India Images In China’s Travels (2000-2012)

“India Images in China’s Travels (2000-2012)” focuses on China’s contemporaryIndia travels and discuss the India images represented in those books. Currentacademic study of the images of India vastly focuses on early Chinese classics suchas Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang and A Record of BuddhisticKingdoms, with an odd absence of research on the image of India in contemporaryChina. During the last decade, more than60India travels have been published in themainland of China. Both the quantity and the quality are worth our attention. Hence,this thesis explores the image of India reflected in the India travels in contemporaryChina, and analyzes its’characteristics and the cultural backgrounds for the formationof such images.Travelling is a journey during which one constantly encounters with the "other".With reference to the imagology theory in comparative literature, this thesis exhibitsthe features of the China’s India images influenced by the traditional collectiveimagination of the nation and the development history of such image on the basis ofthe interpretation of representative India travel notes published in the21century aftera detailed study on various descriptive India travel notes. Travel notes in general havea strong narrative nature. But from the perspective of imagology, any exoticdescription is a kind of cultural imagination, and the identity of the travelerdetermines his or her very own impact on the formation of the collective imaginationtowards India revealed in his or her travel notes, i.e. the cultural narrations. Thiscomplicated and changeable image of India, like a mirror, reflects the speculationabout our own Chinese culture.The present thesis first categorizes all the India travel notes into four types andchooses the representative texts respectively. Then it sums up the “the images ofIndia” in India travels at three different aspects and analyzes Chinese travelers’cultural psychology as well as the features of their traditional thinking patterns whenlooking at India. In the end, it concludes the effect and significance of India travels published in the21stcentury in forming Indian image: travel notes is a genre ofcultural narration and the mutual verification between travel notes completes thecollective imagination of China towards India in the new century; those travelers asthe constructors of image both inherit and deviate from the traditional Chinesecollective imagination towards India and utter their self-desire and reflect their ownculture by virtue of India image.