Materials for a course on representations of China in Western Culture

Bickers' "Scramble for China" is indeed good, so is his "Empire Made Me", I have also had great fun and learned a whole lot from reading "Across China on Foot" by Edwin Dingle, "Midnight in Peking" by Paul French and "I Sailed With Chinese Pirates". I have been spending the morning looking into how Chinese people were represented in the press, both the ones with integrity and the yellow press like "The World" run by Mr. Pulitzer, there is a lot of stuff, mostly negative. Also read "Chop Suey" by Andrew Coe, a cultural history of Chinese cuisine in America. Highly recommendable. 

Guy Gavriel Kay writes historical fantasy. His last two books are based on China.

Under Heaven is set in the 'Tang Dynasty' and 'River of Stars', the Song Dynasty.

I just found this today while reading Cracked, yes Cracked, the funny lists website

http://publicculture.org/articles/view/24/2/welcoming-china-to-modernity-us-fantasies-of-chinese-automobility

How academic do you want this course to be? When you start examining how the West views and represents the East, some of what you uncover is kind of uncomfortable. As  an Asian Studies and film double major I took a lot of classes sort of geared in this direction. When you start doing a lot of reading on media and post-colonialism, you find a lot of films/books you might have previously enjoyed are actually kind of suspect. Some stuff like "The Joy Luck Club" seems pretty innocent and positive on the outside, but there are actually some pretty solid criticisms of Amy Tan for basically selling out and exoticizng/eroticizing China, particularly "old China" into an Orientalist fantasy for a mainstream Western audience.

ETR, I wouldn't tackle the topics you're covering in this class without referring to Said's Orientalism, and even using it as a main text for the class. Rey Chow also writes on the subject, often specifically in the context of how the West studies and views China. There is also Frank Chin, who edited an anthology of Asian American writing called The Big Aiiieeeee (which is actually a follow-up to his first anthology). The introduction to that book is really a must read.

You can make this a really meaty course, and probably get the students pretty riled up.

I intend it to be rather academic. I was actually reading Said's book yeaterday. The course, like all the other courses I am fiddling with, is part of my scheme to turn the oral/written/intensive reading classes into something useful. So far I have made folders for each century, from Marco Polo to now. I am endeavouring to make a similar course focusing on the representation of foreigners in Chinese art and literature through the ages, which is more difficult as my ability to read Chinese is very, very bad. Working on improving it but there are only so many hours in a day.

Said is great. When you major in Asian studies, particularly as a white Westerner, the first thing they do is really turn you on your head and get you thinking about why you're so interested in the East in the first place. You start thinking, shit, am I actually an Orientalist without even knowing it? Fuck me. Hah. Good stuff. 

How academic do you want this course to be? When you start examining how the West views and represents the East, some of what you uncover is kind of uncomfortable. As  an Asian Studies and film double major I took a lot of classes sort of geared in this direction. When you start doing a lot of reading on media and post-colonialism, you find a lot of films/books you might have previously enjoyed are actually kind of suspect. Some stuff like "The Joy Luck Club" seems pretty innocent and positive on the outside, but there are actually some pretty solid criticisms of Amy Tan for basically selling out and exoticizng/eroticizing China, particularly "old China" into an Orientalist fantasy for a mainstream Western audience.

It's also worth remembering the way that this sort of academic culture works though, you can find an angle for everything and one of the best ways to make a name as an academic in a saturated field like Film and Cultural studies is to say something controversial. I'd imagine that somebody at a university somewhere has called every popular movie ever racist, imperialist, orientalist etc...

To be honest, I am not focusing that much on movies, albeit I am doing research into them. Nor am I trying to say anything controversial, I thoroughly dislike that aspect of Academia. I thoroughly dislike the idea that one has to tip-toe around aspects of history and culture because of modern sensitivity. The character of Fu Manchu and Johnny Chinaman are both racist stereotypes, but I simply want to take all the representations and put them into a contemporary setting. I am truly not endeavouring to either rile people up or stir up controversy, it is purely historical, cultural and sociological studies.

Of course academia pretty much exists in order to deconstruct everything to a degree that most non-academics (and even lots of academics themselves) find tiresome. But if they couldn't do that, what would they have left?

I do think there is some worth, however, in making students aware of the issues with how the West portrays the East and some of the theories behind why that is. I can enjoy Amy Tan as a novelist and think she tells a good story while also being aware of some of the problems with her writing as a whole.

I don't know. Chinese-Chinese students are, for the most part, not even aware of why they shouldn't call themselves "yellow," so the intricacies of post-colonialist theory might go above their heads but then again, they can surprise you.

I don't think any of this is particularly controversial really, even for the students, although sure they might get angry when they figure some things out. It doesn't take a PhD scholar to pick up on the idea that China, when portrayed in Western media and film, is usually either a) exotic and mysterious or b) evil and corrupt. In fact, have a hard time thinking of a single Western portrayal of China that doesn't fit int one of the two categories. I think the interesting part is challenging the students to think about why that is and what it means.

I was just saying be careful, I agree that it's useful and often enjoyable to analyse popular culture. My dissertation at university was about national identity in cinema although my focus was on Italy and I hadn't realized the extent to which ideologies manifest in pop culture. But it is easy to get carried away as well, things sometimes just are what they are. I wasn't implying that was what you were doing Eric, just saying like...

I think china is kind of a special case as well because the 'old china' fascination could also be because it was the big power at the time. Chinese have endless films,books etc about it, (and so did hong kong, so its not just ccp nationalism) it's like how the fascination with the Roman And Egyptian empires aren't to do with how we view those countries so much as them being some of the richest times in history for drama and spectacle (IMO)

Yoda!