Study questions

1. Can you define orientalism in your own words?

 The word 'orient' is derived from the Latin word 'oriens' meaning 'rising sun' or the East,
from a Western perspective. So, in one sense, orientalism is the study of Eastern culture,
people, history and language usually by Western scholars. However, the term has come to
refer to how such studies and their depictions of the East can be influenced by outdated,
stereotypical or prejudiced perspectives. This has manifested in views of the East as exotic,
mysterious or backward and the view that the East is antithetical to the West. Moreover, an
orientalist view envisions all Eastern societies as inherently similar to each other, making
little distinction between them.
 Orientalism is a mode of thinking, a way of talking or writing about the east. Usually involves
generalisations and distillation/oversimplification. Can involve exoticisation. Also involves the
sexualisation of the other as deviants.

2. How does Zhang Longxi's idea of orientalism differ from said and victor’s?

 Zhang Longxi: Orientalism is bad when it is a western fantasy, hopes people will understand
China for its reality. He recognises east and west are different, but wants westerners to
appreciate china's beauty “in its own beauty”, not in some kind of exotic oriental foil
 Edward Said: all together, all part of one humanity. Don't draw arbitrary lines, as the idea of
orientalism does- “the notion of an ‘other’ culture is of questionable use, as it seems to
end inevitably in self-congratulation, or hostility and aggression”.
 Victor Segalen: comes to two conclusions in his work. From an academic standpoint, he
speaks as an artist, and doesn't want the fantasy of the orient to be taken away from the
west- “The exotic tension of the world is diminishing”. However, judging from the
conclusion in Rene Leys, Victor is willing to explore the orientalist fantasy, but also exposes it
for what it really is-western narcissism.

3. What are the differences between the films Taipan and Lin Zexu?

 Both Taipan (1986) and Lin Zexu (1959) are set around the First Opium War in the first half of
the 19th century, yet depict Westerners and Chinese people very differently as a result of the
films’ contextual backgrounds.
 Taipan engages in an Orientalist depiction of both Europeans and the Chinese. The power
struggle between Struan and Brock serve as the focus of the story, with China functioning as
a mere background to the western characters. Westerners are depicted as bold and
aggressive, with the dramatic opening narration stating that they were “defying the Emperor
to trade.” By contrast, the Chinese are portrayed as passive and weak, embodied in May-
May’s slave-master relationship with Struan. The glorification of Westerners is sustained
throughout the film, with the final shot of a wealthy modern Hong Kong implying that the
opium merchants were the reason behind Hong Kong’s commercial success, which is only
partly true.
 These themes differ strongly from Lin Zexu’s depiction of the Chinese people as physically
strong and capable of fighting against foreign invaders. This is epitomised in the character of
Lin Zexu himself. In Taipan, he is given an imposing and grand entrance, but the subsequent
execution sequence is another orientalist depiction of Eastern conceptions of justice being
different and depraved compared to the West. However, in Lin Zexu, the repulsing of the
 British at the Tiger Gate outside Canton is a culmination of the film’s anti-Imperialist and
patriotic stance. Moreover, Taipan fails to depict First Opium War at all, with the US-
Australian co-producers filming the first English movie shot in China after the Communist
revolution and perhaps wanting to avoid blatant depictions of Western oppression. Lin Zexu’s
context is greatly different, made after the Great Leap Forward (1958) which had the motto
of “suppress England, catch up to America”. The government wanted to retell the Opium War
from the Communist Chinese perspective, and it served to both highlight the competition of
the West but also the failures of the old society and the Qing dynasty through corruption.

4. How and why did Western impressions of China change over the centuries?

 Before 1800s: Westerners had an exotic, philosophical interest in comparing cultures with
China. Stories of headless men or men with dog’s heads persisted from Roman accounts of
India. There even existed the idea of some great Christian kingdom, manifest in the “Prester
John” myth during the crusades. This image of China was somewhat challenged by Marco
Polo’s book, which subverted traditional impressions of the East by depicting a well-
governed empire with an intricate economic system.
 1800s: Following the age of enlightenment, impressions of China became quite divided.
Whilst French enlightenment revolutionaries praised the Chinese system of churchless
morality and order, many sailors travelling to China spoke badly about China. George Anson,
for example, called China an “awful place” in his journal accounts of the country.
 20th Century: The popular culture around China’s image shifts, as the perception that China is
unchanging is broken down by writers like Harold Isaacs. America and Hollywood also
become enamoured with Orientalism, and Chinese American fiction starts to become
popular during the 20th century. Films like Tai-Pan begin using China as an exotic
backdrop/foil for the telling of western stories (usually romance).

