From utopia to the most hideous

On July morning in 1753, A Swedish queen joyously took over a golden dazzling key, symbolic of a priceless birth day gift presented to her �C an imposing China palace hidden in the forest, which masons had modeled on a China-style castle owned by her brother, the King of Prussia. This is the Europeans' early true image of China.

During three to four centuries prior to the mid 18th century, Europeans tried very hard to know China through exquisite porcelain ware, and books written by missionaries sent to China, such as "the travel of Marco Polo (1254-1324)", which were treasured as classics. Some European scholars of the time even pared the discovery of China with the discovery of the American Continent.

From the very beginning, China was alive with pragmatism in the eyes of Westerners and, for the sake of these "pragmatic colors", their presentation of China was plunged into the "permanent misinterpretation, " swaying between the two extremes of either being good or bad, and either with an affection or a hatred.

In the middle of the 18th century, freighters from the West unloaded at Chinese ports opium-packed boxes to substitute for piles of silver dollars or the bulk of goods. The Europe at that time did not need China as an utopia, Alfred Tennyson, a distinguished British poet, then said a garden-type kingdom gave way to a dirty asylum strewn with cesspools of garbage, where people dressed in silk became impoverished, wretched and dreadful.

Love-hatred syndrome

A caricature in the museum of Chinese Americans in the United States is seen depicting a large-scale "anti-Chinese wave" in the U.S. over a century ago. The caricature reminds viewers of another picture in a Paris decoration museum, which indicates a menace from the Oriental with the image of a huge dragon and a Buddha in dense smoke. The two pictures gave a true picture of the Yellow Peril or Scourge, the so-called threat of the Asians, especially the Chinese, to the white supremacy.

From then on, there have been a host of problems in the exchange between China and the West, and the crux of matter lies in the racial superiority of Westerners, with which they overlook China and the Oriental at large.

Even when China was turned into a member of the alliance against fascism during World War II, its image remained that of a pauper begging alms and pities behind the West. China's image, however, became somewhat brighter to people in the West partially due to such works as the Red Star over China by Edgar Snow and the Great Road by Agnes Smedley in the 1930s and 1940s, but the Korea war in the 1950s and the ensuing cold war again spurred the image of China to the darkest extreme.

A noted China expert in the U.S. cited the Americans'feelings toward China as a "love-hatred syndrome". China's image has been either resembled as the foe or not the foe since the establishment of new China in 1949 and become the symbol of terror or of evils in the 1950s. When Americans looked at China with an horrified eyesight, the "utopian China" fantasy again loomed over the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. But in Europe, left-wing intellectuals again turned to the distant China for seeking a motive force against capitalism.

The image of China among Swedes, too, has swayed from idealism and the end of idealism, acknowledged a professor of Chinese in elite Stockholm University. When they spotted some problems facing capitalist countries against a backdrop of the Vietnam War, he added, intellectuals in Sweden and other Western nations restudied the concept of Western democracy with a critical viewpoint and again ��swayed" China to the side of idealism.

Confucius plus restaurant

At present, there are Chinese restaurants named after Confucius (551-479), an ancient Chinese philosopher, educator, and founder of Confucianism in the Spring and Autumn Period, in many leading European and American cities. The ideal integration of Confucius with Chinese restaurants of course is more informative than that the restaurants themselves.

In the past 100 years or so, the first job for thousands upon thousands of Chinese who have left their home country is to find a job in Chinese restaurants. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of Westerners begin to acquaint themselves with China from Chinese restaurants. To aliens, there is not much difference if they eat out in these Chinese restaurants and strolling in China towns or they simply make a trip to China.

Ordinary Westerners incline to use a symbol or a substitute to represent China, and such symbolization has impeded their understanding of the country. A relevant survey in 1942 showed 60 percent of the Americans did not know the location of China in a world map, and there was no major change over half a century later. And a media poll conducted in 1997 showed only four students out of every 100 knew who late Chinese Deng Xiaoping was.

Almost two centuries have elapsed since the first American cargo freighter reached the port of Guangzhou. Some Chinese students residing overseas have often been heard complaining that China's image among Westerners remained unchanged in the past century, and this indicates ordinary Chinese know much more about the West than Westerners know about China.

A still more complex China

Many Chinese Americans were out of their depth at a thrilling scene in an aerospace stadium in New Jersey three years ago. Several blondes put up a huge streamers with words, "Yao Ming (a top Chinese basketball player), will you marry me?" Then, the entire stadium was seethed with excitement with bubbles of voices.

In 2005, the Asia section of the Lyon Security Firm released a special report on China's development with its front cover featuring a mammoth Chinese dragon swallowing up the globe. Relevant statistics of the report show China had become the global top consumer of iron and steel, copper, coal and iron ore.

Indeed, modern China has brought about a lot of queries for Westerners: Why the Chinese economy has taken a sudden leap? Why China can bring forth such a top basketball star like Yao Ming? Will China use up all the global oil reserve? Will China eventually overtake the U.S. in term of its economic strength �� But all these questions are related closely to the image of China, which will be thereafter turned still more complex, pluralistic and varied. Consequently, Westerners cannot look at and judge China with a solely criteria of either being good or bad, or with a simple syndrome.

By People's Daily Online