Manufactured images: Four Chinese travelers and their writing about American women (Li Gui, Hu Shi, Yang Gang, Wang Xiaoying).

摘要

This dissertation analyzes continuity and change in Chinese impressions of American women in a century of travel writing. The story of American women has been told to the Chinese audience for one hundred and twenty-five years. It started with an internationally-oriented, U.S. show, the Women's Pavilion at the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia. The glorious Centennial image of American women—independent, outgoing and well educated—became an emblem for America's rising power in the world in the eyes of the Chinese travelers. Since then it has been used as a mirror and a lamp along China's road to modernization. The making of American women in China has from the very beginning been a joint venture between Chinese and American cultures. It has been facilitated and in many ways determined by the political, economical and cultural development of two countries. The writings about American women by Li Gui, Hu Shi, Yang Gang and Wang Xiaoying discussed in this dissertation show the invisible hand of culture at play on the personal, social, and national level. That invisible hand affects the selection, perception, and representation of American women.; The four traveler-writers are feminists of their time. They write in the form of autobiography. Li Gui and Hu Shi represent the sympathetic male supporters while Yang Gang and Wang Xiaoying speak for themselves as they speak for Chinese women. The chapters are arranged chronologically for the purpose of tracing the development of cultures accompanying the making of the image of American women. The footprints of the travelers as recorded by their essays, diaries, journalist reports and literary prose form a full circle. Li Gui introduced the Centennial American women as a fresh model for the Chinese to emulate. Hu Shi crystallized the strengths and merits that could uplift China in thinking and practice. Yang Gang exposed the defects that China should avoid. In Wang Xiaoying's sketches one finds a more balanced combination of earlier views. Improvising on their backgrounds and contemporary local and international circumstances, travel writers continually revise images of American women to serve as models and foils for China's modernization.