The Pride And Prejudice "on A Chinese Screen"

Among all English writers, exoticism can be most widely found in W. Somerset Maugham's works. The areas of southern pacific are called "the Kingdom of Maugham". Indeed, he was a famous writer with both refined and popular tastes , good at catching readers' or audiences' expecting insight and providing satisfactions to the readers' interest with remote and heterogeneous oriental culture and evoking renders' imagination, which were important factors to the commercial success of his works. He was fond of traveling through all his lifetime, and wrote down what he saw and heard. He was never simply a sightseer, but marched in his spiritual journey with a Purist's (both cultural purism and belief purism) perspective.China was an important stop for Far East travel and spiritual travel to Maugham. From Of Human Bondage, he imagined the Orient through the love between West and Song, While by On a Chinese Screen; he came to china in person. But it didn't change his standpoint to Chinese culture. On the one hand, he was in pursuit of his own pure faith; on the other hand, he succeeded the tradition of Oriental culture. He was blind to Chinese situation after the May 4th Movement and didn't care about current affairs in that times. On the contrary, he thought greatly of Han and Tang dynasty in that times of turmoil of war and warlord regime. He was full of pride and prejudice to China, which was westerners' sense of superiority . In the framework of ensuing the course of spirit of Maugham, this paper's criticism and demonstration are based on Maugham's attitude towards post-colonialism, culture and belief purism. Hence this paper draws the premise of Chinese and Western Culture's blending, namely, two different cultures can exchange only when they can co-exist. To achieve real exchange, the two different cultures need mutual understanding. First, we should understand our own culture's rationality and glory, and at the same time, we should understand that the western culture's imperialistic style was caused by the tradition of Western Oceanic Culture. We can't demand that other cultures have our introverted and implicit Confucian style, or they become oriental cultural imperialism. But we also can't absolutely reject western culture, including its imperialistic practices. A sensible approach is that we should abandon its arbitrariness of imperialistic acts and absorb its active enterprising spirit. Only in this way, can the real purpose of cultural exchange and blending be achieved.