In the late 19th century, with the signing of a series of unequal treaties, China was forced to gradually open up, and a large number of Western missionaries, merchants, etc. poured into China, which was an extremely prosperous period in the history of cultural exchanges between China and the West, professional sinology emerged and flourished, and travelogues and missionaries continued to appear in this period. It is worth noting that during this period, a new group began to emerge. With the gradual opening of treaty ports and the interior, Western women came to China, and this unique group had an impact on the social and cultural life of the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, and a large number of women's travelogues were published and distributed at that time, such as Isabella Bird (1831-1904) "1898: China through the Eyes of an English Woman", Alicia Little (1845-1926) "My Beijing Garden" and "The Land in blue Robes" " Intimate Contact with China – The Chinese in My Eyes" ( Constance Cumming ( 1837-1924 ) " Roaming China " , emily Kemp ( 1860-1939 ) " The Face of China : A Century-old Memory of an English Female Painter " , and so on. Together, these travelogues constructed the image of China in the eyes of British female travelers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I. The Image of China in English Literature Before 1840
Sino-British cultural exchanges have a history of centuries, and the image of China in English literature has a long history. Zhang Longxi once pointed out in the article "The Myth of Not Me", "The image of China in the mind of the West is an image formed in the course of history, representing values that are different from the West, and this difference can be good or bad." At different times, China, India, Africa, and the Middle East have all played a role in complementing the West, either as an idealized utopia, as a seductive and exotic dream, or as a land of eternal stagnation and spiritual blind ignorance." Over the centuries, the image of China in English literature has undergone many changes.
As early as the 14th century, the image of the Chinese Khitan appeared in the English writer John Mandeville's Travels in Mandeville. The travelogue mentions that "the Great Khan was the greatest lord in the world, and neither The Elder John, nor the Sultan of Babylon, nor the Emperor of Persia was inferior to him." In the Tatar state, men can marry at will, either by a hundred or as many as dozens. Except for their own sisters, mothers, and daughters, who cannot marry, they can be married at will among their relatives... They believe in an Almighty God, and they also believe in idols made of gold and silver, and offer the colostrum of their animals to them." In the 16th century, China was mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and Bacon's writings. By the 17th century, in Milton's Paradise Lost, China was known as the "Secarina" (the land of silk), "Chinese pushing light bamboo carts and advancing on sails and winds."
In the 18th century, the "Chinese fever" arose throughout Europe, and exotic Chinese, clothing, daily necessities, gardens, And Chinese became popular trends in British society at that time. In 1762, Golsmid's Citizen of the World imitated Montesswood's Persian Letters to satirize this state of British society in epistles. In a letter from Li Zi'an, the image of a British lady is very ironic to show the "China fever" of British society at that time, and the British lady with identity sees Li Ji'an's eyes are bright and excited: "Oh my God! Could this be the gentleman from a distant land? His whole appearance looks a little unusual. God, I was fascinated by his exotic face, and his wonderful forehead exuded infinite charm. I really want to see him in his own clothes. Sir please turn around and let me see your back. Oh, you seem to have traveled to a lot of places. Waiter, go get a plate of beef cut into small pieces, and I am very happy to see him eat. May I ask, sir, have you brought chopsticks with you? It must have been fun to see how he clamped the meat up and quickly threw it into his mouth. Please speak a little Chinese: I myself have learned a little bit of that language. God, didn't you bring that interesting Chinese stuff? The kind of thing that makes us wonder how to be good? I have a collection of twenty Chinese, but useless things in this world. Look at the jars, which are very green in bean green: these are used for furniture. Golsmith expressed the satire and criticism of the "China fever" in Britain at that time.
At the end of the 18th century, British industry developed rapidly, and began to seek to expand its sphere of influence overseas and promote trade expansion. In 1792, the British government sent a delegation led by Macartney to visit China, visiting the Qianlong Emperor, trying to ask the Qing court to open trade ports, divide the residence of British merchants, reduce taxes, set up permanent embassies, and allow British missionaries to preach in China. The Qing government of China at that time regarded itself as a "heavenly kingdom" and had no intention of sitting on an equal footing with britain, so it refused these demands. After leaving China from Macau in March 1794, Macartney wrote the "Diary of China" and "Observations of China", and other members of the mission also published many travelogue works, such as "The Record of the British Envoy Seeing Qianlong" by the deputy envoy Staunton, Anderson's "The Visit of the British Mission to China", Remus's "Diary of Mr. Samuel Holmes Escorting the Macartney Mission", Gillan's "Observations of Dr. Gillan on the Internal Medicine, Surgery and Chemical Conditions in China", Ding Weidi's "Travel Diary through China" and Barrow's "Diary of a Trip Through China" Travels in China", etc. At the end of the 18th century, especially after the return of the Macartney mission to China, the "China fever" situation in Britain changed, as Mr. Qian Zhongshu pointed out, "Since the visit of the Macartney mission to China, sinology has become a specialized discipline in Britain, and the loss of specialization is that while the knowledge of professional scholars on this subject is becoming richer and richer, the general public pays less and less attention to it." This theme is no longer an integral part of humanistic and cultural interests." Dr. Ye Xiangyang also stressed that between 1790 and 1804, britain "published some works introducing China, but it is difficult to see other forms of literature containing Chinese content except for the poems related to China." The large number of translations on China published in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries are basically gone at this stage, and the anthology of travelogues containing Chinese content has disappeared."
