The Politics of Knowing China: Why Did Lu Xun Criticize Pearl Buck?

American writer Pearl Buck is known to the world as a “spokeswoman of China.” As a missionary child, she grew up in the country and devoted her entire life to promoting China’s image in the West. As Harold Isaacs once remarked, “for a whole generation of Americans,” Pearl “created” the Chinese “in the same sense that Dickens ‘created’ for so many of us the people who lived in the slums of Victorian England.”

Yet, not all Chinese scholars think highly of her work. Lu Xun once dismissed Buck for her not knowing China. Knowing China or not, it is argued in this talk that it was a political struggle in the production of China-related knowledge in the 1930s when literary scholars, business entrepreneurs, transcultural dialoguers, and cultural brokers negotiated their views on who had the right to talk about China.

In the case of Buck, on the one hand, pro-Nationalist Swedish explorer Sven Hedin lobbied the Nobel committee to offer her a literature prize; on the other hand, left-leaning young Chinese translator Yao Ke influenced by Agnes Smedley passed his negative judgment to Lu Xun. While both sides favoured a one-sided view on Buck, one would argue that perhaps the world in the 1930s was not yet ready for a more nuanced, balanced understanding of China. This opinion-based view in return invited an emotional resistance against any foreign interpretations about China inside the country. 

About the speaker

Dr Xin Fan (范鑫) is a historian of twentieth-century China. He is interested in Chinese intellectual history, historiography, and global history. He is the author of World History and National Identity in China: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He also co-edited Reception of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia (Brill, 2018). He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled The Right to Talk about China: The Rise of Emotional Politics, 1900 to 1949, as well as collaborating with scholars in Europe, America, and Asia on several projects on nationalism, historiography, and conceptual history. In addition, he is writing about world-historical analogies. Dr Fan is Teaching Associate in Modern Chinese History at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow and Director of Studies at Lucy Cavendish College.

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required.

Please note that this seminar is taking place on campus and will not be recorded or live-streamed.

• Chair: Dr Jieyu Liu (Deputy Director, SOAS China Institute)
• Organiser: SOAS China Institute
• Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk