Chinese and U.S. writers try to bridge the culture gap in this “splendid little book” from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (The Washington Post Book World). Winner of the New England Book Show Award It’s been a pilgrimage for Annie Dillard: from Tinker Creek to the Galapagos Islands, the high Arctic, the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon Jungle—and now, China. This informative narrative is full of fascinating people: Chinese people, mostly writers, who encounter American writers in various bizarre circumstances in both China and the U.S. There is a toasting scene at a Chinese banquet; a portrait of a bitter, flirtatious diplomat at a dance hall; a formal meeting with Chinese writers; a conversation with an American businessman in a hotel lobby; an evening with long-suffering Chinese intellectuals in their house; a scene in the Beijing foreigners’ compound with an excited European journalist; and a scene of unwarranted hilarity at the Beijing Library. In the U.S., there is Allen Ginsberg having a bewildering conversation in Disneyland with a Chinese journalist; there is the lovely and controversial writer Zhang Jie suiting abrupt mood changes to a variety of actions; and there is the fiercely spirited Jiange Zilong singing in a Connecticut dining room, eyes closed. These are real stories told with a warm and lively humor, with a keen eye for paradox, and with fresh insight into the human drama. “Engrossing and thought-provoking.” —Irving Yucheng Lo, author of Sunflower Splendor ‘Keenly observed, often comic encounters.” —The New York Times Book Review “Dillard distills her encounters in lively anecdotes, sketches and vignettes. Her charm lies in the simplicity of her storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly

Why should the earliest literary encounters between China and the United States—and their critical interpretation—matter now? How can they help us describe cultural exchanges in which nothing substantial is exchanged, at least not in ways that can easily be tracked? All sorts of literary meetings took place between China and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, involving an unlikely array of figures including canonical Americans such as Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Chinese writers Qiu Jin and Dong Xun; and Asian American writers like Yung Wing and Edith Eaton. Yet present-day interpretations of these interactions often read too much into their significance or mistake their nature—missing their particularities or limits in the quest to find evidence of cosmopolitanism or transnational hybridity. In Intransitive Encounter, Nan Z. Da carefully re-creates these transpacific interactions, plying literary and social theory to highlight their various expressions of indifference toward synthesis, interpollination, and convergence. Da proposes that interpretation trained on such recessive moments and minimal adjustments can light a path for Sino-U.S. relations going forward—offering neither a geopolitical showdown nor a celebration of hybridity but the possibility of self-contained cross-cultural encounters that do not have to confess to the fact of their having taken place. Intransitive Encounter is an unconventional and theoretically rich reflection on how we ought to interpret global interactions and imaginings that do not fit the patterns proclaimed by contemporary literary studies.

In this collection of original essays, leading Asian studies scholars take a new look at the way the Chinese conceived of India in their literature, art, and religious thought in the premodern era.

People of Asian descent have lived for centuries in North and South America, where they have been actively involved in the creation of multicultural, multiethnic societies. This groundbreaking anthology explores their experiences among ethnic and cultural groups in a unique collection of works by and about Asian Americans. Utilizing a rich blend of analytical, autobiographical, biographical, and narrative essays, oral histories, fiction, photography, and artwork, the anthology focuses especially on the interactions of Asians with others outside the dominant culture. Contributors range from established scholars, writers and artists to little-known voices heard here for the first time. Scholars of Asian diasporas and all readers interested in Asia in the Americas will find this book an extraordinary resource. Contributions by: Kozy K. Amemiya, Himani Bannerji, Monica Cinco Basurto, Raissa Nina Burns, Jeff Chang, Jay Chaudhari, Kathryn Jeun Cho, Rienzi Crusz, Astrid Hadad, Laura Hall, Muriel H. Hasbun, Tomoyo Hiroishi, Velina Hasu Houston, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Naheed Islam, Feroza Jussawalla, Nguyet Lam, Armando Siu Lau, Stephanie Li, R. Zamora Linmark, Sunaina Maira, Diane Monroe, Ofelia Murrieta, Luis Nishizawa, Dwight Okita, Gary Pak, Monica J. Rainwater, Aly Remtulla, Roshni Rustomji-Kerns, Ann Suni Shin, Jan Lo Shinebourne, Janet Shirley, Lok C. D. Siu, Rajini Srikanth, Leny Mendoza Strobel, Eileen Tabios, Ayumi Takenaka, Gabriela Kinuyo Torres, Kay Reiko Torres, Takeyuki Tsuda, Usha Welaratna, Bill Woo, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Thomas Sze Leong Yu.