At the end of his diary, Macartney commented on China at the time: "The Chinese Empire was an old and eccentric first-class warship, and over the past one hundred and fifty years successive generations of able and alert officials have managed to make it float and to frighten its neighbors by its vast appearance." But when a man who is not fit enough is at the helm, he loses discipline and safety. It may not sink immediately, it may float like a wreckage, and then shatter to pieces on the shore, but it cannot be rebuilt on its dilapidated foundation. This famous assertion about China seems to predict the reality of Chinese society for an entire century. In the 19th century, Britain continued to seek world trade expansion, and together with other Western powers set off a frenzy of dividing up the world and competing for overseas colonies, while China's internal and external troubles were increasingly aggravated, the Qing government was corrupt and incompetent, and the land cut and huge reparations led to the people's livelihood. More than a century of "China fever" is getting cooler.
2. China in the British Women's Travels to China from 1840 to 1911
The defeat of China in the Sino-British Opium War in 1840 and the signing of unequal treaties opened the prelude to China's semi-colonial society, and the image of China in British literature and culture also changed. Miriam Detley points out this very different image change in her essay "The Image of China in 19th-Century Western Literature", "Since 1840 there has been a great deal of literature depicting China (with the forced opening of the door of China, a large number of travelogues and fictional works drawing inspiration from the travelogue), which give the impression of endlessly liquidating with the literary works of the past: because they constantly, consciously or unconsciously, contrast the ideal Chinese images of the ideals created by the Jesuits and Enlightenment philosophers, A new image of the exact opposite was established. Attitudes toward Chinese things range from liking to disgust, from reverence to denigration, from curiosity to contempt." The Chinese image of this period became the barbarians who dragged pig-tails in the eyes of Westerners. On December 22, 1860, the British comic book magazine Punch published a cartoon titled "What We Ought to Do in China," depicting a Chinese dragon with long pointed fingernails, braids facing the sky, square shoes on its feet, a vicious face, and a European cavalry behind him wielding a chain ball and a strong hand. The cartoon typically reflects the Attitude of the British Government towards China at the time. After the Second Opium War, China completely lost its defense line, with the signing of various unequal treaties, large areas of territory were divided up by Western powers, and the British Empire was more unscrupulous in its colonial expansion in China, seeking more spheres of influence and trade privileges. At this time, China, like the evil image of the dragon in the West, became the object of reprimand and whipping.
After the Sino-British Opium War, Victorian female travelers came to China to witness for the first time this country that has always existed on paper and in the imagination, and China was also in the gaze of Western women for the first time, its social reality, customs and customs were directly presented in front of these female travelers, and to varying degrees, they impacted their existing fantasies about China. Along the way, these fantasies were constantly integrated with the information and scenes encountered, gradually generating new Images of China, which were presented to Western readers in different ways in subsequent self-conscious travelogue writing. As a result, we can see the China of this new group, the Image of China in the Travelogue of British Women who Came to China from 1840 to 1911.
1. Image of China
An important change in travelogue in the 19th century was the gradual development of travelogue recording tools from textual narratives to a combination of text, painting and photograph. Image China became another expression of the Image of China in travelogues. In 1839, the Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre invented the first daguerreotype camera, after which, the rapid development of camera technology, portability and visualization continue to increase, which led to changes in the form of travelogue in the 19th century, photographs gradually became a popular way of travel records, it and text, painting together with become part of the travelogue. As early as the 1860s and 1870s, John Thomson (1837-1921), a member of the Royal Geographical Society, recorded China in photographic form. First in Hong Kong in 1868, he began traveling in southeastern China, north China and the Yangtze River basin in 1870, taking numerous photographs of Chinese landscapes and people, and in 1873 published the four-volume chinese photography collection Illustrations of China and its People: A Series of Two Hundred Photographs with Letterpress Descriptive of the Places and People Represented, 1873-1874), followed by Through China with a Camera (1898). John Thomson was also the Royal Geographical Society's Director of Travel Photography at the time, teaching members of the Geographical Society to master photography techniques as quickly as possible and record travel in photographs. Since then, the number of images in travelogues to China has gradually increased, and photography has become another way of writing travelogues.
The change in the way of expression undoubtedly provides a new reference for the image of China in Western society. Here, this article attempts to relate it to the expression of words, examining the relationship between pictorial China and the author of the travelogue himself. Although the traveler's travelogue is more subjective, it is inevitable that the pursuit of credibility is either implicit or explicit, and as a witness, the travelogue author strives to provide a seemingly real scene for his own readers, especially travel in distant foreign countries. Therefore, because of its relatively real, intuitive and more convincing characteristics, images have become an effective supplement to the language expression in travelogues. Of the four travelers selected for this article, all three other travelers, with the exception of Constance Cumming, are accompanied by numerous photographs, including photographs and paintings. These images are either for the sake of real geographical investigation, or for artistic sketches, or for the purpose of documenting the scenery along the way. Isabella Bird's 1898: China through the Eyes of an English Woman is accompanied by 113 photographs and paintings, and Mrs. Lide's My Beijing Garden is accompanied by 90 photographs, which appear almost every other page. In 1900, Isabella Bird also published the photographic collection Chinese Pictures: Notes on Photographs Made in China, in which words became the narration of the photographs. The abundance of images in travelogues of this period can be seen.