5. What have you learned about Marco Polo?

 Marco Polo (1254-1324) was a Venetian Merchant who claimed to have travelled to China as
a young man during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. The Travels of Marco Polo is a travelogue
written by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Polo. Polo is said to have met the Great
Kublai Khan and served him as an official for 17 years, “obtaining so much honour that he
provoked the jealousy of other officers of the court.” This apparently forced him to leave for
home before the Great Khan died. He returned by sea via India and was arrested when he
landed in Genoa, then at war with his home city-state Venice. It is in prison that he dictated
these stories to da Pisa.
 It is debated whether Polo ever went to China. He neglects to mention unique cultural
characteristics that would have been obvious, such as the use of chopsticks, foot-binding and
the Great Wall and so Frances Wood argues that the book is actually based on a Persian
travelogue. His trip may have indeed been possible due to the Pax Mongolica (Mongol Peace)
that existed during the Yuan Dynasty when the Mongols controlled all of Russia, central Asia
and then China. The Travels of Marco Polo does accurately depict porcelain making, paper
money and the burning of coal. However, he also claims to have been Governor of a major
city (Yangzhou), but the Chinese records do not support this. Furthermore, he says he never
mastered the Chinese language because of its difficulty, but he claims to have learned four
central Asian languages whilst just passing through those territories.
 Regardless, Marco Polo’s account of China subverted the Eurocentric narrative, showing that
an empire could be prosperous, large and well-governed without being European. This
 challenged the existing ecclesiastical and monarchical European authorities, who brandished
Polo a liar and heretic.
 Did he really go to china? Well doesn't matter, because someone did, and the literature had a
big effect on the public by showing how orderly china was. It shook eurocentrism.

6. How did China play a role in the European enlightenment?

 French Enlightenment thinkers wrote about Confucianism & the Chinese writing system-
Confucius was later called the patron saint of the Enlightenment – Jesuit priests sent
accounts of Confucianism back to Europe.
 These French Enlightenment thinkers used the idea of “an ethically moral Chinese society”
that was “non-Christian” to ‘criticize the role that the Catholic church was playing in the
European society at the time.
 Voltaire, for example, considered morality “the first of the sciences”, and respected China for
apparently perfecting social morality.

7. How did Marx and Engels learn about events in China?

 In Jonathan Spence’s Western Perceptions of China from the Late Sixteenth Century to the
Present, he proposes that the 19 th century German communists Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels learned about China through Protestant missionary writings and treaty-port
journalism, with the Protestants living among the peasantry to teach, heal and convert them.
Furthermore, Georg Hegel was highly influential for both Marx and Engels, with Hegel
arguing that China was ‘outside the development of world history’ after his attempt to make
a ‘systematic’ and ‘scientific’ analysis of China’s “backwardness.” This is supported by
Wittfogel, who in his article The Marxist View of China writes that one of Marx’s earliest
exposure to learning about China would have been when he took a course at the University
of Berlin under Karl Ritter prior to 1853 who lectured on the hydraulic nature of Chinese
society.

8. Why did the communists sometimes orientalise the old society in their depictions of it?

 Communists tend to orientalise old society to draw a line between old and new, positioning
themselves as modernisers bringing in European ideas (communism).
 The filmic adaptation of “the New Year’s Sacrifice” is a good example of communists
orientalising the old society in order to legitimise their own reforms. The narrative structure
and plot emphasis focuses on oriental stereotypes regarding superstition and feudal society,
suggesting that the communist revolution marked a departure from a cruel and primitive
way of life.

9. Does Lu Xun succumb to orientalism?

 First, define orientalism (see questions 1 and 2).

 It might seem illogical to suggest that someone with a fierce love of their country, such as Lu
Xun, would engage in stereotypical or prejudiced views of their own people, culture or
society. Indeed, Lu Xun is considered the founder of modern Chinese literature and is
revered for his call for social reform as well as his criticism of Chinese governments in the
early 20th century. However, it could be argued that Lu Xun’s criticisms of traditional Chinese
values and social practices do engage in orientalism by depicting exaggerated and
stereotyped images of China.
  In The True Story of Ah Q, almost every conceivable negative image of China is epitomised in
Ah Q, who is arrogant, stupid and selfish, even claiming he “belonged to the same clan as Mr
Chao” to gain status. Even the ‘Q’ in his name could be said to be a pun and pictograph, just
as many Westerners like to imagine all Chinese characters are mere pictographs.
 Lu Xun also depicts the family that employs Hsiang Lin’s Wife’s as terribly cruel and
hypocritical neo-Confucianists in The New Year’s Sacrifice. This negative view of Chinese
people is first seen in A Call to Arms where Lu Xun describes China as a “weak and backward
country.” Regardless of whether Lu Xun did succumb to orientalism, his depictions served not
to supress or belittle the Chinese and glorify the West, but to expose areas of Chinese life
that needed reform. Indeed, Q.S. Tong argues that “For the intellectuals of the May Fourth
generation, the tradition must be buried, all historical memories must be erased, and the
project of modernizing China must start with a total destruction of what had defined and
constituted China as it was.”

