A Study Of The Karsh Region In Two Women's Travels—A Critical Analysis

In the hinterland of Asia,the most remote part of China,there lies a city rich in regional customs-Kashgar.Kashgar is located at the communications center of Silk Road.It has been a place where multiple cultures converge since ancient times and also an object that domestic and foreign travelers are keen on writing.For a long time,Kashgar,Xinjiang appears mysterious and fantastic in the eyes of many foreigners and even mainland Chinese,and it is an “exotic place” where travelers are yearning for.At the beginning of the 20 th century,a large number of foreign investigation groups,travellers,explorers,businessmen,diplomats,and missionaries went through southern Xinjiang frequently in the name of “exploration”,“investigation”,and “travel”.They were engaged in activities in Kashgar,the important town of South Xinjiang,in various names and left a large number of memoirs,travel notes,and investigation reports.These documents provide textual materials for educational circles to investigate the geopolitics between China and the West in special historical backgrounds and to expose the fictional or imaginary images of Xinjiang portrayed by Westerners.Meanwhile,these documents,just like a “mirror of others”,help us stand in our current context by criticizing the construction of discourse mechanism full of illusions of these images and take “One Belt and One Road” as an opportunity to build and spread the good regional image of Kashgar,making it the bridgehead for economic and cultural exchanges between China and Central Asian,China and West Asian countries.Guided by Marxism and based on the perspective of cross-cultural study of comparative literature,the thesis selects two female travel notes as the textual object,explores the narrative strategies adopted in reproducing and portraying the regional image of Kashgar in these women's travel notes,and critically analyzes the differences between texts and the underlying causes of such differences by comprehensive use of theories and methods of imagology,traveling culture research and narratology and combining with the specific historical context in the first half of the 20 th century.The two female writers used the eyes of "others" to reproduce the Kashgar image in the eyes of Westerners with words filled with exotic colors,providing a "mirror of others" for us to understand the historical culture of Kashgar.The thesis tries to explain the important role of Kashgar in the process of cultural exchange between China and the West through the historical changes and cultural appearance of Kashgar.As the narrative subject of travel notes,the two female authors lived in Kashgar for a long time as accompanying dependents.Comparatively speaking,their identity is significantly different from explorers,missionaries,and diplomats.In terms of narratives,the two travel notes detail the natural features and resources of Kashgar,carefully describe the appearance,clothing,headwear,and marriage of the local people.In a sense,the choice of feminine perspective is more conducive to a panoramic view of natural ecology,humanistic atmosphere and daily life of people in Kashgar,and it maybe provide typical textual objects for us to return to the historical “live scene”,take a glance at the daily life of Kashgar back then and explore the unique geographical cultural imagination.The thesis always adheres to the main position of Chinese culture,decodes the narrative mechanism and cultural implications of the two women's travel notes from a critical perspective,and consider the significance of these texts for our understanding of regional culture of Kashgar from a dialectical scientific attitude.