Study On The Understanding Of Samuel Wells Williams About Chinese Geography

As early as the end of the18th century, China and the United States hasestablished the preliminary business relationship, but as the two countries trademerchant don’t know and even don’t want to learn each other’s language and culture.While the missionary is different, they take positive attitude to Chinese culture. As themissionaries came to China, they found the “pagan" country and its culture aredifferent from their country, and it is impossible to preach if they don’t know Chineseculture. Therefore, missionaries want to realize their missionary goal, they mustlearn the Chinese culture. After learned Chinese culture can help missionary topreach, and the missionary introduce China to American to promote domestic peopleprovide more support.Samuel Wells Williams is a famous American Sinologist, and made greatcontributions to the cultural exchange. He had been printers, missionaries, diplomatsduring he had lived for nearly40years in China, and familiar with Chinese culture.After Williams returned home, he was appointed as the first professor of sinology ofYale University. Samuel Wells Williams had edited the Chinese Repository, published manybooks about Chinese, especially The Middle Kingdom have a significant impact, andwhich refer to Chinese geographical.We can know the level of the missionaries who had the understanding of thegeography of China by combing their works. In some respects, missionary’sunderstanding of China are more scientific than Chinese. It will help us to make abetter understanding Chinese geography in nineteenth Century, and further for us tostudy Chinese historical geography on nineteenth Century by disentangling earlymissionaries to China’s understanding. After make a clear understanding of SamuelWells Williams and other early missionaries of Chinese geographical knowledge, wecan see part of the understanding of Americans still retains the impression of that time,especially affecting the American China experts. Today, western scholars stilloccupies discourse right in the academic, and the part of the error on understanding ofthe Chinese has been inherited. Therefore, we should have the discourse right in themutual exchange process to dominate our impression to the world.