However, the subjective colors of the images recorded by different travelers are different, and the interception of the images is closely related to the attitude of the traveler himself, his understanding of China, and the purpose of the trip, and it is combined with the physical practice of the traveler and is another expression tool of other images. Most of the pictures in 1898: China through the Eyes of a British Woman show natural landscapes and humanistic buildings on the way, and there are relatively few pictures of people. Mrs. Lide's "The Land in the Blue Robe" also comes with many photographs, but nearly two-thirds of them are photographs of people, such as puppet show performers, opium Chinese, monks, Taoists, Catholic missionaries, women spinning yarn in the countryside, peddlers in the village, people at banquets, opera classes in the garden, sons of Chinese merchants, gentlemen and students in schools, retinues of officials, Chinese soldiers in practice, Mongolian men, Hmong dancing women, richly dressed Hong Kong ladies, magistrates, Foot-bound women and children, and even her group photo with her livestock.
The travelogue style is closely related to their selection of chinese scenes. As a member of the Royal Geographical Society, Isabella Bird is a writer and a traveler, which leads to her travelogue writing focusing on scientific sophistication, with relatively few subjective comments and less comments due to lack of understanding, and travelogues presenting a precise and objective scientific narrative style. During her eight-month trip to China, Isabella Bird attempted to make a panoramic human geography expedition to China, spending a lot of ink on describing the local hydrological landscape, produce, trade prospects, etc. at each place. The simplest and most prominent manifestation of this feature in the way of writing is that there are many accurate numerical statements in travelogues, from travel miles to temperature differences, from coffin prices to opium import and export volumes, from regional land area to population composition, figures can be seen everywhere, taking a few statements about China's coal industry in the text as an example: "More than 1 quintal of refined coal is 100 catties, selling for 40 small dollars (about 1.25 pence), burning with an open flame." Miners can dig 600 pounds of coal in a day, and they can earn 20 coppers for every 100 pounds. "This shows its digital expression characteristics. Among the travelogues of these four Victorian female travelers, Isabella Bird's travelogue is also the least obvious female characteristic because of this scientific and accurate way of writing, and her travelogue is more like a beautifully written Chinese social survey report.
In contrast, Mrs. Lide's travelogues take on different styles. Mrs. Lide lived in China for 20 years, and also traveled to various parts of China for the Tianzu Movement, and in the past twenty years, she has been in contact with various social classes in China, not only meeting Empress Dowager Cixi, the Guangxu Emperor, and Li Hongzhang, witnessing ronglu's funeral, but also living with local people in rural Sichuan. Therefore, Mrs. Lide's travelogues focus on the social situation of all classes in China, including a variety of characters and details of life.
All four female travelers were well educated and very sensitive to art, especially in the travelogues of landscape painter Emily Kemp. Her travelogue writing pays more attention to color and line, has a lot of ink on scenery and clothing, and vividly describes the double doors of golden bats decorated with dark green backgrounds and the fish-shaped drip mouth carved in stone. In addition to the text and photos, in Emily Camp's travelogue, we can also see many highly artistic landscape portraits, Chinese women with legs like sticks, slippery poles for traveling, and of course, landscape scenery everywhere. This should be Emily Campo's unique travelogue style as a landscape painter.
As a prominent feature of the image of Chinese women in Western society, the three-inch golden lotus has a narrative about women's foot binding in many travelogues to China. From the formulation of this matter, we may be able to see more clearly their different tendencies. Mrs. Lide is the president of the Chinese Heavenly Foot Association, the initiator of the early heavenly foot movement, and has done a lot of practical work in the cause of the sky foot. In the narrative of women's foot binding, Mrs. Lide used her own feelings to compare the pain of female foot binding, which not only expressed sympathy for women, especially girls, but also recorded in detail the development of the tianzu cause and pinned her deep expectations for the tianzu cause of Chinese women. Isabella Bird's narrative focuses on the analysis of the social situation of Chinese women's foot binding, the description of the three-inch golden lotus is still digital "no more than 4 inches long", she is linked by female foot binding to the marriage customs of the time, and mentions the reputation of the "golden lotus" in poetry, prose and speech, and the writing is also sympathetic, but it is basically a quiet cultural statement, and the female foot binding is an aspect of her investigation of Chinese society and culture in Isabella Bird's travelogue. In the landscape painter Emily Kemp's pen, women's foot binding and leggings present different images, she mentioned that Chinese women's "clothing colors are extremely gorgeous, green, red, blue, black combined in a person is very common." Their tight cotton pants just reached just below their knees, down to their ankles, and their legs were neatly wrapped around the leggings. The legs are very thin, looking like sticks, and together with the small outturned feet and stiff knees, they give the appearance of goat legs." Emily Camp's depiction of foot binding focuses more on artistic details such as color and line.
In terms of the purpose of travel and the identity of the traveler, Isabella Bird was a traveler and geographer who came to China for travel and investigation, consciously proceeding from the interests of the British Empire, providing information for Britain's political and trade expansion in China, and was an explorer with a clear purpose. Therefore, the Chinese images in the travelogue focus on various landscapes, human geography, and use a top-down perspective to try to present a panoramic image; Mrs. Lide came to China with her husband, without the purpose of the geographer's investigation or the mission of the Western missionaries, but with the writer's conscious desire to express and a strong adventurous personality. Mrs. Lide once mentioned in her travelogue: "Isn't traveling to get information?" "She has lived in China for many years, and her travelogue images pay attention to detail, including all kinds of eyes and objects in her travels, not only royal funerals but also various Chinese, landscapes and historical monuments, courtrooms where cases are tried and dinner parties in the homes of Chinese officials, Chinese monks, Taoists and missionaries in China, gardens where they live, and foals and dogs. In addition, the Chinese images in Mrs. Lide's travels are written step by step, with obvious diachronic characteristics, and the photos follow her gradual deep into China in the past 20 years. Unlike Isabella Bird's human geography examination and Mrs. Lide's extensive travels, Constance Cumming and Emily Camp are more like tourists who come to China. This gives Emily Camp's pictorial expression a kind of wandering and curiosity. At the same time, as landscape painters, the two look for Chinese customs and customs, and consciously pay attention to those beautiful scenery that can be painted and objects with exotic colors, so that the travelogue is more artistically appealing.
