Author ｜
Huei-chen Chang
Abstract ｜
This paper examines the travels and writing of late-Qing China’s ambassadors and intellectuals, who first left the “heavenly dynasty” to visit the “earthly world” during the Tongzhi and Guangxu period, by focusing on the political-religious sphere they observed in the British Empire, France, and America. The first part of this paper scrutinizes the diffusion and performativity of power in the western political-religious sphere, which was inspired by the works of postmodernist scholars such as Fernand Braudel and Michel Foucault on space-power relation as well as cultural geography, to reveal the cultural significance in it. It then compares this kind of western perspective was with the bodily experiences and interpretations of the late-Qing’s pre-modern travellers, in order to reach a deeper understanding of their culture shocks and mental states. By juxtaposing theoretical interpretation and field observation, the pre-modern and the post-modern, the occidental and the oriental, this paper attempts to create a spark of intellectual light, exposing a more diverse reading of space across the boundaries of culture and time.
keywords ｜
Late-Qing dynasty, travel journals of Europe and America, space, power, modernity