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I Perhaps nothing is more symbolic and representative of a China Abroad than a resident Chinese embassy. On January 21, 1877, after fifty days at sea, Guo Songtao, the first Chinese ambassador to Britain, and his entourage arrived at Southampton. The British public was quick to realize that the establishment of a permanent Chinese embassy in London was an “event unprecedented in the history of the relations between China and foreign countries” and constituted “a proud page of British history.”1 Inaugurating China’s modern diplomacy, Guo’s mission was a diplomatic one, but, in an important sense, it was also a journey of intellectual discovery of the West. A prominent scholar, social critic, and statesman in his time, Guo had long been committed to the constitution and development of an informed and enlightened understanding of the West in China. His appointment as China’s first ambassador to Britain provided an opportunity to experience and to study the West he had so far only observed or imagined from a distance. What would he have to say about Britain and about the West more generally? How would he see his own country in light of his experience and his knowledge of Britain gathered and accumulated during the time of his ambassadorship? In what ways would his views on the West and on China in relation to the West contribute to our understanding of radical social and cultural transformations in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Guo’s intellectual engagement with western learning and the heavy price he had to pay for his liberal attitude towards the West are evidence of the difficulties, complexities, and perils of cross-cultural understanding at a time when so much of it was needed. 3 Guo Songtao in London: An Unaccomplished Mission of Discovery Qingsheng Tong 46 Qingsheng Tong Today, more than a century later, we cannot speak with confidence of China’s discovery of the West, a project that Guo began both symbolically and literally, as finished or complete. Three decades after the implementation of the open-door policy in the early 1980s, China’s economic ascendancy has fulfilled, partially at least, the dream of many of Guo’s contemporaries including those “self-strengtheners” for whom military power and material wealth were the sole objective of state policy. But the question of where and how to position China’s indigenous cultural formations vis-à-vis their western counterparts in the context of globalization continues to demand intelligent responses that may enable a vision of the future for China and an enlightened understanding of the West as the locus of reference for China’s project of modernization. Some of the problems that confront China today are uncannily reminiscent of those with which Guo and his contemporaries—friends and foes alike—were preoccupied. When it comes to China’s understanding of itself in relation to the West, the history of modern China is one of recurrent tautologies. Born in Hunan in 1818, Guo Songtao (Kuo Sung-t’ao 郭嵩燾) received a classical education at the Yuelu Academy (嶽麓書院), a prestigious institute of learning first founded in the twelfth century by the leading neoConfucian scholar Zhu Xi (朱熹) (1130–1200). A distinct aspect of its tradition was its commitment to what is known as “practical statesmanship.” This tradition was to be continued and developed by Guo Songtao under the new circumstances seven hundred years later. During the First Opium War (1840–42), Guo was involved in organizing the defense against the British in Zhejiang Province; China’s defeat, which led to the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, constituted a turning point in its modern history as well as in Guo’s thinking. In an attempt to understand what had really happened and how it had happened, Guo organized for himself a spate of activities—reading about the West and trying to get in touch with westerners visiting or residing in China for information about the countries they came from. About two decades later, during the Second Opium War (1856–60), he was again involved in building the defense of the Taku Fort against the British and French allied forces under the command of Lord Elgin. As a military secretary to the famous Manchu general Senggelinqin, Guo, however, stood against the use of force in settling the disputes with the British and preferred negotiation to an allout war. His dissenting views not only antagonized the general but angered the whole rank of scholar-officials, though, for this...

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