10. How is the film Zhufu different from the short story?

 Zhufu in its filmic form is significantly different from the original short story, due to the
extrinsic motivations of communist film writing,
 Many modernist techniques and features of the short story are altered in the film
adaptation. For example, the unreliable narrator present in the short story is not in the film,
and the time-jump narrative structure present in the short story becomes a straightforward
chronological storyline in the film, based on the communist cultural hierarchy- “xia yan”.
 Furthermore, the thematic concerns change between the film and the short story. Whilst Lu
Xun is committed to articulating a broader criticism of man's inhumanity to man, the filmic
adaptation centres on the dangers of superstition and religion, and the exploitative nature of
traditional china toward its peasant class.

11. What does Ah Q in The True Story of Ah Q symbolise?

 It is often concluded that Lu Xun uses the character of Ah Q to symbolise China and her
flaws. This is seen in Ah Q’s arrogance and ignorance, such as when Ah Q says “we used to be
much better off than you! Who do you think you are anyway?” when quarrelling. Ah Q also
wants to draw a perfect circle when signing his execution document. This would be
analogous to China’s attitude of superiority and the importance of saving face. Indeed,
Frederic Jameson posits that the literature of third world countries that have suffered from
imperialism is both allegorical and collective whereas first world literature is individualistic,
reaching the conclusion that “Ah Q is thus, allegorically, China itself.” However, not only does
Aijaz Ahmad argue that this generalised binary cannot hold because third world literature
would inevitably be affected by first world influences, Lydia Liu also argues that it is too
simplistic to conclude that Ah Q is just purely symbolic of China. She examines how the
narrator in the story can criticise and analyse Ah Q in a way that mocks the concept of
‘national character’, that various nations and people groups share a character as a way of
legitimising Western imperialist expansion. Liu, drawing on Betrand Russell, recognises how
May Fourth reformers utilised the myth of national character to construct a powerful
language of self-criticism and Liu argues that the subjective narrator in the story allows Lu
Xun to make nuanced comment on China, hence challenging the simplistic conclusion that
Ah Q is wholly equivalent to China.
12. What eras or issues in Chinese history are depicted in Lin Zexu, 55 Days in Peking (Boxer
rebellion), Sand Pebbles (northern expedition) and the Mask of Fu Manchu (China as the nexus of
disaster)

 Lin Zexu: Presents a patriotic view of China. It was anti-imperialism, anti-foreigner and anti-
Qing dynasty. The film presented the everyday Chinese man and woman as physically and
mentally strong, and also emphasised the collective power of Chinese people when united
against a common enemy.
 55 Days in Peking: Depicted the boxer rebellion in China (1900). It depicted the interesting
dynamic between the Boxers and the Quing leadership- initially, the Boxers are enemies of
the Quing rulers, however, both forces eventually endorse one another and consolidate an
anti-foreign rhetoric.
 Sand Pebbles: Depicts the Northern Campaign conducted by the Nationalists and the
Communists against the government of the northern warlords. It depicts the internal purging
of communists within the KMT by Chiang Kai-shek, and promotes a message of anti-military
intervention in China.
 Mask of Fu Manchu: Was a pointed criticism of Japanese expansion in North-east China.
“Manchu” clearly references the puppet Manchukou regime under Puyi installed by the
Japanese government. The villain Dr Fu represented western fears of Japan building a
“Greater East Asian Prosperity Sphere”.

13. What orientalist preoccupation do the nobel rene leys and the film the last emperor display?

 Both Victor Seegalen’s Rene Leys (1922) and The Last Emperor (1985) engage in an orientalist
occupation with the Centre. That is, they communicate that China is far too complicated to
understand without going to the Centre of the country – the leadership. This is seen in Rene
Leys in how the narrator is interested in exoticism and sexual conduct within the Forbidden
City. The narrator is obsessed with Rene Leys because of his thirst for exoticism, as seen in
the narrator’s conclusion that Leys’ suicide was to save face. In The Last Emperor, we see
that Pu Yi is actually an outside to Chinese society and that his tutor, Johnston, represents
the control that the West attempts to exert on China.
 The preoccupation of the centre is a fallacy- what goes on in the imperial bedchambers and
the forbidden city is not even clear to the emperor puyi himself, he is, in a way, not exposed
to the true mystery of life in the “centre”.

