Guo Lan's Chinese Letters

Author: Victor Segalen (France)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: In Segalen's works, the exploration of the "other" and the exploration of the self are intertwined. This stance and orientation not only intrinsically determine the spiritual quest of Segalen's journey to China but also cast a mysterious veil over his entire Chinese journey, transcending historical time and space. If we follow Segalen's footsteps of that time, echoing the hooves of his donkeys, and accompany him and his friends on their long journey across the Yellow River plains in China, we will truly experience that his journey to China was not just an external geographical adventure but also an inner spiritual journey. Segalen once wrote, "Living in China is strange because people walk through its millennia of history." In Segalen's view, China is both a real space and a mythic space, a region of imaginative choice. Immersed in this China, the mystery of time and the mystery of space, the mystery of reality, confronts one directly. This book is a compilation of letters written by the author Segalen to his wife during his first visit to China in 1904. It is part of the "Approaching China" cultural translation series edited by Qian Linsen. Segalen was a significant French writer of the early 20th century, spending a crucial period of his life in China. As one of the first French writers to visit China in the 20th century, Segalen's fresh prose records this ten-month journey, allowing us to observe the diverse aspects of Chinese society in the midst of its transition from an old monarchy to a new republic from a different perspective and to experience the confrontation and dialogue between the East and the West with a different mindset. As a record of early 20th-century Chinese society, this book holds great significance for historians and anthropologists.