Description:
By exploring the diverse nature of foreign activities in Republican China, this book complicates the dominant narratives of the imperialistic foreigner and Chinese victim. The spaces and relationships examined in the essays in this volume reveal a complex series of interactions between foreigners and the people of China which go far beyond one-way transmission or exploitation. This edited volume adopts a uniquely multi-disciplinary approach to the study of foreigners in China, and utilises the perspectives of historiography, literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and political science.
Review Quotes:
The essays are certainly wide-ranging, with the foreigners discussed in the collection ranging from "Soviet comrades and the institutions of the Comintern, to English teachers, women activists, a freelance female journalist and a Contessa, Western aesthetes and sexual tourists as well as Japanese, Koreans, colonial New Zealanders and Italians of both elevated and humble rank." As one small window into Republican China, these vignettes provide some limited, butnevertheless informative, insights into that period of Chinese history and are well worth reading. - A. Tom Grunfeld, SUNY Empire State College