Portrayal of Foreigners in Traditional Chinese History and Literature

My thesis examines how foreigners have been portrayed in traditional Chinese literature, with the underlying question being to which degree the traditional Chinese world-view was adhered to in different eras and circumstances, as this world-view had many implications for the views on foreigners. Attention is given to which factors could influence perceptions of the outside world, and to when the world-view came to change. I defined foreigners as those not recognised by the Hàn Chinese of their era as being part of the central Chinese civilisation. After explaining the traditional Chinese world-view, I explored these questions in a series of case studies analysing the portrayal of foreigners in a number of texts from different periods: the Hòu Hàn Shū (5th century AD), the Dà Táng Xīyù Jì (7th century AD), a selection of Táng poetry (7th to 9th century), the Yuán Shǐ (1370), the Sānguó Yǎnyì (14th-16th century), the Hǎiguó Túzhì (1843-52) and the writings of Liáng Qǐchāo and Lǔ Xùn (late 19th to early 20th century). These texts vary in genre from formal dynastic histories, poetry and travel accounts to popular novels and private gazetteers and essays. In this thesis, I have found that while the influence on the Chinese view of foreigners from the traditional world-view can be discerned in all the writings I have analysed, there have been many exceptions to this world-view. Exceptions of varying degree can be found in most of my selected material. These could be caused by a variety of reasons, such as religion, historical circumstances and personal experiences. Here, while exotic aspects were frequently stressed, foreigners were portrayed as equal or superior to the Chinese, and were able to play various roles. A reverence for tradition, however, kept on influencing the Chinese world-view for much of history. Genre has been proven to have been important, as exceptions were more apparent in religious and popular literature and certain poems than in other works, which adhered more closely to the traditional world-view. This shows there could be differences between popular and élite views. The Chinese world-view has been shown to not have been completely dominant throughout China’s long history of interactions with foreigners. This thesis makes clear that this world-view gradually came to change due to foreign pressure especially in the period between my last two case studies, or between the 1840s and the late 19th and early 20th century, but also that change happened over time and may have started much earlier