D. E. Mungello – The Great Encounter of China and the West

The first two parts of this book look at China’s acceptance and then rejection of the West. Mungello uses “the West” here to describe Europe and cites how in China this was frequently how Europe was referred to. While giving a good overview of the events and conflicts between the two cultures I have a few small criticisms about this part of the book. Firstly he focuses nearly all his attention on China’s acceptance or rejection of Christianity. He interprets the view as almost entirely the relationship between China and Christianity, rather than attempting to take a balanced look between merchants and missionaries. This leads to a rather distorted view, and ignores the conflicts between the two groups, for instance the role the Jesuits had in halting the expansion of trade by the Dutch at the beginning of the Qing. (There is however a small but interesting section looking at the influence of European style painting). The other criticism for this first half is that in his look at why the Chinese rejected the west, (or more precisely Christianity) he cites two different theories by 20th century European sinologists and does not refer to any Chinese sources. Surely if looking for the Chinese position it would be necessary to consult Chinese scholarship on the matter.

Another point that came about with the discussion of painting was the lack of mention of India or the Muslim world as existing. Granted the book is looking at China and “the west” however, I think looking at these in isolation, and ignoring the cultural exchange between the different parties is a rather large oversight. The Arab world was having a huge influence on the Renaissance at this time, and it had also been trading with China for centuries. Particularly in art it can not be assumed that there were two ways of doing things. After citing the example of a few artists that used variations on what could be a European sense of perspective, and discussion of some portraits Mungello concludes that the influence on Chinese art was, “limited but significant” (68) as it was a few artists over many centuries and had not influence on techniques in general I’m not sure this warrants the term “significant” to me this is more of a curiosity. As books about art and art techniques, were so common, was there many were European techniques were discussed? (I think this is probably a question for John Cahill the art historian).

The next two chapters look at the acceptance and then rejection of China by Europe. He focuses on the acceptance of Confucianism as a moral philosophy by Jesuits and Leibniz, as well as looking at the increased fashion of Chinoisire. He continues to look at the importance of Chinese philosophy in the Renaissance, but there seems to be no clear rejection in the chapter dealing with rejection. Instead it is not till the conclusion where he talks about how in the post 1800 world China is viewed as a barbaric and uncivilised place.

Still this book gave a very good overview of the main themes, people and conflict that took place between European thinkers, missionaries and the Chinese elite. The scope was narrower than claimed but it was interesting and a good overview. I think it would have benefitted from reading of more primary historical sources, particularly Chinese sources, and have been longer and encompassed more social and economic history. But for what it was it was informative and interesting.

( Quotes and references )

My name is Red - Orhan Pamuk

As this is a bibliogoth book and the meeting hasn't happened yet, I'll keep this as a relatively short and non-spoilery review. I enjoyed the rich setting of this book. The format was a little confusing at first but it didn't take too long to get the hang of it. The murder mystery was perhaps the least interesting part, the suspects being the least defined characters in the book. I enjoyed the discussions about art and culture. While I'm not going to rush out and read anything else by him, it was still enjoyable.

走路

星期五我走路从工作去我家。我走了一个小时刻。今天我又走路这个次我走了四十五分钟。我决定每天我走路所以我买了新耳机所以我可以一边走路一边看音乐。

昨天我朋友indigo_violet到我们房子去聊天儿。我们喝了两杯茶，我没每天喝金酒！