The Qing Travellers in Europe - Cultural Identity, Gender Identification and Representation : A Perspective of Transcultural Translation

Abstract

This study examines Chinese travel writings during the latter half of the 19th century, with a particular focus on the complexities of gender identification and representation. Seeing these travels as transcultural practice and these travel writings as transcultural translation (both literally and metaphorically), this study analyses the linguistic features and their cultural manifestations and implications, aiming to reveal the process by which notions on gender were translated and transferred across linguistic and cultural boundaries, and how this played a role in shaping perceptions of foreign lands and cultures. As the travellers, exclusively male and primarily literati-officials, crossed the ocean and engaged with people from a different cultural context, the very concepts of masculinity and femininity, morality and immorality, as well as propriety and impropriety, underwent significant transformation. Thus, their encounters with Europeans were accompanied by perplexity and difficulty in identifying gender and understanding gender roles. By examining the moments where perplexities or difficulties arise, this study reveals the contrasting gender ideologies intertwined in and beyond the language. One major finding is that the travellers attempted to incorporate alien European women into the Confucian symbolic system to contend with their perceived menace. As a result, they either idealized European women as Confucian “Mingfu” or “Guixiu” for diplomatic reasons, or sexualized and even stigmatized them as contrary to Confucian morality based on their appearance and behaviour.

Presenters

Yuan Gao
OP JAK MSCA Researcher, Asian Studies, Palacky University Olomouc, Olomoucký kraj, Czech Republic

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2024 Special Focus—Traveling Concepts: The Transfer and Translation of Ideas in the Humanities

KEYWORDS

GENDER IDENTIFICATION, GENDER REPRESENTATION, CHINESE TRAVEL WRITINGS, NINETEENTH CENTURY