Here pasted is only the "Preface" to my monograph Drawing the Dragon: Western European Reinvention of China, published by the European Academic publisher Peter Lang.
Link:
https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/10856
Preface
By way of introduction, let me recount a recent episode.
It was a Tuesday morning. As I got in the office, I found the latest MacLean’s on my desk – THE Canadian weekly publication on current affairs, the one that enjoys such a prominence, and holds such a sway, among the Canadian public, as does the Time in the US. I was immediately drawn to the striking photo on its cover: a military man whacks his baton toward the head/back of a Tibetan monk. A huge-size caption “Butchers and Monsters – Things we can never forget about Communist China” runs across the whole page.
My first reaction: Voila, now the real evidence!?
At a second look: But that’s not a setting in China, and the military is not even Chinese!!!
With rumours and distortions rampant in recent media vis-à-vis this spring’s events in Tibet, I had to be very careful. Scrutinizing through the page, I finally found the smallest letters in the least conspicuous corner: “An anti-Chinese protest is crushed in Nepal, March 17, 2008.”
This was April 1, 2008.
It then dawned on me it might be a fool’s joke – it was indeed funny, except in a pathetic way. An established journalist finds a photo from Nepal and plants it on China, and there you are: some “butchers and monsters” are created. It is surprising that even in this age of science and technology, this age of information, when humankind is supposed to be highly enlightened, there should exist such demonization, or monsterization, of an Other nation. It was a fine piece of commercial, though, blowing up whatever is being sold while trying to hide the ugly truth, but definitely not a faithful piece of journalism.
But this is an extreme case. It is a case born of cold-war mentality, ideological prejudice, belligerent political agenda and, especially, deliberate distortion. As such it is not what this book, as a scholarly study, is mainly concerned with. However, while I can brush off the poor concoction and get on with my life, the kind of wide-spread and insidious influence it exerts on the unsuspecting and undiscerning public is not so easily brushed off.
Representations of China, or of any other nation, certainly do not always take the above form. In a much more intellectual setting, here is another experience I had years ago. It was a round table discussion organized by a Montreal-based transcultural – interestingly enough – magazine. The gathering was prompted by the magazine’s inclusion of a poem, entitled “A Rebel to the Long,” or “A Rebel to the Dragon” as it was translated from the Chinese original. That particular issue is devoted to the Orient. And to illustrate the theme, its cover page, in completely red background, carried a clearly touched-up photo of a naked young Asian woman: emphatically black-and-straight-haired, emphatically yellow-skinned, somewhat exotic for her earrings, and mildly enticing for her hand-covered but otherwise bare breasts. The discussion started with the image of the Long/dragon and how it was such a bad symbol, how it needed to be discarded, and moved to the strange and fascinating nature of Chinese “pictographic” writing. The topics were well enjoyed and well exploited, all the more interesting because a Chinese was seen rebelling against the Long/dragon, and fascinating because of the singularly exotic nature of the scripts.
The poet happened to be a great friend of mine, and like me, could be called a “specular border intellectual” or a “native informant.” He has, of course, his native perspective and his poetic license, and the specific domestic politics as his background. But to take for granted, outside of that background and perspective, and in the unlicensed areas, that the “dragon,” the long monsterized, and “its” culture needed to be discarded completely, might be dangerous; as some scholars have pointed out, it could, in the dinner-table observations of diplomats, provide legitimation for Western jingoism. And yet many may find the suggestion quite comfortable or even desirable. Moreover, to presume and wonder, from hearsay, that the Chinese writing consists of funny and mysterious symbols or short-hand pictures, without a full understanding of it, provokes fancies of the exotic and primitive; and to present the Orient in the form a naked young woman certainly serves a desire for the erotic in the exotic. The monstrous, the evil, the exotic, the erotic, the fear, the lure: as ways in which China and the East might be perceived and perhaps treated, these seem to fall into certain patterns.