Known for his ultraconservatism and eccentricity, Gu Hongming (1857-1928) remains one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese intellectual history. A former member of the colonial elite from Penang who was educated in Europe, Gu, in his late twenties, became a Qing loyalist and Confucian spokesman who also defended concubinage, footbinding, and the queue. Seen as a reactionary by his Chinese contemporaries, Gu nevertheless gained fame as an Eastern prophet following the carnage of World War I, often paired with Rabindranath Tagore and Leo Tolstoy by Western and Japanese intellectuals. Rather than resort to the typical conception of Gu as an inscrutable eccentric, Chunmei Du argues that Gu was a trickster-sage figure who fought modern Western civilization in a time dominated by industrial power, utilitarian values, and imperialist expansion. A shape-shifter, Gu was by turns a lampooning jester, defying modern political and economic systems and, at other times, an avenging cultural hero who denounced colonial ideologies with formidable intellect, symbolic performances, and calculated pranks. A cultural amphibian, Gu transformed from an "imitation Western man" to "a Chinaman again," and reinterpreted, performed, and embodied "authentic Chineseness" in a time when China itself was adopting the new identity of a modern nation-state. Gu Hongming's Eccentric Chinese Odyssey is the first comprehensive study in English of Gu Hongming, both the private individual and the public cultural figure. It examines the controversial scholar's intellectual and psychological journeys across geographical, national, and cultural boundaries in new global contexts. In addition to complicating existing studies of Chinese conservatism and global discussions on civilization around the World War I era, the book sheds new light on the contested notion of authenticity within the Chinese diaspora and the psychological impact of colonialism.

From the acclaimed author of The Gunpowder Age, a book that casts new light on the history of China and the West at the turn of the nineteenth century George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. But not all European encounters with China were disastrous. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Tonio Andrade paints a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of an age marked by intrigues and war. China was on the brink of rebellion. In Europe, French armies were invading Holland. Enduring a harrowing voyage, the Dutch mission was to be the last European diplomatic delegation ever received in the traditional Chinese court. Andrade shows how, in contrast to the British emissaries, the Dutch were men with deep knowledge of Asia who respected regional diplomatic norms and were committed to understanding China on its own terms. Beautifully illustrated with sketches and paintings by Chinese and European artists, The Last Embassy suggests that the Qing court, often mischaracterized as arrogant and narrow-minded, was in fact open, flexible, curious, and cosmopolitan.

China is known for its deep veneration of history. Far more than a record of the past, history to the Chinese is the magister vitae (teacher of life): the storehouse of moral lessons and bureaucratic precedents. Mirroring the Past presents a comprehensive history of traditional Chinese historiography from antiquity to the mid-qing period. Organized chronologically, the book traces the development of historical thinking and writing in Imperial China, beginning with the earliest forms of historical consciousness and ending with adumbrations of the fundamentally different views engendered by mid-nineteenth-century encounters with the West. The historiography of each era is explored on two levels: first, the gathering of material and the writing and production of narratives to describe past events; second, the thinking and reflecting on meanings and patterns of the past. Significantly, the book embeds within this chronological structure integrated views of Chinese historiography, bringing to light the purposive, didactic, and normative uses of the past. authors lay bare the ingenious ways in which Chinese scholars extracted truth from events and reveal how schemas and philosophies of history were constructed and espoused. They highlight the dynamic nature of Chinese historiography, revealing that historical works mapped the contours of Chinese civilization not for the sake of understanding history as disembodied and theoretical learning, but for the pragmatic purpose of guiding the world by mirroring the past in all its splendor and squalor.

Since the Chinese have, historically, always looked up to and encouraged their hermits, Bill Porter wondered whether these people still existed in China today. Roaming the landscape of the Chungnan Mountains, he discovered that they do indeed still flourish, and have extraordinary stories to tell.

From bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers, philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China shaped perceptions of Europe’s own musical development. Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western encounter sounded, but also traces the West’s shifting response to China. As the trading relationships between China and the West broke down, travelers and music theorists abandoned the vision of shared musical approaches, focusing instead on China’s noisiness and sonic disorder and finding less to like in its music. At the same time, Irvine reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history, revealing that it was comparison with China, the great “other,” that helped this idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well as to China’s importance to the construction of musical knowledge during and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening to China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.

"Originally published in Great Britain in 2014 by Doubleday."