The West As the Other: A Genealogy of Chinese Occidentalism

1. Introduction: Rethinking “the West”

ONE Introduction: Rethinking “the West” On March 7, 1866 (the twenty-first year of the Tongzhi reign), Bin Chun, a sixty-three year old deputy minister of foreign affairs, boarded a French ship called “Rabbo Deney.” Accompanied by his son Guang Ying and three students from the Tongwen Guan (School of Combined Learning and Translation), Bin Chun led the very first Qing embassy to the West. After two months of tumultuous travel, they finally landed at Marseilles in early May. Bin Chun’s embassy visited several European countries over a period of three and a half months. They reached the “far corners” of France, Britain, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Prussia, and Belgium. On the way, Bin Chun himself devoted a great deal of attention to foreign things and tongues. He had the opportunity to interpret European sites and voices by means of Chinese concepts. Throughout his journey, he deployed old methods of making encyclopedia-type accounts of foreign kingdoms, landscapes, domestic situations, produce, and customs. If it were not for Zhong Shuhe, a historian of the “world activities” (shijie huodong) of late imperial Chinese scholars, most of us would not know the role that Bin Chun played in “Chinese responses to Western impacts.” Zhong (2000) edited the records and poems of Bin Chun and included them in his book Going to the World, granting Bin Chun’s journey a special position in modern Chinese history. One particular moment, however, was given special attention by Zhong— the late Qing ambassador’s meeting with the “Tai Kun” (Supreme Female) of Sweden in Stockholm. TheWestAsTheOther_FA02_17Dec2013.indd 1 TheWestAsTheOther_FA02_17Dec2013.indd 1 19/12/13 10:41 AM 19/12/13 10:41 AM THE WEST AS THE OTHER 2 After an exchange of courtesies and gifts, “Tai Kun” said: “Never before has there been a Chinese traveling in my country, so today, the whole court takes great delight to see you, my honorable Chinese guest.” Bin Chun responded: “Chinese officials seldom make the effort to travel these open seas. Your country is, moreover, located so far north, I wouldn’t have known about this wonderland unless I visited it in person.” He then improvised the following poem and dedicated it to the “Tai Kun”: The King’s Mother in the West (Xi Wangmu) stays in Yingzhou, Twelve Palaces made of pearls are allowed to travel, Yet one witnesses nothing except the fleeting clouds, That’s because the jade chamber is guarded by mountains and rivers. (Zhong, 2000, p. 67) Since the early twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals have adopted many modern European concepts. To compare the King’s Mother in the West—a mythological daughter of Tiandi (Heavenly Supremacy) and the older sister of the Son of Heaven (Tianzi)—with the Swedish queen would perhaps seem absurd to us. Zhong, apparently , had similar concerns, for he comments: “This poem is only a vulgar text, a display of a literary technique in order to create a relationship ; to compare the Swedish queen with Xi Wangmu is ridiculous.” Living in a time so very different than ours, Bin Chun, nonetheless, had his own “culturologics” in doing just this. To Bin Chun’s eyes, Sweden was located in the far north but not to the west, just like the mountains where Xi Wangmu resided (Fig. 1.1). The amiable and majestic “Tai Kun” or “Supreme Female” also bore certain similarities to Xi Wangmu in terms of her appearance and position. Like Xi Wangmu, the queen was a non-Chinese lady. Moreover, in the 1860s a European queen could well seem as powerful as Xi Wangmu. For let us remember that Bin Chun went to Europe just six years after the Qing empire’s second defeat by the Western empires in the two Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860). TheWestAsTheOther_FA02_17Dec2013.indd 2 TheWestAsTheOther_FA02_17Dec2013.indd 2 19/12/13 10:41 AM 19/12/13 10:41 AM INTRODUCTION: RETHINKING “THE WEST” 3 Figure . Late Imperial Chinese Cartography of Scandinavian Kingdoms and the North Sea (source: Y. Wei, Haiguo Tuzhi, ) Could Bin Chun foresee that his old-style Chinese interpretation of the West would be seen as a silly joke by us, Chinese living a century later? No one knows. The passage of time makes it difficult for us to return to the past and make sense of Bin Chun’s “conservative” manner of cultural translation. In spite of all its tragic defeats, China in his...