This paper takes Chinese“Feng Shui”as a starting point to study German missionary Ernest Eitel’s writings on Feng Shui and to explore the Chinese images constructed by him in his writings.This study begins by analy...This paper takes Chinese“Feng Shui”as a starting point to study German missionary Ernest Eitel’s writings on Feng Shui and to explore the Chinese images constructed by him in his writings.This study begins by analyzing the structure of Eitel’s work Feng Shui,or,the Rudiments of Natural Science in China,and the Chinese images that he constructed in his work.The study argues that,due to his multiple identities as a missionary,a believer in colonialism,an educator,and a researcher of culture,as well as the influence of what he saw and heard in China,Eitel,despite his exhaustive examination of Chinese Feng Shui culture,ultimately,due to his own biases brought about by his own experiences and cultural differences,produced a paradoxical discourse on Feng Shui:he understood it as a Chinese natural science system,but an unsystematic one.As a result,Eitel also built a contradictory image of the Chinese:they hold a belief in the“animism”and respect for ancestral observations of nature,which ultimately translates into a superstitious belief in nature and an ignorance of true science.展开更多
文摘This paper takes Chinese“Feng Shui”as a starting point to study German missionary Ernest Eitel’s writings on Feng Shui and to explore the Chinese images constructed by him in his writings.This study begins by analyzing the structure of Eitel’s work Feng Shui,or,the Rudiments of Natural Science in China,and the Chinese images that he constructed in his work.The study argues that,due to his multiple identities as a missionary,a believer in colonialism,an educator,and a researcher of culture,as well as the influence of what he saw and heard in China,Eitel,despite his exhaustive examination of Chinese Feng Shui culture,ultimately,due to his own biases brought about by his own experiences and cultural differences,produced a paradoxical discourse on Feng Shui:he understood it as a Chinese natural science system,but an unsystematic one.As a result,Eitel also built a contradictory image of the Chinese:they hold a belief in the“animism”and respect for ancestral observations of nature,which ultimately translates into a superstitious belief in nature and an ignorance of true science.