In the travelogues of this new group of people who came to China, images were interpreted in both directions as a new way of expression and text, which together constructed the Chinese scene in the eyes of Westerners in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
2. Viewshed fusion
The traveler is a witness and maker of exotic images that move around, and becomes an image communicator in subsequent travelogue writing. They come to China with a prescient vision of China, and the real China and the existing Chinese imagination will undoubtedly coincide or crack, so that the travelogue can produce a new image of China between restoration and creation. As Professor Meng Hua pointed out, on the one hand, because of the vividness and vividness of travelogue, it can create a new personalized exotic image, on the other hand, because of the characteristics of travelogue, it is very easy to be accepted by readers. Thus, "it is in this sense that travelogue works, almost invariably, react to the 'collective imagination', which, in a deconstructive way, causes the rupture of those conventional social norms and history, thereby subverting those 'preconceptions' and playing a certain innovative role in tradition." In fact, organic authors often play a dual role: their foreign images reflect the collective imagination of society, and they are also the builders, advocates, and initiators of the collective imagination of society."
After 1840, the number of Western visitors to China increased greatly, and the number of people coming to China also changed. Professor Geng Sheng mentioned these newly emerging groups in the preface to his "Experience china series", a period in which "among the large number of foreign visitors to China, in addition to those who are traditional professionals, there is an additional group of scholar-like figures: archaeologists, historical geologists, anthropologists, miners, meteorologists, animalists and botanists, architects, educators, and artists." The four British female travellers to China covered in this article are not only the first female travellers to come to China, but also the scholarly figures referred to above. They are well-educated and have a deep reserve of knowledge, and these conditions have become effective resources and tools for them in producing Chinese images, such as Shelley's sonnet praising the ancient Egyptian king Osimadas in Mrs. Lide's travelogues: "I am Osimandas, the king of kings / Look at my career, unparalleled in the world!" At the same time, traces of classical Chinese culture also abound in travelogues: Feng Jieyu in the Book of Han who guards herself against bears, Meng Guang in the Book of Later Han who "raises her eyebrows", "The Coast of the Land, The King's Subject" in the Book of Poetry, "I start from the people, listen to his words and believe his deeds; now I am also in the people, listen to his words and look at his deeds", "Do not suffer from people's ignorance, suffer from ignorance of people", "Gentlemen are not proud, and villains are proud but not Thai" appear from time to time in travelogues. When introducing the celestial foot movement, Mrs. Lide also quoted the old saying that "a pair of small feet, a vat of tears".
In addition, these female travelers have traveled to many parts of the world before coming to China, and their previous travel experience will undoubtedly form a reference for China's travel. Isabella Bird had traveled to North America, Australia and other places before coming to China, and Mrs. Lide had traveled to other countries in Europe before. This prompts them to generate a chinese image in their travelogues not only between China and Britain, but also have a broader geospatial background. Beijing and Italy's Almafi met in Madame Lide's travelogue, "In Almafi, I felt as if I had walked into the Middle Ages. The streets there are usually dark, covered with narrow stone steps, each of which is a good place for bad guys hiding in the shadows to ambush. The noble ladies walked carefully on the stone steps, afraid of encountering bad people or staining their snow-white skirts. Beijing is just a larger Almafi and belongs to a more barbaric era." Chinese silence reminded her of the enthusiasm of the Neapolitans. Different geographical spaces meet in the travelers' travelogues, and these rich travel experiences and geographical and cultural knowledge provide a reference for their image of China.
At the same time, we can see from the travelogues that they read a large number of works about China by Western Chinese before coming to China or during the creation of travelogues, which to some extent shaped the illusion of China before they came to China. Take, for example, Madame Lide's travelogues, Such as Marco Polo, Jean Denis Attiret, Charles Harman, Joseph Edkins, Stephen Wooton Bushell, George Carter Stent, and Lewis Morris and other existing works on China have become an important reference for Mrs. Lide's understanding of China. The Lugou Bridge in Marco Polo's travels and the image of the Summer Palace written by The 18th-century French Jesuit King Zhicheng make Beijing in Madame Lide's eyes show a historical depth effect. In Emily Campo's travelogues, we can also see her imagination of Marco Polo's China, as well as references to travelogues such as Alexander Hosie's "Three Years in Western China" by Alexander Hosie, a traveler from this period, and Justus Doolittle's "Social Life in Chinese". Before coming to China, Emily Kemp learned about the images of the dragon and the tiger in Chinese culture through the research of Lawrence Binyon.