Of course, portrayals or accounts of an Other do not only take the form of monsterization or demonization. It can also appear as zealous idealization, and anything in between, or aside of, these two extremes. China has also been described like a paradise, with abundance, polite manners, enlightened government, a natural religion, sexual opportunities, etc. I believe most representations of an Other culture or nation, or of China in this case, are made with honest efforts at objectivity, and many even with genuinely good intentions. But taken as a whole, what kind of a global result do all these contradictory accounts bring? What kind of image of an Other nation or culture gets thus imprinted on the public’s awareness? How might it influence public opinion and state action? More fundamentally, are there inherent consistencies that underlie the varied accounts, and is there some basic human weakness beneath all these?
These questions, and the patterns discussed earlier, have been explored in depth by Edward Said in his ground-breaking work Orientalism, from a specific cultural and personal perspective. Now with China fast coming into the focus of today’s world, it inevitably draws unsurpassed attention, for whatever reasons, toward whatever ends, and in whoever’s interests. It is all the more interesting or even urgent that these patterns be studied, and these questions answered, with China as the object of such representation or reinvention. However, with the vast amount of studies dealing with all aspects of West-China interactions, the history and extent of the West’s Orientalist reinvention of China remain to be explored. And on the other hand, the scope of Said’s delineation of Orientalism does not seem to be open and broad enough. The picture painted is certainly less optimistic than I would have hoped. It looks very much like a deliberate conspiracy from the very outset on the part of the Western powers to hold down the “Orient.” As a methodology, it seems to be too much preoccupied with a hostile, conflicting, colonial and hegemonic relationship. Or as James Clifford and Dennis Porter have pointed out, it seems to be construed with too much of an “oppressive systematicity.” I am not in a position to judge the West’s relationship with the Arab world, but this way of conceiving the relationship between different cultures appears to me to be intellectually too suffocating. The need for a more-broadly applicable methodology, and the urgency for a new study of the history of the West’s relations with China have converged. In addition, I feel that the epistemological basis of Orientalism, or of any other form of hegemonic discourse, needs to be looked into as well. Hence the present work.
This book attempts to identify and solve some basic problems, but it also raises further questions to be answered. I could see such further research in a couple of directions. First, in general methodological area: The criteria of the internal and external distinction that I have laid out here are still somewhat initial, and may need more tempering. The relationship between innocent ethnocentrism and hegemonic discourse should perhaps be thoroughly studied. Second, the extent of Western representation of China could be studied more fully. This includes more detailed and more inclusive study of the areas and historical periods already covered, somewhat scantily, by the present project, and examinations of those not yet covered. Examination on representations of the post-1949 China, when a cross-cultural situation is further complicated by ideological as well as military conflicts, and more interestingly by the current rapid development of the country in a post-modern world, is especially lacking. The feasibility and conditions of a textual dialogue is also worth exploring further.
This study has benefited from the support of many people. Professor Michael D. Bristol provided unreserved support throughout the progress of my work. Professor Darko R. Suvin offered me sound advice and intelligent comments. Professor David C. Hensley made invaluable suggestions for the final revision of this study. I am most grateful for their time and their intelligence.
My gratefulness also goes to Professors Adrian Hsia, Charles Shiro Inouye, and Linda E. Merians. They invited me respectively to the Euro-Sinica Symposium, the MLA Convention and the NEASECS Conferences, where the arguments of different parts of this project were tried out, and critical comments and questions received from participants. Among the respondents, I want to give my special thanks to the late Professor A. Owen Aldridge, who made invaluable comments on my previous presented papers and encouraged me to refine and publish my work.
Acknowledgement is gratefully made to the editors and proprietors of Comparative Literature Studies for allowing the reuse of my published paper, under the title “Citizen of Whose World? Goldsmith’s Orientalism.” Much of “Chapter 4” of the present work is collected in Tao: Reception in East and West, under the title “Dao, Logos, and Différance.” Both have been revised for inclusion in the present study. I am grateful to Professor Hsia for including this study in the Euro-Sinica series.
I dedicate this book to my family.
Tao Zhijian
Vancouver, Canada
