Traveling the World: Cross-Cultural Imaginings in the Late Qing

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Foreign travel, real or fictional, became a major source of information about the rest of the world and hence a stimulus to coping with China’s international position in the late Qing. How did the Chinese cope with national and cultural crisis through the trope of travel? What strategies did they employ to reconceptualize China’s position in a radically changing world? This panel attempts to answer some of these questions. Ellen Widmer’s presentation draws our attention to contrasting images of Japan in the work of three women authors of different ideological positions. By representing Japan as the ideal place to pursue the values they stood for, these three authors articulate the ways they thought China could improve. Jean Huangfu Day’s presentation examines Wang Zhichun’s travelogue on Russia and Europe. By reading Wang’s writing about Russia and Europe in terms of China’s jingshi state-building tradition, her paper overturns his reputation as a reactionary. Looking into the treatment in Chinese sources of a Chinese giant who was exhibited as a freak around the world, Liana Chen balances the idea of the exotic orient against Chinese understandings of this very tall man. Huili Zheng’s paper focuses on a Chinese rewriting of Henry Stanley’s exploration narrative, How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa. It offers insights into how Chinese people of the late Qing positioned themselves vis-a-vis Africa. Together the four papers yield new perspectives on China’s hopes and fears in the challenging international context before the Qing fell.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Huili Zheng, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Chair

• Ying Hu, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Japan in Three Travel Narratives by Chinese Women of the Late Qing - Ellen Widmer, Wellesley College

• Envoy to the New Tsar: Russia in the Eyes of a Qing Diplomat During the Sino-Japanese War, 1895 - Jenny Huangfu Day, Skidmore College

• A Chinese Giant’s Global Journey - Liana Chen, George Washington University

• Repositioning China, Rewriting Africa: “Translating” How I Found Livingstone in the Late Qing - Huili Zheng, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Discussant

• Ying Hu, University of California, Irvine