Scenery On The Screen

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) is one of the most important writers of British in the 20th century, he had ever taken a four months' visit to china in oct. 1919. Returning his country, Maugham created three works: On the Chinese Screen,The Painted Veil and East of Suez according to the information he got in China. In these works, Maugham depicted the image of China which was viewed as the other by him. Refer to these three and his other works, Maugham's depiction of China will be reviewed and his misunderstanding of Chinese culture will be surveyed in this article.Theory of post-colonialism culture and imagology of comparative literature are used to study Maugham's image of China. This article is divided into three parts. The first part study Maugham's standpoint from which he looked at the other. Through analyzing the relationship between Maugham and Maugham as the "hidden author", we concluded that: on the point of racialism and colonialism, these two were equal, Maugham is a racialist and colonialist when he looks at the other . China as the other in Maugham's works was mainly reviewed in the next part. This second part can be divided into three parts : Chinese on the screen, China that aparted from civilization and lovely China. Through this outlining, we may conclude that Maugham unscrambled China with pride and prejudice. Maugham's misreading of Chinese culture is discussed in the third part which showed his strangeness and dissepiment. At last we concluded that Maugham knew not much about Chinese culture, and he depicted china with pride and prejudice of racialism and colonialism, thus the image of China in his works was just imagination of his own.