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When Sirén returned from EastAsia in 1923, he spent some time in the United States on his way back to Europe. He gave two lectures on Chinese art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and met some of his old Boston acquaintances, such as Paul Sachs (1878–1965) of the Fogg Museum.1 The latter part of 1923 was mostly spent in London, but by early 1924 he seems to have made Paris his base. His decision to settle outside Sweden was partly inspired by the fact that he had offered his collection of Chinese art to the University of Stockholm and the offer had been declined.2 Archival material for 1924 is scarce, but random notes and several letters refer to his activities in 1925, and some of these letters concern his search for new employment .3 During this period, he traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. Sirén does not really appear to have been concerned that he had lost his position as a professor at the University of Stockholm. One wonders how that was possible economically. Sirén did not come from a wealthy background and throughout his life was apprehensive about his income, and as he aged he showed signs of becoming stingier. He must have sold his paintings of the Italian Renaissance which he had put up for sale in 1919; in addition, he had acted as an intermediary for Sir Joseph Duveen before his departure for China and had written certificates of authentication to Rudolph Chillingworth, a German inventor, businessman, and collector of Italian art who lived in Lucerne, Switzerland.4 While “on the road” Sirén had written travel essays. These, like some of those issued in Den Gyllene Paviljongen, belong to the genre of travel writing among Sirén’s works. If the book on his Japanese experience was primarily aimed for readers in Sweden and other Nordic countries, then the essays from the second journey were meant from the beginning to appeal to a wider international audience. The first versions of the essays were published in English in The Theosophical Path during 1923 and 1924, in addition to the article of his photography-tour in the company of Emperor Puyi, which appeared in 1923 in The New York Times Magazine. During the 6 The Fruits of the 1921–23 Expedition 82 Enchanted by Lohans following years (1924–27), these essays came out in Swedish and French editions in various newspapers and periodicals, several of them in Revue des Arts Asiatiques.5 It is intriguing to note that he did not write more travel essays on his later East Asian expeditions; instead, he returned to this genre only when he visited Indo-China in 1935. Was it perhaps the novelty of the experience which partly inspired him to write for newspapers and periodicals? If we look back to his early travels in Europe, we observe that in similar fashion his first visits to Italy stimulated him to share his experience with the audience at home in Sweden. Of course it was, furthermore, a way to add to the funds needed both for living expenses and for these journeys. With regard to travel writing we should think of the “writing” as encompassing not only the written word, but illustrations such as drawings, paintings, and photographs as well, and the different media should be read together. If Sirén, when speaking of Japan, used such old-fashioned tropes as “the vanishing fairyland of the Far East”6 in his description of Kyoto, he was more moderate in his renditions of China. That is not to say that he was less enthusiastic; he could turn very poetic, as in his praise for the city walls. However, his perceptions of his surroundings were still veiled in a romantic attitude, which mainly manifested itself in his admiration of the spirituality of Chinese culture and his grief in the face of its pending contamination by the penetration of Western materialistic values. In his photography, he was not only after architectural or other cultural monuments, but took delight in capturing the bustle of the streets in X’ian and Beijing or in making portrait-like images of individuals he encountered as he wandered the labyrinth formed by the hutongs (alleys) of Beijing. A fine example of these is a portrait of a Chinese man watering plants in a courtyard (Figure 17). Sirén must have asked the man to pose as the slowness of...

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