14. FIlms like Yellow earth and Ju Dou were often criticized for pandering to orientalist stereotypes
of china. If this is true? If so why?

 Whilst these two films did use orientalist depictions of China, the purpose behind these
portrayals were not necessarily based around pandering to stereotypes.
 Yellow Earth: A popular critique of this film is that it portrays Chinese society as backward
and primitive, particularly regarding the seeming stupidity and foolishness of the peasant
class. However, as the commentator Huang Zongying states, “The makers of this film have
thought deeply and seriously about society and life, and even if their feelings are vague
and obtuse at times, they have gone far beyond the social analyses and statistics of our
philosophers and sociologists”. There is certainly the idea that the film is encouraging
movement away from the “unchanging realities of china”, and toward a new revolutionary
generation.
 Ju Dou: In Ju Dou, the setting, score and depictions of deviant sexuality do correlate to some
extent with orientalist tropes. However, these depictions serve as a metaphor for old Chinese
 society, and an evaluation of the democracy movement of 1989. In particular, the depiction
of Tianqing spying on Ju Dou is a strong example of this, as though the sequence relies on
some orientalist assumptions of sexual voyeurism and deviancy, there is a self-awareness to
Ju Dou’s character, and her act of defiantly displaying herself to Tianqing subverts this
gender-based orientalist stereotype completely.
 If anything, in both films, the composer uses orientalist stereotypes to pander to audiences,
before subverting these expectations and making some form of socio-political commentary.

Concept Quotes
The - Lu Xun (The New Year’s Sacrifice): “fearfully thin and dark in its
Subaltern sallowness…completely white, quite unlike someone in her forties”- The
physical depiction of the subaltern parallels their misfortune and suffering.
- Peal Buck (The good earth) “out of the land we came and into it we must
go. . . . If you sell the land, it is the end.”- There is a virtue to the
subaltern, they value the land and tend to it. They have a connection to
the land the wealthy do not.
- Yellow Earth: Scene of villagers performing the rain dance is a marker of
the subaltern’s lack of intellect, and their superstitious nature.
Saving - Victor Segalen (Rene Leys): “for with his death he has just given me,
face Chinese fashion, the best proof-that he preferred to lose his life if it
meant saving face”- The oriental concept of “face” is used to justify
violence.
- Amy Tan (Joy luck club): “Aiii-ya. So shame be with mother?”- Jong’s
Mother is angry that Jong feels ashamed of her bragging. She seeks to
capitalise off her duaghter’s success in chess so that she can brag to all the
other mothers in the marketplace.
- Amy Tan (Joy Luck Club): “Lose eight pieces this time. Last time was
eleven. What I tell you? Better off lose less”- Idea of image and high
expectations infiltrating family relatinoships
Sexuality - Tai Pan (Film): [SCENE] May-may is angry at Tai-Pan for making her lose
and face at a social gathering, and wants to be sold. She wants to be spanked
exoticism by Tai-Pan, because it symbolises that Tai-pan is willing to discipline her
(and thus cares about her)- The idea of this exotic sexual fetish
representing the depth of relationship is played on.
- The Last Emperor (Film): “Eastern Jewel” tells Wanrong “I give you what
you need”, proceeding to such her toes- This representation of sexual
fetish portrays an oriental stereotype of deviant sexuality; plays into the
idea that there is something exotic and mysterious behind imperial
bedchambers (the idea of the “centre”).
- Victor Segalen (Rene Leys): Our French protagonist is concerned with
what it is like during the “first night of love in the palace”- There is an
obsession with the imperial bedchambers and with exoticism.
Feudalism - Lu Xun (Diary of a Madman: “Wanting to eat men, at the same time
afraid of being eaten themselves, they all look at each other with the
deepest suspicion” – Feudal thinking is cowardice, and self-serving.
- Lu Xun (Diary of a Madman): “Perhaps there are still children who have
not eaten men? Save the children….”- feudalism hurts the vulnerable, and
we must protect the next generation from it.
- Zhu fu (Film): [SCENE] End film-card clarifies to audience that the
experience of Xiang Ling’s Wife was a product of an old feudal era- This is
meant to assert that with the advent of communism in China, history will
not repeat itself.