Otherworldly Travels Zhiguai in the Age of Maritime Discovery and Mechanical Reproduction
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Mediating between the normal and the strange, zhiguai stories are always understood as ways of border crossing, utopian imaginary, and self-expression of the literati. Yet one question is seldom asked: how does the imaginary evolve, particularly when the “strange” narratives became conventional and predictable in modern times? Scrutinizing a recurring trope of “otherworldly travels,” I argue that late Qing zhiguai turns the fantastic journeys into a secular dimension, featuring international journeys, realistic concerns, and new technologies. The utopian travels thus are infused with realistic concerns and real foreign places when the world has been brought to China. In the era of lithography, the desire for approachability becomes a newfangled visual experience that needs to be engaged and (dis)enchanted. The plotted fictionality of zhiguai, moreover, became a writing formula to cope with the speeding publication. I treat the modern experiences -- ocean liner, chemistry, photography -- as the “substance” of the fantasy, examining how they inscribe and exceed the predecessors as in material history. With a focus on fiction by Wang Tao 王韜 (1828-1897) and Zou Tao 鄒弢 (1850-1931), this paper aims to explore how late Qing writing imagines the utopia in the face of maritime discovery and mechanical reproduction, instead of what has been represented or done.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Cohen, Paul A. Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang Tʻao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China. Harvard U P, 1987.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, translated by Harry Zohn., edited by Hannah Arendt. Schocken Books, 2007.
Freedgood, Elaine. The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel. U of Chicago P, 2006.
Freedgood, Elaine. Worlds Enough: The Invention of Realism in the Victorian Novel. Princeton U P, 2019.
Foucault, Michel. “Different Spaces,” in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. Edited by James D. Faubion. Translated by Robert Hurley et al. New York: The New Press, 1998, pp. 175-186.
Li, Wai-yee. Enchantment and Disenchantment: Love and Illusion in Chinese Literature. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1993.
Lu Xun 魯迅. Zhongguo xiaoshuo shilüe 中國小說史略 (“A Brief History of Chinese Fiction”) Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2006.
Lu Xun 魯迅. Jiwaiji shiyi bubian 集外集拾遺補編 (“Supplement to the Addenda to the Collected Uncollected Works”), in Lu Xun quanji 魯 迅全集 (“Complete Works of Lu Xun”), Vol. 8. Renmin wenxue, 2005.
Han Bangqing 韓邦慶. Taixian mangao 太仙漫稿 (“Jottings from Taixian”), collected in Haishanghua liezhuan 海上花列傳 (“The Sing-song girls of Shanghai”). Tianyi, 1974.
Pang, Lai-kwan. The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China. U of Hawai’i P, 2007.
Rudolf G. Wagner, “Joining the Global Imaginaire: The Shanghai Illustrated Newspaper Dianshizhai Huabao,” Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870-1910, ed. Rudolf G. Wagner. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007, pp. 105-173.
Shang Wei 商偉. “Bizhen de huanxiang: xiyangjing, toushifan yu daguanyuan de menghuan meiying zhong” 逼真的幻象：西洋鏡、透視法與大觀園的夢幻魅影(中) (“A Lively Illusion: Occidental Lens, Linear Perspective, and the Phantom of the Grand Prospect Garden – II”) Studies of Cao Xueqin 2 (2016), pp. 103-123.
Shen Weirong 沈衛榮. “Lishizhong de xiaoshuo he xiaoshuozhong de lishi: Shuo zongjiao he wenxue liangzhong butong yujingzhong de ‘mimi daxile chanding’” 歷史中的小說和小說中的歷史：說宗教和文學兩種不同語境中的 “秘密大喜樂禪定” (“Fiction in History and History in Fiction: “The Secret Meditation of Supreme Bliss” Represented and Interpreted in Various Contexts of Religion and Literature”), Zhonghua wenshi luncong 中華文 史論叢 vol. 1, no. 109, 2013, pp. 1-39.
Shen Guowei 沈國威. “Yiming ‘huaxue’ de dansheng” 譯名“化學” 的誕生 (“A Study on the Creation of the Chinese Term ‘Huaxue’ in Nineteenth-Century China”), Studies in the History of Natural Sciences 自然科 學史研究, vol. 19, no. 1, 2000, pp. 55-71.
Wang Tao 王韜. Manyou suilu 漫游隨錄 (“Jottings of My Roamings”), edited by Chen Shangfan 陳尚凡 and Ren Guangliang 任光亮. Yuelu shushe, 1985.
Wang Tao 王韜. Songbin suohua 淞濱瑣話 (“Idle Chat by the Wusong Riverside”), edited by Liu Wenzhong 劉文忠. Qilu shushe, 2004.
Wang Tao 王韜. Songyin manlu 淞隱漫錄 (“Random Records of the Recluse of Wusong”). Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 1997.
Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-siecle Splendor Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911. Stanford University Press, 1997.
Wang, Shengyu. Chinese Enchantment: Reinventing Pu Songling’s Classical Tales in the Realm of World Literature, 1880-1920. PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2017.
Wu, Shengqing. Photo Poetics: Chinese Lyricism and Modern Media Culture. New York: Columbia U P, 2020.
Wu Fang-cheng 吳方正. “Wanqing sishinian Shanghai shijue wenhua de jige mianxian” 晚清四十年上海視覺文化的幾個面向 (“Aspects in Shanghai Visual Culture During the Last 40 Years of the Qing Dynasty”), Renwen xuebao, National Central University, no. 26, 2002, pp. 49-95.
Zhang Longxi, “The Utopian Vision, East and West,” Utopian Studies vol. 13, no. 1. 2002, pp. 1-20.
Zheng, Huili. “Enchanted Encounter: Gender Politics, Cultural Identity, and Wang Tao’s (1828-97) Fictional Sino-Westem Romance” Nan Nü, vol. 16, no. 2, 2014, pp. 274-307.
Zou Tao 鄒弢. Jiaochou ji 澆愁集 (“Collection of Drowning the Sorrows”). Huangshan shushe, 2009.