他者之眼:清末民初西方视野中的中国形象——以宜昌为例

The Others’ Eyes:The Image of Late-Qing and Early-Republican China in Western Vision——A Case Study of Yichang

清末民初,西方人留下的关于宜昌的游记、报告、信件等珍贵文字和图片资料,记录了宜昌的山水风光、古迹建筑、人文习俗、经济社会等。西方人对宜昌形象的认知既有明显差异,也有共同点。因视野、接触、思维等方面的局限,西方人视野中的宜昌大多是贫穷落后、封闭保守、堕落原始的。其对宜昌形象的建构,既体现了西方侵略扩张的霸权主义思想,也潜藏着西方人高高在上的审视者心态。影响其建构的因素,除个人的身份、知识水平、文化素养外,更重要的是其所处的时代背景、文化土壤和以西方为中心的权力话语体系。

In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China,the westerners left travel notes,reports,letters and other precious textual and graphic files about Yichang,recording the landscapes,historical sites and buildings,cultural customs,economic and social conditions of the city.The westerners who had been to Yichang had both obvious differences and similarities in their cognition of the Yichang image.Due to the limitation of vision,contact and thinking,westerners mostly deemed Yichang poor and backward,closed and conservative,degenerate and primitive.Their construction of Yichang image not only embodied the hegemonism of western aggression and expansion,but also implied the mentality that the westerns were superior.In addition to personal identity,knowledge level and cultural literacy,factors that influenced their construction most were background,cultural soil,and power discourse system centred on the west.