Interestingly, these four travelers, as the main representatives of Victorian female travelogue authors in China, also form a reference between their trip to China and their travelogue works. Before coming to China, Mrs. Lide had read Constance Cumming's travelogues while traveling in the English Lake District, and was deeply attracted by her Chinese azaleas, "At that time, I thought, one day I want to go to China to see it, but I never thought that there would really be this day." 」 Two years later, Mrs. Lide came to Ningbo, and her first impression of the city was given by the rhododendrons of Constance Cumming. In addition, prior to the publication of Mrs. Lide's Intimate Contact with China (1900), Isabella Bird wrote to her editor, John Murray, in a February 1899 letter praising Intimate Contact with China as a well-veined, readable, and beautifully illustrated work. At this time, Isabella Bird's travelogue 1898: China through the Eyes of a Woman had just been published.
At the same time, travelogue writing is by no means a simple visual feedback of travel writers, and the Chinese image in the eyes of travel companions and Chinese compatriots also has an impact on travelogue writing, and they are the most direct image speakers. The Qing government's foreign policy and the organization of missionary groups in China made travelers in China have many contacts with Western Chinese, or travel in pairs or receive escorts. At the same time, the gender identity of female travelers will also make them often have companions when traveling to China. Mrs. Lide's best travel companion is her husband, Mr. Lide, who knows China very well. Much of Emily Kemp and Constance Cumming's travels were with missionaries or other travelers to China. Relatively speaking, Isabella Bird spent relatively long time alone (with the exception of accompanying servants and soldiers), but many times there were companions. Much of what they know about all parts of China comes from the introduction of local missionaries and companions, and Mrs. Lide once emphasized the important role of missionaries in traveling in China, "For a traveler, the customs and customs are quite attractive, but in China, to understand the local customs and customs from the Chinese, it is impossible for a foreigner, but the missionaries can describe everything around the church quite accurately." This way of travel naturally produces the first narrator of the Chinese image in the travelogue, but also the harmonist. Mrs. Lide mentions this phenomenon of interaction in The Land of the Blue Robe:
When travelers pass by, the most exciting time for Chinese urban life has arrived. Foreigners who live in China for a long time will become less reticent and will not hear anything interesting from their mouths. And in foreign travelers, you can hear a lot of things that you don't see or hear in the metropolis. For days on end, we sat around the traveler and told him about our experience in China over the years. We also asked him to say what he had said there, what he had done, and what he had seen. Talk to them with an unparalleled richness of content. Most travelers are collecting materials for their travelogues, the publication of which has undoubtedly enriched the world's treasure trove of knowledge. I know two travelers who have many wonderful experiences that have not yet been written into a book, and I am sure that readers will be greatly interested in their travel experiences in China.
This hearsay virtual China tour, as a special way, also has an impact on the chinese image of travelers.
Third, the traveler in the eyes of the "other"
Speaking of the relationship between the self and the other in iconography, Ba Rou pointed out, "I 'gaze' at the other, and the image of the other conveys certain images of myself. It is inevitable that at the level of the individual (writer) or the collective (society, state, nation) or semi-collective (school of thought, viewpoint), the image of the other is both a denial of the other and a supplement and extension of the self and the space of the self. 'I' speak of the 'other' (often for all sorts of urgent and complex reasons), and while speaking of the other, the 'I' negate the 'other' and speak of the self. The image of the foreign country is expressed as a secondary language, which parallels and coexists with the narrative language of 'I', and to some extent even replaces the latter to tell... Other out-of-words". The cliché is a special form of expression of the image. The phrase "does not appear as a sign (like a possible description that arises from the meaning of a sign), but as a signal." This signal automatically points to a possible interpretation. Clichés are a representation of monolithic interaction, a representation of a culture that is solidifying." However, the study of the iconography of clichés is often limited to a single linear relationship generated by clichés, that is, the cultural form of clichés identifies the image of others, identifies the image of others in a nation or a country over a period of time, and then excavates the causes of image generation, while examining the periodic effects of clichés diachronically. As Barrou said, "Once a 'mono-form and mono-semantic figuration' becomes a cliché, it penetrates into the deep psychological structure of a nation and continuously releases energy that subtly affects the perception of others by future generations." However, the user and scope of application of the cliché are often limited to the directed perspective of the stereotype producer and the other, and the use of the cliché by the other itself and the effect of the cliché on the other are often ignored. Thus, examining the relationship between travelers and travelers in the eyes of others from travelogues is the entry angle that this article attempts to choose in this section.
When Eliot talked to Ricciard about Westerners looking at China, he once compared China to a mirror, and what Westerners see in the mirror is still self. The traveler in the eyes of the other is like a prism, and after the refraction of two mirrors, it is still itself that appears. And this power relationship is more clear after two refractions. The relationship between the three is shown in the following figure:
This refraction is most evident in the narrative of the hostility of the Chinese in the travelogues of four female travelers, especially Mrs. Lide and Isabella Bird. Mrs. Lide mentioned in her travelogue that ignorant children in Shanghai would call them "Lanuma", which is what Shanghainese say about robbers. Isabella Bird also mentioned the attitude of the locals towards foreigners when describing her trip to Sichuan, "The people were not hostile, but they cursed the missionary Mr. James in the street, believing that the five people who walked with him were 'eating children', and believing that beautiful women used the brain marrow of children to stay in Yannian!" There are such rumors everywhere in Sichuan... Mr. A. J. Little mentioned the term 'foreign devil' in his correspondence in Sichuan several years ago, while other rude names for foreigners elsewhere have not been heard; And now, Chinese has picked out the most vicious words in its incomparably rich swear words and thrown them at foreigners." Clichés such as "foreign devils" show the hatred of the Chinese people after the Opium War for foreigners, especially Western missionaries. In addition to clichés, in their travelogues, it is often seen that the understanding of the other is expressed by borrowing the knowledge of the westerners, such as Isabella Bird's travelogue mentioning that when contacting mainland women, these women will think that foreigners eat in a barbaric way, because the fork will prick their mouths and bleed. They believe that wearing straw shoes on top of British leather shoes is anti-slip, which is to recognize that foreign things are inferior. This seemingly objective paraphrasing takes on the color of power precisely because of its appearance in travelogues, causing the traveler in the eyes of the other and the other to become a fictional existence at the same time, and it does not dissolve but strengthens the manifestation of power relations. These women's travels to China do not avoid the use and self-identification of clichés such as "foreign devils" and "foreign dogs", but the meaning of clichés has completely changed in the process of identification, and power relations have also been demonstrated in this transformation process.
