The Image Of China In Beauvoir's Book “The Long March:China Tour”

In 1950 s,Simone de Beauvoir was invited to visit China by Chinese government.After returning France,she wrote the book "The long march: China Tour",which was known as Encyclopedia of China or textbook of China.In this book,she didn't look at Chinese achievement from stereotypical idea and narrow-minded attitude,while she adopted open and brand new attitude to evaluate Chinese policy,government,religion,culture and so on.In her book,China was regarded as a prospering and hopeful country.To some extent,she eliminated bias from capitalist society and introduced a brand new China to western country.This book attracted many foreigners' attention and let them know new China and socialism.Simone de Beauvoir described China carefully and completely in the book “The long march: China Tour".She provided abundant material for researching the history of China and France.Though she realized there are a lot of shortcomings in China,she still kept optimistic to China because she thought China had made great progress after establishing socialism country.She believed China would succeed in future because she saw diligent leaders,effective government,booming economy and united people.Undoubtedly,China was an idealized and utopia world in her book.As research object “the other” in Comparative literature field,her Chinese image was not copy of China,it was integration of Chinese reality,western society collective imagination of China and her personal creation.This paper was written from the perspective of comparative literature,based on the text and combined with the knowledge of history,geography,social subject.The image of China in France was not isolated from western country,while it was influenced by the whole Europe country.From legends age,geographical age,Confucius age to flickering age,China image has changed a lot in 1950 s.In 1950 s,because the communication between China and western country was infrequent as before,China image was trapped into darkness.However 10 years later,China was accepted by western country gradually.The image in this book just appeared in the turning period.As a book written by foreigner,her view for China gives us a hint for building China image now and its image provides rich date for research history.