Urban Image Of Guangzhou In Westerners’Eyes (1840-1910)

As an open country, there were so many foreign observers and participants who playing integral roles in the history of China’s foreign exchange. These people included missionaries, merchants, messengers, explorers, history and geography scientists, scholars, scientific and technical personnels, tauthors, sailors, soldiers and so on. They used there own text, leaving a lot of ancient China’s geography, social, custumal and political records, and also provided valuable material for the study of ancient Chinese history.From Ming Dynasty, Westerners began to enter China. They recorded all that they saw and heard in China, which gradually formed a relatively specific view of China. The West’s concept of China is not static. From16th century, western world began to arise the phenomenon which we call it "China fever". But at the early20th century, it changed into the idea that we call it "backward China". The China’s image in the eyes of the Westerners had a process of change from positive to negative. The West’s concept of China underwent great changes from mid-19th century to early20th century. The positive image of China plummeted during this period. The Chinese empire, which had been regarded by westerners as her prosperousness and powerfulness, started becoming backward.Interestingly, the root cause which leading to this shift is not that China has undergone enormous changes, but the development and progress of the Westerners, as well as changes in the purpose of their visit.We can confirm this point by judging from the Westerners’ observation and recording in Guangzhou.Guangzhou, as a long-term continued opening-up port in China’s feudal era, had irreplaceable importance in the exchange of Chinese and Western. Many Westerners also came to know China through Guangzhou. Even some Westerners in China just knew that Guangzhou but not Beijing. In a sense, Guangzhou’s image could be said to represent the image of China as a whole. The general shape of Guangzhou City in the late Qing Dynasty was molded in Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty. In these several hundred years, the change of city scale was small. In other words, the scene of Guangzhou that Westerners saw in Jiajing period was no essential difference from that Westerners saw in the late Qing Dynasty.But the Westerners’ records of there two periods are different. The former was positive while the latter was backward and negative.Meanwhile, after the First Opium War, Guangzhou began to lift the ban for westerners within the city. The westerners finally got the chance to enter and observe the city center which was the place they had always dreamed of. The West thus had more opportunities to gain first-hand information about Guangzhou. This dissertation attempts to sort, classify and analyze westerners’ descriptions of China in this period to demonstrate the urban image of Guangzhou in westerners’ eyes. The author as well further explores the concept of China behind this image and its change.This dissertation is divided into the following four chapters:The first chapter is mainly about the issue including rights, courses of westerners getting into Guangzhou’s city center. And also discusses the relationship between xenophobic Chinese officials, gentries, people and westerners.The second chapter mainly introduces how westerners describe Guangzhou city, including the "city center" they enter and observe, and the streets, population, city management and "boat city" outside Guangzhou. Thus we can probe into the causes of Westerners’ changed Chinese concept. The third chapter mainly introduces how westerners describe about people of different occupations of Guangzhou which includes barbers, fortune-tellers, drug sellers, buskers, beggars, thieves, businessmen, officials, women, farmers. So we can see the extreme disparity between the rich and the poor in Guangzhou of the late Qing Dynasty and information sources of Westerners understanding Chinese by the description before.The Fourth chapter mainly introduces diet habits and life modes in leisure time of Cantonese, and attempts to give reasons about one-sided and extreme phenomenon of Chinese that Westerners described.