during the Civil War is a lot to take in, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who had that reaction. I would like it if someone familiar with the sociological intricacies of their time and place could add at least a cursory bit of background information on that, even as a parenthetical aside? Wormwoodpoppies (talk) 22:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC).
 * Ditto. I was wondering how they managed to pull all that off. 108.41.148.7 (talk) 02:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * What the Siamese Twins did was almost impossible. The Siamese Twins became citzens of the US at a time when it was not legal for Asian-Americans to do so. They were likely able to own Black slaves and marry white women because there was no established societal norm for Asian-Americans on the East Coast in rural North Carolina as there was on the West Coast. Therefore, these individuals who had acquired hefty financial gain from touring themselves after splitting from Barnum's circus were able to marry and purchase slaves (despite criticism from family and neighbors) taking the place of the plantation-owning white man, thus fulfilling a norm and occupying a role. SomeoneWWTSI (talk) 17:59, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

not able to seperate them?
were is the proof that 19th century medicine couldn't separate them? eng would refuse separation even when it cost him his own life, so i'll assume the twins themselves never asked about the possibility of a split. it seems every butcher would have been able to separate them with little more then one quick cut and some bandages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.127.245.196 (talk) 20:53, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Their livers were also fused. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.24.247.59 (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

How were they born?
I wonder if there is any explanation of how it was possible for them to be born? Assuming that there were no c sections at the time and place where their mother lived? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.219.163.252 (talk) 10:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Bunker?
If they adopted the surname Bunker only after moving to the USA, what was their family name before that? The Chinese do not use mononyms. Sophie means wisdom (talk) 21:54, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * They emigrated long before Rama VI (r.1910–25) decreed family names. Sad to say, HM's article makes no mention of this. It is mentioned in articles on Names awarded; curiously, Internet access to web cites for those articles has been blocked. Curiously, Chang & Eng were allowed to emigrated, or perhaps were sneaked out. John Crawfurd notes in his journal of his mission to Siam that his ship was searched before departure, to make sure no Siamese were aboard. Maybe the boys were not considered Siamese, but Chinese of little or no value. I did note in the article a secondary reference to American envoys' journals, saying the boys were well-known in Bangkok at the time by slightly different names, but principally for failing to send remittances home to their mother. History fails to recall why they chose the name Bunker when naturalized. My wife knows her Gujarati-grandfather when naturalized in Thailand chose the family name of his employer. I can trace my family name back 7 generations in Georgia, but not to where the scion came from.--Pawyilee (talk) 07:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * According to this (usual internet warnings apply) The name Bunker came from friends they made in New York. Sophie means wisdom (talk) 08:30, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Barnum?
As the article is now, there is no mention of P. T. Barnum in the article (though there is a template at the bottom of it. Either the template should be removed, or Barnum, the main reason anyone knows about Change and Eng Bunker, should be incorporated into the article. They spent, I think, some time touring with Barnum's circus. I also find rather conflicting information between this article and other sources. Who "discovered" them, Robert Hunter, or Abel Coffin? - Nunh-huh 22:55, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussion of the "bullet format"-- Legacy section
If it matters, I prefer the "fast read" format of the bullet version for the Legacy section. Why make the reader dig through a clutter of dense grammar and prose? -- when the "fast read" format lets the reader "zoom in" on the details that generate the most interest. --Rednblu (talk) 20:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Chang and Eng Bunker. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110609125237/http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Chang_and_Eng_Bunker to http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Chang_and_Eng_Bunker

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 11:05, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Planned Edits
Hello everyone,

I was planning on adding some more information regarding Chang and Eng's experience within the freak show they performed in. I don't think the page talks very much about this topic, so I think that expanding on this subject matter will be highly beneficial to the history of these brothers. I'm going to add a lot of scholarly citations as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yung mead (talk • contribs) 02:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Chang and Eng Bunker. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20020114054201/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?data=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fparsed&division=div1&id=TwaSiam.sgm&images=images%2Fmodeng&part=1&tag=public to http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=TwaSiam.sgm&images=images%2Fmodeng&data=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fparsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 03:02, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Thai-American anachronism
Has this been discussed before? Referring to Chang & Eng as Thai-Americans is incorrect. If I have my history right, Thailand didn't exist until WWII. They were born in Siam, they emigrated from Siam, and they called themselves Siamese. "Thai-American" is an anachronism. Dcs002 (talk) 21:32, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. I've made the change. Hameltion (talk, contribs) 00:04, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I made a similar change in the... that section under the lead image - nationality: Siamese and American. Dcs002 (talk) 06:31, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Family: which wife was older?
There is a contradiction in the Family section. The 2 birth dates given indicate that Sarah was the older sister: Sarah Dec.1822, Adelaide Oct.1823. However the paragraph on Adelaide says that she was "Taller and thinner than her younger sister", which implies that Sarah was the younger sister. These 3 facts are all sourced to Orser's biography. Could someone with access to this book please check which statement is incorrect? Dirac66 (talk) 23:53, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It should say older sister; that must have been a slip of my mind. Hameltion (talk, contribs) 00:02, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Contradiction with Ronnie and Donnie Galyon
Ronnie and Donnie Galyon says that some Italian conjoined twins were the longest lived before them, but this article says that they weren’t—this needs a consensus.DemonDays64 (talk) 02:50, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Darin Strauss quote
I've abbreviated the Darin Strauss quote, to remove "No definitive history of the twins' life exists." I can find no discrediting claims online against The Two: The Story of the Original Siamese Twins (1978), by Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace. Anything more than their 339 pages would be ridiculously over-detailed. They have a six page bibliography, which is extensive for something in the popular press. -- Zanimum (talk) 01:49, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Pronunciation?
I generally hear Chang and Eng pronounced as if both names rhyme with "bang".

In this video, that is generally the case as well. But one person identified as a descendent of Eng pronounces the name Eng like "Ing" (0:45). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTgs3UMcDkI

This book published when the twins were alive (1836) notes, "Their names are pronounced as if spelt Chun and In." https://archive.org/stream/61230170R.nlm.nih.gov/61230170R_djvu.txt — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paco2718 (talk • contribs) 01:53, 1 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The latter would agree with the Thai rendering of the names, อิน and จัน, which are pronounced [] and []. I guess it could be said though that the common English pronunciations are now quite divorced from their origins, so the original pronunciations probably shouldn't be in the lead. (Maybe in the first section; there's already a footnote giving the names as In and Chun.) --Paul_012 (talk) 11:32, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've added the Thai pronunciations to said footnote. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:44, 1 February 2021 (UTC)