中国万花筒:古伯察游记中的中国形象塑造及其传教士立场

China as a Kaleidoscope: The Formation of China's Image in Evariste Regis Huc's Travels and His Missionary Standpoint

古伯察是法国天主教入华遣使会会士,他于19世纪40年代用了六年时间穿越中国内地,与多个民族各阶层人士,包括各种信徒、各级官员、各类商人、平民,更多的是穷人亲密接触,写就了两部游记《鞑靼西藏旅行记》和《中华帝国纪行》。他对当时中国社会和文化的观察之细之深是许多西方人无法达到的。在他的笔下,中国是一个好与坏、恶与善杂处五方的大国,但也依旧是一个落后的、残缺蛮荒的停滞的帝国。由于传教士的身份以及身处19世纪中叶的历史时期,古伯察的"客观认知"在某种程度上确实修正了当时一些西方人的观点,然而不可否认的是,他的"中国观"的倾向性又是不可避免的。

Evariste Regis Huc was a French Catholic Lazarist missionary in China. In the 1840s he spent 6 years travelling across China, forming intimate contact with people of different nationalities and different classes, including all kinds of believers, officials, merchants, civilians, but mostly the poor people, and writing two travel journals Travels of Dada in Tibet and The Chinese Empire. In his writing China is a country where good and evil co-exist, an empire which is backward, babarian and stagnant. As a missionary in the mid-19th century, Evariste Regis Huc＇s objective knowledge did to some extent modify the ideas of his contemporary western people, but it is also undeniable that he was inevitably tendentious.