The Chinese Chameleon Revisited: From the Jesuits to Zhang Yimou
★★★★★
★★★★★
English
By examining how the Middle Kingdom has been portrayed by foreigners and the Chinese themselves, this volume advances a new perspective in our reading and interpretation of the Chinese past by placing these producers and presenters of China in the spotlight. The chapters probe how these figures produced or presented the country, cross-examining their backgrounds and circumstances. Their gaze upon the Middle Kingdom was dictated by religious and political conviction, but also particularly by the consumers of that gaze. Like invisible hands, producers and consumers of China continue to constrain representations of the country, looming larger than the literary, artistic or journalistic works they produce. This volume also addresses scholars of Europe and America who have overlooked what Western writers on China reveal about their own contexts which is indeed often more than they reveal about their ostensible subject. As such, the Middle Kingdom serves as a convenient mirror to reflect European and American anxieties and ambitions.
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Product Details
Dimensions: 148 x 212mm
Publication Date: 18 Apr 2013
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Publication City/Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781443844673
About
Zheng Yangwen is Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester. Educated at Oberlin College (BA 1995) and the University of Cambridge (Kings College MPhil 1997 and PhD 2001) she taught at the University of Pennsylvania (200204) and the National University of Singapore (200406) before joining Manchester. She is the author of The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge University Press 2005) which has been translated into Italian and Korean and China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped Modern China (Brill 2011). She is also the editor of Negotiating Asymmetry: Chinas Place in Asia (with Anthony Reid) The Body in Asia (with Bryan S. Turner) Personal Names in Asia: History Culture and Identity (with Charles J-H. Macdonald) and The Cold War in Asia: the Battle for Hearts and Minds (with Hong Liu and Michael Szonyi). An editorial board member of Modern Asian Studies and the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient she is currently preparing Choreographing and Dancing the Communist Revolution for publication in 2014.