The Illusion About Orient Analyzing The Foreign Image In Lost Horizon

Lost Horizon published in the crisis of the western society .The novel which is common in the narrating was very popular in the west and of great influence in its ages. As the light literature, it has some factors of fashion , like the adventure desire of occidental,attractive exoticism of foreign country and quaint romance. In fact, if you analyze it, you will find the desire of western people who wanted to reconstruct the western culture in the crisis time.In the western traditional civilization, China is a great eastern country, just like a beautiful dream in people's heart, since the Marco Polo's day. But after 18th century, this dream broke up, because the reality of politics and economy in these two countries had changed .China had not been a strong and flourish nation. She became to be dirty, corrupt, fatuous and uncultured .Time goes to the 30's of the 20th century, the days of Lost Horizon, the western society was involved in the mist of despair and suspicion and negative. The disappoint people wanted another culture which was different from the modern materialize western capitalism, so they found the East again. This time, their eyes went over China and arrived at Tibet, arrived Shangri-La, which had been a new paradise. Consider the reason, we will find that the western culture want to establish "the others" to be its set off, "the other" has the meanings of Utopian and Ideology. As the metaphor and symbol, the foreign images appear to be illusion and untruth, they show that the West has an anxiety and expectation in the relations between "the others" and itself .So the foreign images become the metaphor and symbol of the western culture. Chinese images become the symbol of the western Christianizsm which is trying to express and establish itself.