Mary Louise Pratt proposed the concept of "contact zone" in her book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation in 1992. "Contact space" has a similar meaning to "colonial frontier", but "colonial border" is usually based on the perspective of European territorial expansionists, while "contact space" shifts the center of gravity from Europe. "Contact space" is the space in which the encounter of empires takes place, in which geographically and historically separated people meet and establish a continuous relationship that often involves coercion, extreme inequality, and irreconcilable conflicts. Contact space mainly studies the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, the traveler and the travelers, not focusing on separation, but emphasizing co-presence, contact, interactive understanding and practice, and is often in an extremely unequal power relationship. The clichés of "foreign devils", "child-eating", "ranuma", and "foreign dogs" are precisely in this confrontational space field. These titles for foreigners do not have a practical effect in Western society as they refer to, but they become Chinese rude and barbaric manifestations in the eyes of foreigners. Therefore, in travelogues, we often see their careful and detailed accounts of these Chinese clichés, but rarely see anger and accusations, but more of a confirmation of this conservative and backward people, and thus show racial and cultural superiority. When the other is represented through the other, that is, when these female travelers judge themselves under the guise of the eyes of the other, the image of the other and the self has long since changed. Therefore, the generation and use of linguistic and cultural codes can only take effect within a certain range, and once such codes cross the hierarchy of power, there is a danger of mutation or failure.
From the perspective of the gender identity of the travellers, these Victorian female travellers have escaped the femininity fixed by their own society. They are in a foreign space, the body and individual are liberated at the same time by another element of confrontation, this confrontation does not come from the patriarchal class and the entire society of the definition of women, but from a people whose socio-economic and cultural development is relatively lagging behind, from their own colonies where they have many privileges. In this sense, although confrontation exists, the hierarchy of power has changed, and female travelers have jumped from subordinates in patriarchal societies to power holders in colonies, they have always had the right to speak despite being besieged, and naturally become so-called "victims" in travelogues, these besiegers are called "mobs" and barbarians, and women who are besieged are more sympathetic than male travelers in their own readers. This is also the reason why when Mrs. Lide, Isabella Bird, and others were besieged by the local people, the accompanying messengers would intimidate the besieging people with the idea that foreign soldiers would take them away, and they would eventually be safe under the escort of local officials. The party in charge of power decides who is the victim and who deserves punishment, and the Boxer Rebellion and the Eight-Power Alliance invasion of China in 1900 are the ultimate expression of this power.
In 1898: China through the Eyes of an English Woman, Isabella Bird reflects on the reasons for the frequent occurrence of lesson plans at that time by presenting the other in the eyes of the other, and presents this distinctive feature of the Western traveler:
First of all they are foreigners, "foreign devils", their eyes, their skin color, their every move is disgusting, sometimes pitiful; they are "children-eaters", using the eyes and hearts of children to make medicine. At that time, many believed that foreigners had come as conspirators and political brokers to spread foreign and Western religions with the aim of destroying the Chinese nation, undermining the respectable social order advocated by Confucius, eliminating the dignity and purity of family life and loyalty to their ancestors, and introducing abhorrent customs.
I think this is a factual view of the purpose of the missionary from the standpoint of Chinese, which is dominated by the extreme ignorance and strong conservatism of the Chinese. Thus, there were successive small-scale riots, and it was not at all surprising that there was a large-scale xenophobic riot in Sichuan in 1895. Many missionaries escaped during these disturbances, and many survived, thanks to the protection provided to them by the officials in the gates.
This power relationship and antagonism has weakened compared to Mrs. Lide, who has lived in China for 20 years. When Mrs. Lide was in rural Sichuan, she mentioned that "the Chinese in the courtyard all talked about me in dialects, and said to each other, 'She is a foreigner who can't understand'", and Mrs. Lide helplessly said that she really did not understand. She was invited to the wedding when she watched Chinese marry her relatives, but she felt very faceless because she was wearing a Scottish tweed coat and could not speak a word of congratulations in Chinese. The long-term personal and cultural encounters in the "contact space" have alleviated this extremely unequal power relationship to some extent. Pratt's emphasis on "transculturation" also plays a role in this sense.
