Bringing the World Home : Appropriating the West in Late Qing and Early Republican China

Nineteenth-century China was a paradoxical place. On the one hand, significant new voices were determined to undertake reforms that would enable the Qing empire to cope with the powerful West; on the other, the literate public was for the most part equally intent on preserving the old ways. Bringing the World Home sheds new light on China's vibrant cultural life between 1895 an... Nineteenth-century China was a paradoxical place. On the one hand, significant new voices were determined to undertake reforms that would enable the Qing empire to cope with the powerful West; on the other, the literate public was for the most part equally intent on preserving the old ways. Bringing the World Home sheds new light on China's vibrant cultural life between 1895 and 1919 - a crucial period that marks a watershed between the conservative old regime and the ostensibly iconoclastic New Culture of the 1920s. Although generally overlooked in the effort to understand modern Chinese history, the era has much to teach us about cultural accommodation and is characterized by its own unique intellectual life. This original and probing work traces the most significant strands of the new post-1895 discourse, concentrating on the anxieties inherent in a complicated process of cultural transformation. It focuses principally on how the need to accommodate the West was reflected in such landmark novels of the period as Wu Jianren's Strange Events Eyewitnessed in the Past Twenty Years and Zhu Shouju's Tides of the Huangpu, which began serial publication in Shanghai in 1916. The negative tone of these narratives contrasts sharply with the facile optimism that characterizes the many essays on the "New Novel" appearing in the popular press of the time. Neither iconoclasm nor the wholesale embrace of the new could square the contradicting intellectual demands imposed by the momentous alternatives presenting themselves. Bringing the World Home fruitfully bridges the intellectual and literary history of the late Qing and early Republican era by showing how post-1919 radicalism - in an attempt to obscure the contributions made during the preceding period - obliterated an important legacy of cultural interaction and compromise that holds many lessons for the contemporary world. Bringing the World Home sheds new light on China's vibrant cultural life between 1895 and 1919--a crucial period that marks a watershed between the conservative old regime and the ostensibly iconoclastic New Culture of the 1920s. Although generally overlooked in the effort to understand modern Chinese history, the era has much to teach us about cultural accommodation and is characterized by its own unique intellectual life. This original and probing work traces the most significant strands of the new post-1895 discourse, concentrating on the anxieties inherent in a complicated process of cultural transformation. It focuses principally on how the need to accommodate the West was reflected in such landmark novels of the period as Wu Jianren's Strange Events Eyewitnessed in the Past Twenty Years and Zhu Shouju's Tides of the Huangpu, which began serial publication in Shanghai in 1916. The negative tone of these narratives contrasts sharply with the facile optimism that characterizes the many essays on the "New Novel" appearing in the popular press of the time. Neither iconoclasm nor the wholesale embrace of the new could square the contradicting intellectual demands imposed by the momentous alternatives presenting themselves. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher Contents Preface Introduction Part I Late Qing Ideas Chapter 1 China as Origin Chapter 2 Appropriations Another Look at Yan Fu and Western Ideas Chapter 3 New Ways of Writing Chapter 4 New Theories of the Novel Part II Late Qing Novels Chapter 5 Wu Jianren Engaging the World Chapter 6 Melding East and West Wu Jianren’s New Story of the Stone Chapter 7 Impossible Representations Visions of China and the West in Flower in a Sea of Retribution Part III The New Republic Chapter 8 The Contest over Universal Values Chapter 9 Swimming against the Tide The Shanghai of Zhu Shouju Chapter 10 Lu Xun and the Crisis of Figuration Afterword Notes Glossary of Chinese and Japanese Terms Works Cited Index Huters (Chinese, U. of California-Los Angeles) explores the intellectual climate in China from the country's defeat by an upstart Japan in 1894-95 to the 1910s to find the beginnings of what became a condemnation by intellectuals of their own social and intellectual traditions beyond any objective evidence. Focusing on fictional narrative and prose essays, he looks at such aspects as Yan Fu and Western ideas, Wu Jianren's New Story of the Stone as a melding of East and West, and the Shanghai of Zhy Shouju. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR "Bringing the World Home bridges the intellectual and literary history of the late Qing and early Republican era by showing how post-1919 radicalism - in an attempt to obscure the contributions made during the preceding period - obliterated an important legacy of cultural interaction and compromise that holds many lessons for the contemporary world."--Jacket