Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

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.