"Her" outlook on China's destiny
After the Second Opium War, the "Foreign Affairs Faction" headed by Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang launched the Western Affairs Movement of "Mastering And Changing Skills to Strengthen Themselves," opened the Tongwen Museum to train translation talents, established a number of military industries such as the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and the Hubei Gun Factory, and then set up enterprises such as the Steamship Merchants Bureau, the Telegraph Bureau, and the Machine Weaving Layout. In addition, Kang Youwei and other reformists preached the Penghu Reform Law and did a lot of preparatory work before the change, and the "non-foot binding movement" mentioned above is one of them. Although these movements ended in failure, they partly reflected the desire of a group of reformers at the end of the 19th century to reform China under the pressure of the invasion of Western powers, and brought many changes to Chinese society. At the same time, the growing power of Western countries in China, trade expansion and missionary work infiltrated China's cities and villages, which also changed the face of Chinese society in this period to some extent. These female travelers came to China after the "opening of the door" in the late Qing Dynasty, and they witnessed the social changes in China at different times and experienced the effects of this change first-hand during their travels. From being besieged to being received by official drivers, from opening up the Yangtze River route to traveling by train, from frequent teaching cases to seeing a gradually colonized and Westernized China. This is a unique group of Witnesses of Chinese history, whose travels are necessarily linked to the commercial expansion and missionary work of the British in China at that time, and they have become the eyes of the Modern Reform Process of China while witnessing the expansion of the British Empire in China in the Victorian era. The travelogues of these female travelers became feedback on the results of the expansion of the British Empire in China, and also injected their evaluation and reflection on British policy in China and the social changes in China during their travels. Where does China's future go? Several female travelers, such as Isabella Bird, consciously incorporated this question into their travelogues. In their travelogues, they show different perspectives on China's future:
Isabella Bird, as an explorer and feedbacker of British influence in China, highlighted the impact of the British Empire on the future social development of China in her concluding remarks 1898: China through the Eyes of an English Woman:
China is indeed at the dawn of a new era. Whatever position the 20th century placed her at the forefront of the Eastern states, or what it would prove her collapse and decline, depended heavily on the political talent and influence of Great Britain.
Compared with Isabella Bird, Mrs. Lide is more of a lament for the decay and lack of livelihood of the late Qing government, a reflection on British policy in China, and an expression of expectations for social change in China.
If the women of the future are thus liberated, it is a little merit for the atrocities mentioned above, and women are not only the mothers of half of the country's population, but also the mothers of the other half. Insufficiency, ignorance, and diseased mothers who give birth to and raise sons will be as weak as their mothers. It is worth noting that since the spread of foot binding in China, the Chinese Empire has never given birth to a man who won the admiration of the people. People shouted, "Where is he?" Now the time for the Savior's arrival has passed, but they are still shouting, "Where is He?" ”
In My Garden of Beijing, she reflects on the current state of late Qing rule through the socio-historical changes in Beijing:
The entire history of Beijing can be seen as an illustration of opportunism being ineffective and unhelpful in dealing with the fate of one of the world's greatest countries. But is it possible that the superior intellect that has been trusted for centuries prove to be a failure? All of China now recognizes that, not without remorse, the capital of a vast and uncontrollable empire is located on the border, not only cannot be its forward fortress or a barrier against invasion, but can be used as a threat at any time by shrewd enemies. This conveys to the entire population a sense of distress. Moreover, the Beijing court has been separated from the rest of the country for many years, and those who know China will never doubt it. Still, it's a great presence, and it's beautiful and spectacular, even though it's decayed and decayed.
Mrs. Lide was extremely concerned about China's reform cause, and had personally contacted Li Hongzhang, a representative of the Western affairs movement, Wen Tingshi, a member of the reformist faction, and others, and in the book "Intimate Contact with China", she detailed the process of the Penghu Reform Law, and reprinted the interview with Kang Youwei in China Post and Kang Youwei's open letter to the press. At the end of the book, Mrs. Lide looks at the implementation of British policy in China and expresses her expectations for the British government to make further moves in China to promote social change in China:
Lord Salisbury seems to me to be the wisest politician of our time, though he has too many times lacked the decisiveness to act. I would like to conclude my book with a passage he said in June 1898: "If someone asks me what our policy of dialogue is, my answer is very simple: we should defend the Chinese Empire, prevent it from collapsing, guide it on the path of change, give it all the help we can, improve its defenses or enhance its commercial prosperity." In doing so, it will be good for its cause and it will be good for our own business. "Can I ask the British government?" Apart from the establishment of victorian colleges in Hong Kong a few years ago, as any of the ministers in the Prime Minister's most able modern cabinet, when and where did you act in accordance with the policy proposed by the Prime Minister?
Emily Kemp witnessed the great changes in Chinese society in a short period of time during her two trips to China, and in the final chapter of "The Face of China", "The Present Situation in China", she introduced the Political System, Education System and Change Trends in China to British readers at that time, and carefully examined and evaluated China's social changes:
The entire civilized world watched with astonishment and admiration the recent rapid evolution of the Japanese state, and now the Chinese Empire was determined to make a similar change. This is a much more difficult task, and because of China's size, it is likely to be much more important to the whole world. Chinese strongly encouraged by the spirit of patriotism, they have a good mind and a persistent determination to carry out the necessary reforms to the end. They were pioneers of art, science, and philosophy in the dark ages of the past, so we can look forward with hope to a more brilliant future, believing that the new era that has just begun may be a greater and greater era for China.
