China Image In The Perspective Of Western Travellers In 19~th Century

Though isolated by vast deserts and mountains, China and the West, which were respectively situated at the east end and the west end of Eurasia, have never stopped the cultural exchange from time immemorial. As the world entered the threshold of modern times, China adopted the policy of seclusion and lost the opportunity to integrate into the world gradually, while the new-emerging western capitalist countries explored various ways to contact China continuously. When a few Chinese people started to understand the world, a large number of westerners opened up the peregrination in China by crossing the Eurasia and the ocean. The peregrinators mostly were missionaries, envoys, scientific researchers, traders and professional travelers, who were well-educated with pan-European travelling and studying experiences. The peregrinators or travellers, who had lived in China for a long time, observed China, a foreign culture to them, widely and deeply. There were prejudice against China because of their west-centered standpoint as well as history not having been discovered before in their peregrination texts. The 19 th century is the time when images of China and the west both changed dramatically to their complete opposite, and a time that witnessed the profound revolution of international situation and rapid development of world civilizations. Instead of being studied in terms of western-civilization-centered “tailoring the Chinese” or Chinese-civilization-centered “criticizing the west”, a clear view of the real history of the establishment of china’s image, the evolution of china’s image in the west, and the logic of evolution should be explored with an international background in which the formation and spread of china’s image is placed in the framework of the international peregrination, namely, a comparative perspective of their peregrinations in Europe and China, and the china’s image is studied from the perspective of those western peregrinators.In the studies of modern China’s Image in the west the sinologists have played a leading role focusing mainly on the theory of the history of china’s image evolution while studies in china has concentrated more on two fields-- the translation and publication of peregrination texts, and the missionaries’ view of china.so, in order to probe into the formation of China’s image in the 19 th century and the historical law behind it, the annals of peregrination texts of china of the 19 th century by the west is compiled based on English historical materials, choosing the peregrination texts and travelling guidelines written by envoys, traders and scientific researchers as the main source, combining with the existing research results of missionaries’ view of China’s image.. The whole text is divided into five chapters.The knowledge of China in the west before the 19 th century is the blueprint of the China’s image in the west in the 19 th. Since the 13 th century when the west for the first time began to recognize china, China’s image in the west has experienced phases of yearning to visit, power and wealth, and utopia ideal building, and finally reached the glorious peak in the 17-18 th century when China’s image of the imaginative other, the nice other and the ideal other were successively formed, through the joint work of molding by missionaries, envoys, businessmen, philosophers and litterateurs in different historical periods of middle ages, the great geographical discovery, and the Enlightenment movement.1750 is a key point when china’s image in the west began to move fast to its opposite, when the five-century-long passion about china started to fade away.With the falling of the feudal agricultural civilization and the Qing Dynasty, the rising of the capitalist civilization in the west, fermented by the quarreling about the Chinese etiquette, and the representative events of Macartney and Amherst mission, China’s image in the west declined thoroughly, and reached the extreme negative image eventually.In the process of the expansion of capitalist civilization in the world,the binary opposition of the international peregrination rules were established gradually.In the west, the pan-European tour was characterized as equal exchange and peaceful learning; in China, after the failure of a series of peaceful engagement, it was embodied by the diplomacy of naval and gun marked with invasion, and the commerce and religion tour which was featured as permeability.By a series of aggressive wars against China and unequal treaties, the west obtained the leading power on peregrination rule in China, formed a series of peregrination rules, and promoted the formation of three peregrination routes, which took Guangzhou and Shanghai as the center of southern China, yangtze river and Chengdu as the center of southwest China, and Beijing and the great wall as the center of north China.China’s image in west after the opium war was formed gradually, based on the travel observation and knowledge screening in the three peregrination routes of southern China, southwest China and north China.All the missionaries, merchants, envoys, scientific researchers and professional travelers observed Chinese society deeply and formed the structural image of China with different dimensions and themes. Combining historical and realistic cognition and following the western standard, peregrinators built an image of “the inferior other ” from the dimensions of body, society, politics, religion, spirit, culture and art in the process of the contradictory interaction between cultural self and cultural other.The image of China molded by the western peregrinators in the 19 th century was complicated and changeable. Instead of a linear downward straight with drastic fluctuations, a tortuous path presented itself in the evolution of china’s image which was praised, criticized, favored and discounted. There are no fundamental differences in the facts observed by the peregrinators and the facts recorded by the peregrination texts. But the simulation and recognition of China’s image, and the values applied are distinct from before, which leads to the formation of a new discourse paradigm. Against such a grand historical background, gender, nationality, occupation, social status, travel transportation, regional differences and travel purpose have become critical factors bringing about the change and differentiation of China’s image in the west. The combination of progressive travelling rout and transportation mode, and as staged mode of traffic and stepwise mode of peregrination regions, produced a sharp contrast in the characteristic elements of physical appearance, system, behavior and spirit of china’s image, exerting a profound influence on the change and differentiation of that image.From the perspective of cultural self, peregrination texts shaped China’s image by China’s national power and national reputation. In view of cultural others, both scientific or emotional and descriptive or commercial texts applied multiple rhetoric means to present China’s image.Combing with historical recognition, according to the western standard, the 19 th century western peregrinators finished the shaping of China’s image of “the inferior others” as degeneration, stagnation, and being complicated and changeable in the interactive process of self cognition and attention by the others.