Re-Orienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-Cultural Understanding

by Leilei Chen

Overview

In the last few decades, China has undergone drastic changes, from a secluded Communist state to an active participant in the global economy. At the same time, the West's fascination with China has ascended to new heights. Leilei Chen's Re-Orienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-Cultural Understanding guides us through six rarely studies writers on post-1949 China: Jan Wong, Jock T. Wilson, Peter Hessler, Leslie T. Chang, Hill Gates, and Yi-Fu Tuan. Beginning with a defense of travel writing against the charge of imperialism, Chen explores the potential for cross-cultural travel to both transform the self and effect social and political change. At moments personal and intimate, Re-Orienting China guides us towards cross-cultural relationships that are critical in today's globalized world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780889774421
Publisher:	University of Regina Press
Publication date:	12/02/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	617 KB

About the Author

Leilei Chen teaches English and Writing Studies at the University of Alberta and has published on Asian American studies, Victorian studies, Canadian literature, and travel writing. She recently translated Steven Grosby's Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP) for Yilin Publisher, China. Before moving to Canada, Chen was a professor of English at Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Departure: A Prologue

Introduction

Scholarship on Travel Writing about China

Looking beyond the China-West Divide

Six Case Studies

Theoretical Underpinnings

Chapter One – Peter Hessler’s Enlightened Ambivalence

The Traveller’s Linguistic and Cultural Immersion

The Enlightening Moments of Travel

Enlightened Ambivalence and “Epistemic Humility”

The Travel Writer as a Critic

Chapter Two – Jock Tuzo Wilson’s Horizon of Cross-Cultural Understanding

Validity and Limitation of the New Vision:

Critical Sensibility Engendered

Translating Cultural Differences

“A Broader Humanism”

Chapter Three – Jan Wong’s Egological Translation and Beyond

Contextualizing Wong’s Travel

The Egological Translation of China and Its Problems

Critical Questions about Journalism and Openness to the Other

Chapter Four – Hill Gates’s Contextualizing Translation of China

Translating the Context of the Foreign

Self in Translation

Insights about Travel Writing and Culture

Chapter Five – The Traveller’s Joined-University Press Vision in Leslie T. Chang’s Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

The Chinese Migrants as Travellers

The Changes of the Chinese Migrants

The Traveller’s Rediscovery of Her Chinese Heritage

Chapter Six – Locating “Cosmopolitan Hearth”: Yi-Fu Tuan’s Homecoming Travel and beyond

A Lifelong Traveller and the Question of Self and Belonging

Self and Place

“Trying to Be a Tourist”

“Cosmopolitan Hearth”

Arrival: An Afterword

Works Cited

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An intriguing contribution to research. Postcolonial studies is in the process of exploring ways to get past the binary opposition of self/other, and books like Re-Orienting China are an important part of this project." Pamela McCallum, Cultural Memories and Imagined Futures

"Chen brings an intimate awareness of the internal diversity within China which is too often downplayed or ignored by foreign observers." Stephen Clark, Asian Crossings: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia