| The American image of China is a heated issue of common concern in both China and the United States. However, present academic studies of this issue often analyze contemporary communicating phenomena, which make the inherent historical and cultural thinking of this issue absent.Dating back to the origin of the American image of China, numerous clues of historical memories were pointing to American missionaries in China. Elijah Coleman Bridgman (1801-1861) and David Abeel (1804-1846) landed in Guangzhou in 1830, and has since raised the historical curtain of missionaries'close contact with and observation of China. The missionary, following the merchant, had become the second important American groups in China. In the later one hundred years, missionaries had been incessantly running missionary activities in China. Therefore, together with merchants and diplomats, missionaries are the important sources for direct observation of China. Moreover, for as long as a century, they wrote books, published newspapers and magazines, delivered speeches when back to the US, lobbied the US policy makers, and even spoke to presidents themselves. Through various forms, they delivered images of China to every class in the US, and become "the only appropriate or accurate source" that influences the American conception of China. The China-US diplomatic relations, from the beginning to the development and maturity, were deeply branded by the sign of American missionaries' cognition of China. Therefore, the study of the strategy and transforming process of American missionaries'cognition of China provides a solid foundation for a thorough understanding of the formation of contemporary American image of China.Missionaries'cognition of China commenced, developed and deepened throughout their intercultural missionary activities in China. The Christian culture, represented by the missionary, differs significantly from the Chinese Confucian culture in the late Qing Dynasty. Objectively speaking, the Protestant Christianity, accompanied by the Western business and military activities, was forced into China. However, on the whole, missionaries'attitudes toward the Confucian culture had experienced a process of "challenge, adjustment, and balance", and had simultaneously promoted the closed Chinese society tending towards open. In the modern transformation, Chinese society had made efforts to adapt to the impact of foreign cultures. The two kinds of different cultures eventually showed a trend of mutual adaptation. In this trend of general adaptation, missionaries'cognition of both China and the Chinese had experienced obvious changes. In this paper, the description of the times changes include the following questions:what were the cognitive strategy of the missionary? What was the relationship between the cognitive strategy and the external environment as well as the internal psychological schema? In the process of cognitive changes, were there empathy and dialogic understandings formed across cultures?In order to solve these problems, this article adopted the social interaction schema to explore the psychological cognitive changes, which is the creativity of this research. Specifically speaking, firstly, missionaries were reduced to the context of their parent culture (the Christian culture) to investigate their role, goal, strategy and emotional characteristics. These internal psychological schema had profound influence on missionaries'basic attitudes and overviews of China, on their evaluation standards of good and bad, kind and evil, beauty and ugliness, as well as on their emotional connections with the Chinese. At the same time, in the aspects of the role, strategy, emotion and standard, the missionary had been questioned by the Confucian culture and had been left in their predicament. The Chinese people's reaction to the Christian culture, represented by missionaries, had become the key basis for missionaries'evaluation of the Chinese. Through the discussion on the two aspects, this article showed that missionaries'cognition of the Chinese image was closely related to their specific psychological cognitive structures and their cultural contexts. It is a result of their understanding, cognition and evaluation of differences between the Christian culture and Confucian culture, as well as of the development of both civilizations.Secondly, this article integrated the above psychological schema with Bailey's cultural adaptation model, and combined with the experience of "challenge, adjustment and balance" to analyze the use of missionaries'cognitive strategy. This study finds out that based on the differences of the missionary theology, the American missionaries in China mainly adopted two culturally adaptive and cognitive strategies:"separation" and "integration". A part of the missionaries emphasized maintaining similar role and emotion schema (identity) with the "headquarter". They took non tolerant attitudes ("religion replacement") toward the indigenous belief system in China. They were separated from the orthodox value of the Chinese society and the mainstream groups. They mainly made cultural contact with the lower social groups, and thus showed characteristics of the "separation mode" of cultural adaptation and cognition. Accordingly, they paid more attention to the poor, queasy, ignorant, conservative and backward dark sides. Their cognitive image of China was dull, but also filled with their sympathy on the lower class. Another part of the missionaries also emphasized the role of their own culture, but they were able to make flexible adjustment. Through the strategies of "westen science as auxiliary of gospel", missionizing to the upper class, and the like, they approached to the officials and the literati, and established good interaction with them. They took a more tolerant attitude of "cultural reconstruction" towards the Confucian culture. They recognized the rationality of the Confucian culture, and at the same time stressed "making up for Confucianism" with the help of Western civilization, which reflected the "integrated" cognitive features. Accordingly, they stood more in the social center, paying attention to the reform and progress of China, and observing the national sentiment. Their cognitive image of China tended to take progressive, awakening and positive colours. However, regardless of the types of cognitive strategies, the missionaries maintained the superior position of the Christian civilization, and could not fundamentally recognize the independent subjectivity of the Chinese culture, nor could they realize the positive value of different cultures. These were the limitations of the missionaries.Finally, by examining the missionaries'main works, this study finds out that throughout the entire 19th century, under the circumstance of strong West and weak East in the overall civilization form, the "separation" cognitive strategy occupied a dominant position, while the "integration" cognitive strategy belonged to the subsurface stream. Therefore, the Chinese image portrayed by the missionaries presented a picture of occasional twinkle in overall shadow.The "separation" cognition reflected strong self values, which was connected to the strong sense of mission, and formed a kind of "missionary thinking". This mode of thinking was often accompanied by power relations and thus expanded. It played an important role in the formation and continuity of American overview of China, and the impact remains till today. In the intercultural communication, this kind of thinking mode would potentially reject, dispel and conquer (replace) the Other's position, and thus fail to share meaning and fail to form favorable intercultural communication. The "integration" cognitive thinking would form a deconstruction within the internal power relationships. |
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