Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The European Diary of Hsieh Fucheng: Envoy Extraordinary of Imperial China (review)

The European Diary of Hsieh Fucheng: Envoy Extraordinary of Imperial China (review) Reviews 69 Helen Hsieh Chien, trans. The European Diary ofHsieh Fucheng: Envoy Extraordinary ofImperial China. Introduction by Douglas Howland. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. xxi, 199 pp. Hardcover $49.95. Sometime in his third year of residence in Europe, Hsieh Fucheng, Qing ambassa- dor to the courts of Great Britain, Belgium, and Italy and to the Republic of France, made this pithy diary entry: "The appearance of the dragon is clearly reported in the history of China, yet Westerners refute its existence. The Westerners require solid proof as evidence before they will believe in the existence of such a creature" (p. 122). In these two brief sentences, Hsieh appears to reference both the great cultural divide separating China from the West and, perhaps more interestingly, the perennial problem of the status of "traditional" knowledge in an age of "modern" scientific rationalism. At the same time, however, the very fact that he can enunciate this difference in measured tones marks him, it would seem, as one of those transitional figures about whom so much has been written over the past forty years in Chinese stud- ies--the handful of modernizing, if not modern, scholar-official-intellectuals who attempted to move Qing China http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png China Review International University of Hawai'I Press

The European Diary of Hsieh Fucheng: Envoy Extraordinary of Imperial China (review)

Hevia, James Louis
China Review International , Volume 2 (1) – Mar 30, 1995
Download PDF
5 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-hawai-i-press/the-european-diary-of-hsieh-fucheng-envoy-extraordinary-of-imperial-9UvRqZtHWr

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © University of Hawai'I Press
ISSN
1527-9367
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Reviews 69 Helen Hsieh Chien, trans. The European Diary ofHsieh Fucheng: Envoy Extraordinary ofImperial China. Introduction by Douglas Howland. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. xxi, 199 pp. Hardcover $49.95. Sometime in his third year of residence in Europe, Hsieh Fucheng, Qing ambassa- dor to the courts of Great Britain, Belgium, and Italy and to the Republic of France, made this pithy diary entry: "The appearance of the dragon is clearly reported in the history of China, yet Westerners refute its existence. The Westerners require solid proof as evidence before they will believe in the existence of such a creature" (p. 122). In these two brief sentences, Hsieh appears to reference both the great cultural divide separating China from the West and, perhaps more interestingly, the perennial problem of the status of "traditional" knowledge in an age of "modern" scientific rationalism. At the same time, however, the very fact that he can enunciate this difference in measured tones marks him, it would seem, as one of those transitional figures about whom so much has been written over the past forty years in Chinese stud- ies--the handful of modernizing, if not modern, scholar-official-intellectuals who attempted to move Qing China

Journal

China Review International – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Mar 30, 1995

There are no references for this article.