Textual Travels

This study examines the problem of "making sense of the Other" in Late Qing and Early Republican China (1860-1919) by analyzing three types of encounters between Chinese literati and German culture. In the first section, I examine empirical travelogues by Li Fengbao, Zhang Deyi and Kang Youwei, three of the earliest Chinese travelers to Germany. In the second section, I discuss fictional recreations of the 18 th century Münchhausen text by Iwaya Sazanami, Bao Tianxiao and Xu Nianci as well as the connection between these writers' theoretical ideas and literary fantastic aesthetic. In the third section, I analyze Cai Yuanpei's creative integration and synthesis of German moral, aesthetic and educational thought during the early stages of the new Republic. My main aim is to explore how intellectuals and fiction writers during this transformative moment in Chinese history discovered and re-imagined the world beyond China's borders while at the same time analyzing the "travel," integration and recreation of specific German texts and ideas.

I argue that the three cross-cultural encounters with the German Other which I describe here are linked by the idea of enactment. In particular, I propose the thesis that in unsettled times, encountering the other becomes a way to re-enact and critique the self. By showing three ways of encountering a particular other at this specific moment in Chinese history, my study shows that each of the intellectuals discussed here engages in this type of re-enactment of the self by means of creating a new text which responds to, integrates and transforms the encountered cultural artifact in Chinese form. The textual readings presented here fill gaps in our knowledge of the period by fleshing out concrete descriptive information about specific texts, their authors, the ideas they embody and their influence upon greater currents of modern intellectual and aesthetic Chinese thought. By examining empirical travelogues, fantastic fiction as well as philosophical treatises in the same thesis, I also highlight connections between individual thinkers that have not been made clear before.