Days Left in Beijing

Author: Lüdi
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-09-01
Features: This is a documentary literary work compiled from the private diaries of the French writer Lüdi. It is part of the "Understanding China" cultural translation series edited by Qian Linsen. The book consists of seven chapters, faithfully recording all aspects of the surroundings of Beijing during the period of the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China in 1900-1901. The author, like carrying a black-and-white camera, meticulously captured everything he saw and experienced in China, especially upon entering Beijing. The book is filled with a monochromatic and dim palette, occasionally interwoven with vivid colors of recollection, presenting the decline and disappearance of Chinese beauty. It gradually deconstructs and reconstructs the mysterious and magical China in the eyes of Westerners, leaving a profound impact. Although the book tends to glorify the French invaders, it also condemns the inhumanity and destructiveness of war.
In the autumn of 1900, Lüdi (Colonel Julien Viau) was sent on a campaign to Beijing, "invading" China at a time when the Boxer Movement had just been brutally suppressed by the Eight-Nation Alliance, and the blood of the martyrs had not yet dried on Chinese soil. Lüdi's "visit" clearly represented the armed Europe, a part of the military invasion of the "aged and dark China" at the turn of the century. In the great cultural confrontation between East and West at the turn of the century, his role was both an invader and a witness. As a naval officer on the campaign to China, he provided a grim portrayal of the Qing Empire, left to be exploited and slaughtered by Western powers, depicting an empire on its deathbed. As a Western writer fascinated by exotic cultures, he showed, with a sense of compassion for the suffering, the historical scene of the ancient Eastern civilization declining into ruin, presenting a landscape of a decaying and collapsing imperial culture. He sang a mournful and gray elegy for the lost civilization of China.