The Images Of China In The Perspective Of The West

The image of China is a kind of imaginary construction and a set of discourse system with metaphorical symbols, which is not an objective existence, but a substance constructed by the westerners. With history goes, the image of China has been written and transformed constantly and presented with various complex images, sometimes as beautiful as myths, sometimes as ugly as the hell.The paper starts from the historical changes of the image of China in westerners’eyes. With the use of Orientalism Paradigm created by Edward W. Said, this dissertation is to explore why the text of the "Objective" China is not real, but the reflection on desire of the West. This thesis will describe the image of China constructed by the West in the different ages, and classify several typical images in details into the so-called Four models Apotheosized-China, Idealized-China, or uglified-China, or monstrous-China.The first part is the introduction. By means of introducing the contents and the most elementary characteristics of Orientalism Paradigm of Edward W. Said, it points out how the West and the East are divided into the duality opposition of civilization and barbarism. At the same time, it also indicates the defects of Said’s theory that it does not mention another beautification of Orientalism.In the second part, the Utopian images of China are summarized by the West as four types in myth, material, right system and culture, which are formed into special processes with regular rules followed.The third part deals with the Anti-Utopian images of China. To roughly clarify the images which appear in the western history, it divides them into several types: the stationary, the autocratic and the savage one. Slowly panning across the tapestry of the vicissitudes of the Image of China in the West, we can see clearly that the Image doesn’t mean the reality of China, but a metaphor for the western culture.The last part is the conclusion. The author questions closely the inevitability and strategetic of transcending the Orientalism at present. On one hand, we should animadvert the hegemony structure in the old relationship of culture; on the other hand, we should also avoid the pitfalls of DongFangHua by ourselves. We should breed our ethos in order to combine negation and animadversion with affirmation and content. Only by rectifying the wrong and correcting the deflection can we finally dispel the discourse hegemony with the harmonious culture, and obtain mutual benefits.