Enchanted Encounter: Gender Politics, Cultural Identity, and Wang Taoâs (1828â97) Fictional Sino-Western Romanceâ©
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Wang Tao (1828â97) was a late Qing translator, political commentator, and fiction writer who spent time in England, France and Scotland, and served as an important literary link between China and the West. In examining Wangâs tales of Sino-Western encounters and drawing from the long literary tradition of depicting foreign âOthers,â this paper shows that Wangâs image of the West in his literary tales is ambivalent. Further, it argues that Wangâs gender positioning of the Chinese âSelfâ and Western âOtherâ is rather ambiguous. By interpreting his representation of the West against his immediate historical context (e.g., a China facing unprecedented political and cultural challenges), this study investigates Wangâs use of various rhetorical strategies from an existing discourse on foreign âOthersâ (particularly the theme of âforeign woman marrying Chinese manâ) to appropriate, domesticate and even contain the West. It also shows how Wang complicates and even subverts these older rhetorical strategies as a way to cope with the new historical reality. â©
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5
âEmma Teng, âThe West as a Kingdom of Women,â 117â119.
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9
âXia Jingqu, Yesou puyan (Beijing: Renmin zhongguo chubanshe, 1993). The episodes on Europe are in Chapters 147â150.
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âWang Tao, Manyou suilu (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1982), 99â100. On another occasion he also remarks that âthe current world is a world of one globeâ (dangjin tianxia, nai diqiu heyi zhi tianxia ç¶ä»å¤©ä¸, ä¹å°çåä¸ä¹å¤©ä¸); Wang Tao, Taoyuan chidu å¼¢åå°ºç (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 208. Wang Taoâs notion of âgreat unityâ (datong 大å), a concept central to New Text Confucianism, anticipated the same idea enthusiastically promoted by Kang Youwei 康æçº (1858â1927) and Tan Sitong èå£å (1865â98) a couple of decades later. According to Ge Zhaoguang èå å , the late Qing thinkersâ emphasis on the sameness between the Chinese Dao and the Western Dao reveals anxiety over the challenge the West posed to the Chinese civilizational order, as the emphasis on the sameness was a strategy used by these thinkers to promote Western learning. See Ge Zhaoguang, âYige pubian zhenli guannian de lishi lüxing â yi Lu Jiuyuan âxin tong li tongâ shuo weili tan guannianshi de yanjiu fangfaâ ä¸åæ®éççè§å¿µçæ·å²æ è¡ â 以é¸ä¹æ·µ âå¿åçåâ 説çºä¾è«è§å¿µå²çç 究æ¹æ³, Dongyue luncong æ±å¶½è«å¢ 2 (2004): 5â15. I argue that Wangâs emphasis on the sameness intends to diminish the gap between Self and Other as China was inferior to the West, a fact many of Wangâs contemporaries refused to acknowledge. But Wang was acutely (and probably painfully) aware of this problem as a result of his close association with Westerners, and especially his first-hand experience in Europe.
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âWang Tao, Songyin manlu, 13â16. In Pu Songlingâs original tale scholar Wang encounters a bevy of beauties on an island of immortals. He marries one of them and they return to Wangâs hometown when he becomes homesick. After Wang fulfills his obligation of filial piety and helps his son establish himself, the two of them leave the mundane world and return to the island of immortals. See Pu Songling, Liaozhai zhiyi, 946â56.
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Enchanted Encounter: Gender Politics, Cultural Identity, and Wang Taoâs (1828â97) Fictional Sino-Western Romanceâ©
In: NAN NÃSearch for other papers by Huili Zheng in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Wang Tao (1828â97) was a late Qing translator, political commentator, and fiction writer who spent time in England, France and Scotland, and served as an important literary link between China and the West. In examining Wangâs tales of Sino-Western encounters and drawing from the long literary tradition of depicting foreign âOthers,â this paper shows that Wangâs image of the West in his literary tales is ambivalent. Further, it argues that Wangâs gender positioning of the Chinese âSelfâ and Western âOtherâ is rather ambiguous. By interpreting his representation of the West against his immediate historical context (e.g., a China facing unprecedented political and cultural challenges), this study investigates Wangâs use of various rhetorical strategies from an existing discourse on foreign âOthersâ (particularly the theme of âforeign woman marrying Chinese manâ) to appropriate, domesticate and even contain the West. It also shows how Wang complicates and even subverts these older rhetorical strategies as a way to cope with the new historical reality. â©
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 848 | 121 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 335 | 3 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 140 | 7 | 0 |