In the actual contact between the traveler in a foreign country and the other, the subject needs to re-identify, construct himself while constructing the other, find and confirm the position of the British Empire in China after the opening of the door, and predict the development prospects of China, which is actually the general psychology of Western travelers to China in the late 19th century and early 20th century. They walk between the bustling cities and villages, between Chinese landscape culture and Western civilization, "all Chinese cities are generally busy, crowded, quarrelsome, noisy, and there are very few women." Drums beating, cymbals, bells, rifles firing, firecrackers popping everywhere, beggars howling everywhere, countless cries in the streets, business talking in the loudest voice, the air filled with countless discordant roars." China's natural scenery is beautiful and rich in minerals, but it is full of opium addicts and women with feet. These female travelers came to China in the corrupt late Qing Dynasty, and all of them saw the country's deepest depravity and the rapid trade expansion of Western countries in China. But from their travelogues and social practice, we can still glimpse the shadow of China's social change. Some of them have either witnessed or participated directly in China's social movements. Mrs. Li De had personally met Li Hongzhang, a representative figure of the Western school, and the Tianzu Movement she led was at the same time as the non-foot-binding movement launched by Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Tan Si and other restorationists in China at that time. In 1907, Emily Camp came to China for the second time and found that within a few years Yunnan had schools, barracks, mints, railway stations, street lamps, and even foreign police, French hospitals and post offices.
However, the focus on social change in China is often accompanied by a reflection on the development of both civilizations. At this time, Britain had entered an industrial society, and these British travelers came to an ancient but decaying, beautiful but also dilapidated country, where they saw the hope of change, witnessed the thriving trade of the British Empire in China, but lamented that Westernized China might lead to the gradual disappearance of these "relics of history". For these travelers, China is not only the scope of British colonial expansion, but also a geographical space to travel and watch. The 18th-century German thinker Herder pointed out that conceited and stagnant China was a mummy wrapped in silk, a metaphor that, although inaccurate, also graphically expressed certain characteristics of China from the other side. Ancient Chinese civilization remains attractive to Western travelers, but as China moves toward Western industrial civilization, the spectacle of difference that such travel can bring is suspended. The China in Marco Polo's travels has long been lost, how should China develop now? Is the UK's policy in China properly and effectively implemented? The more than century-long controversy over etiquette has gradually faded, but the contact and development of two civilizations in the same space is still an inextricable problem. Mr. Lu Xun once criticized the curiosity of foreigners who came to China at that time in "Long Pen Under the Lamp", "Among foreigners, those who do not know and praise are forgivable; those who occupy high positions and are pampered and superior, so they are deceived, but they are spiritual and admirable, and they are also forgivable." However, there are two others, one of which is that the Chinese is inferior, only worthy of the original appearance, so it deliberately praises the old Chinese things. One is to wish that people in the world will be different in order to increase their interest in travel, to See braids in China, to see clogs in Japan, to see Kasako in Goryeo, and if the clothes are the same, they will be tasteless, so they will oppose the Europeanization of Asia. These are abhorrents." Mr. Lu Xun clearly pointed out the attitude of a group of Western Chinese people at that time to China, and at the same time, this curious attitude was also mixed with the characteristics of reflecting on Western civilization in the turbulent Changes in China reflected in many travelogues in the same period, reflecting the complex psychology of West Chinese people at the turn of the last century when the two civilizations of China and the West collided. Mrs. Lide once said of the development of the missionary career in China, "Are we expecting them to be replaced by colorful, neat and clean churches? Let the crisp European bronze bell replace the thick Buddha bell? So where will the village rally be held? Will we build taverns or bars for Chinese, as we did for the sailors who came to China... Can we watch as these relics of the past, which bear witness to the oldest civilization of mankind, are removed from the surface of the earth, while mourning the collapse of the Venetian bell tower?" Mrs. Lide showed a complex attitude toward the Westernization of Chinese civilization, and is relatively speaking, Isabella Bird, proceeding from the interests of the British Empire, was more certain of the Westernization process of China and looked forward to Britain's position in China's future reforms.
These British female travelers to China came to the real China, saw the Lugou Bridge written by Marco Polo in the 13th century, enjoyed the magnificent scenery of the Yangtze River, witnessed the erosion of foot binding and opium on the people of this country, experienced the strong resistance of the Chinese people to the Western invasion at the end of the 19th century, and also witnessed the expansion of the West in China and the practice of Chinese social changers. The development prospects of Chinese society at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century showed different writing trends in the "contact space" of the two civilizations, and the travelogues of female travelers to China provided a new perspective for reflecting the social changes in China at the turn of the century.
It should be pointed out that this paper selects the travelogues of four British female travelers as research objects, but this group is not fundamentally different from the overall Western travelogue writing in China at that time. At the same time, there are also different projection emphases and writing characteristics among the Chinese travelogues of various female travelers, regardless of each person's specific evaluation of Chinese. However, precisely because of its particularity as a new type of group coming to China, their Chinese encounters, perspectives and statements can more effectively complement the overall presentation of Western travel to China during this period and the image of China in the eyes of Westerners at that time. The foot-binding women, opium addicts, monks, Taoists, Hmong women, rioting people, missionaries, soldiers, police, officials, cities, landscapes, monuments, hotels, railways, post offices, etc. described in their travelogues present the Chinese scene in the eyes of British female travelers in this period, thus constituting the overall image of China in the western travels to China in the late Qing Dynasty from 1840 to 1911. At the same time, their travels and travelogues directly influenced the writing of Chinese images by female travelers to China in the decades that followed, such as Mary Eliza Bakewell Gaunt,000, who came to China in 1913 and A Woman in China in 1914; Ellen Newbold La Motte, who came to China in 1917, and published Old Things in Beijing in 1919. (Peking Dust); Grace Thompson Seton, who came to China in 1923, published Chinese Lanterns in 1924. In this sense, these women's writings also form a huge intertextual space with the previous and subsequent Travelogues of China, and together construct the ever-changing image of China over the centuries.
This article was originally published in The Review of Chinese History, Vol. 3