Thanks Art. I will continue with these notes of mine but for the last month or so I have been in the homeland and I will be here for a few weeks more. I am looking forward to my return to Xi’an, so further notes may well be forthcoming. For the time being a few extracts from Harry G. Gelber’s The Dragon and the Foreign Devils, an historical overview of 3000 years of Chinese history, that I have started reading while away:
‘From the beginning [here referring to around 400BC] the westerners- traders and others- were highly interested in China and its ways. The Chinese, by contrast, showed no interest in exploration or travel to the far West, as distinct from some trade… That contrast between the Europeans’ desire for distant exploration and adventure, and the altogether more narrow and domestic focus of China, would continue.’ (p36)
‘Like other observers, he [Matteo Ricci circa late 16C] greatly admired much that he saw in China. Here was a very large and unified realm, well ordered and with a central orthodoxy, namely Confucianism. Social life was regulated by rituals and manners that produced a harmony only too likely to be disturbed by foreigners.’ (p102)
‘But there is no evidence that European thought or practice had any influence on the beliefs of the Chinese governing and literary classes. As for the European traders [17C] to the China coast, they were apt to be adventurous, raucous and uncouth, and many of them, the Dutch especially, were a violent lot. Anyway, the Chinese found it hard to distinguish among them, for they were all “red haired barbarians”. The empire therefore tried to maintain the general policy of imperial kindness to strangers, and to tolerate their trading efforts.’ (p124)
Bloomsbury Publishing 2008
西安