Chinese Images In Heterogeneous Cultural Communication

China was once considered as a primitive, barbarous and exotic land in heterogeneous cultural communication. It was Pearl S. Buck's vivid descriptions about Chinese peasants Wang Lung and his wife's pursuits for earth and life in The Good Earth that encouraged American people who were then in stuck of the Great Depression. On the other hand, many American Chinese writers make every effort to write Chinese stories in Western context. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan shows a mysterious China to West through mothers' memories and arrests the eyes of Western public.In recent years, comparative study and American Chinese literary study give more and more attention to cross-cultural elements of such literary works. Cultural study on literary works with heterogeneous cultural context becomes a new trend in this study field. Imagology is a study of the foreign images and it is concerned with the representations of Other image in historical, cultural and literary context. Imagology in comparative study gives more attention to the interactive relations between those Other images. According to Imagology, any image creation is come out under an interactive care between Self and Other. As cultural marginal persons, Pearl S. Buck creates a compromised Chinese image with a considerate care between Self and Other; while Amy Tan makes a patchwork of collected Chinese imagination with a confusing self-identification. This thesis aims to analyze literary texts written in heterogeneous cultural context from the angle of Imagology and cultural relativism, with an intention on Chinese image reinvention.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is the introductory part, which gives a detailed introduction to Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club as well as a review of the related researches in both works; meanwhile, it also presents the research objectives of this thesis. Chapter two makes an exploration of the identities of Pearl S. Buck and Amy Tan from the respect of Sociology and points out that, it is Chinese narration by means of literary creation that can help them out of identity confusion; meanwhile, their Chinese narrations deeply unfold their Self riddles. In the third chapter, a detailed and progressive analysis is applied to Chinese images together with Chinese traditions in Others' eyes. The theory and methodology of Imagology will be employed to interpret Buck and Tan's Chinese images creation. When it comes to the forth chapter, it mainly discusses the Chinese image reinvention in heterogeneous cultural communication context from the angle of cultural relativism. Chapter five is the concluding part, it further points out the significance of the study on Chinese image in heterogeneous cultural communication context. And meanwhile it predicts a possibility for multi-cultural co-existence and the role the marginal person may play in this process.