Remember that through a book you may become great travellers, putting the broom and the needle momentarily aside, to sail the oceans and to learn of the many ways in which God shaped distant nations to thrive where He placed them, enjoying the widely diverse scenarios of life, from the heat of Africa to the frozen Greenland
(Higginson 1879, p. 70)
Abstract
In this paper I will analyze what were the emotions that Rome, and its artistic heritage, excited in a Chinese traveller’s eyes and heart—rationally and unconsciously—at the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper will focus on the analysis of some pages of the Guiqian ji (归潜记), written by Shan Shili, the wife of the Ministry of China in Rome from July 1908 to November 1909. Unlike Chinese travellers of the previous period, she, during her sojourn in Rome, was more fascinated by art and culture than by scientific and technological marvels. This ‘unknown territory’—art, history, mythology, in brief, the historical and cultural European past—unknown to her, but also to the Chinese at that time, attracted her curiosity insomuch as to use artistic descriptions as means of cultural dialogue between her own culture and the other’s culture. But what did the discovery of a different artistic expression provoke in a Chinese traveller? Did she appreciate these forms of art? Did they go along with her artistic and cultural tastes? The analysis of some explanations of artistic works (paintings and sculptures), offered by Shan to her readers, and the reading of emotions and feelings which these works presented to her—esteem, repulsion, admiration or disapproval—allow us to draw a brief cultural dialogue between a Chinese female traveller and the other (Italian), at the end of the Qing empire.
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Notes
Of course I do not want to affirm that these texts are completely lacking any expression of subjectivity or personal reflections; for example the lower the status was of a member of the delegation, the more free his style and content of writing was. We should not forget that in Chinese literature the manifestation of a subjective writing, where the “I” is markedly present, was a slow and gradual process, which started exactly at the end of the Qing Dynasty (Chen 2008; Tsui 2010; Lee 1985).
Born in 1856 at Xiaoshan in Zhejiang province, to a family of scholars; her great-grandfather was a high official in the Ministry of rites, her father Shan Sipu (單思溥) a famous scholar, the same for her uncle from her mother’s side, Xu Renbo (许壬伯). It was thanks to the latter that she received a solid literary education, an instruction in both classic poetry and prose, and in Chinese history and historiography. She married in 1885, to Qian Xun, an official of the Manchurian government, whom she followed in the various charges he was appointed to abroad. The Qian family lived in the Japanese capital, more or less without interruptions, from 1899 to 1903. Shan was introduced here to the capital’s academic and reformist circles, striking friendships with many scholars, both men and women, in that city. During these years she also studied Japanese, which she would come to master in time. In 1903 she embarked upon another long voyage, which was to take her to Moscow, where her husband was appointed ambassador. Shan Shili recorded this experience in a text written during that period, the Guimao lüxing ji (癸卯旅行記, Travels in the Guimao year, 1903). After the Russian capital, the couple moved further West, going first to The Netherlands, and later to Italy. After the sojourn in Rome, Shan returned to China, where she took up political and philanthropic activities for women. She died in Peking, at the age of 87. For further readings on her life, see Hu (2006), Widmer (2006), Brezzi (2012).
Born at Wuxing in Zhejiang province, eldest brother to the famous grammatician Qian Xuantong 钱玄同 (1887–1937), he was an official and ambassador to the Manchurian government, participating in a number of diplomatic delegations to Europe, including the one led by Xue Fucheng 薛福成 (1838–1894) coming to Europe in 1891. He was ambassador to The Netherlands in 1907, and to Italy the year after, where he would stay from April 23rd 1908 until November 29 1909. Between 1899 and 1903 he lived in Japan, where he had been sent by the Manchurian government as head of the education of Chinese students in Hubei. At the Japanese capital he was introduced to the reformist circles, which he was to seek out once more he returned to China on the eve of the 1911 Revolution. According to records of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs: “Tsien-Sun [Qian Sun] was born in 1854 in the province of Tchi-kiang [Zhejiang]… In 1890 he was appointed Attaché to the London Delegation, and later transferred with the same charge, in 1891 to Berlin, in 1892 to St. Petersburg, and in 1895 to Paris. The following year he returned to China where he took up the important charge of Secretary General to the Vice-Kings of Nanking and Hankow for six years. He was one of the delegates who in 1903 revised the treaty of trade with England. He was sent to St. Petersburg once more in 1903, as Councillor, and in 1906 he accompanied the Special Mission to Japan, charged with studying the new organisation of that Empire.”; see R. Legazione d’Italia n° 170/71, Ministro cinese, n° 24373, 5 aprile 1908, X C 2; and Qingji Zhong Wai shiling nianbiao, 清季中外使领年表, Pechino, Zhonghua shuju, 1985, pp. 14, 18.
The couple, with the other members of that delegation, sojourned in Via Palestro, where the Chinese embassy was located at the beginning of the 20th century; see Brezzi (2012).
It was inappropriate for the first wife not only to face long and tiring journeys, but it was even more inappropriate to abide by rules and behaviors considered dishonorable for a woman. An emblematic example was the fictional account of Hong Jun 洪钧 (1840–1893), a Qing ambassador, and his concubine Sai Jinhua 赛金花 (1874–1936), described in the novel Niehai hua 孽海花 (Flower in a sea of Retribution) by Zeng Pu 曾朴 (1872–1935), Hu Ying (2000).
This likeness has been suggested by Hu Ying in her essay, 2006, p. 151.
There have been many literary treatments of this story, the most famous is Shelley’s verse-drama, The Cenci (1819); other writers drawn to the subject, for example Stendhal, Dickens and Alberto Moravia.
The mosaic is kept in the chapel of Saint Michael in Saint Peter’s basilica, while the painting by Guido Reni (1575–1642) is in the church S. Maria Concezione in Rome.
Through what sources the Chinese woman traveller was able to obtain all the detailed and accurate information she wrote in her text, still remains one of the most challenging questions of this research. It is difficult to retrace and identify her bibliographical sources, since she does not mention them in her text, and at the beginning of the 20th century no sources, in the Chinese language, existed, which explained in such a detailed manner Western art and its metaphorical meaning. Probably she availed herself of some oral accounts, not written, which she heard in Rome or while travelling with the Chinese delegation from China to Europe. My hypothesis is that she was helped by Karl Kreyer (1893–1914), a Baptist missionary in China, who arrived in China in 1866, and after few years started to work in Jiangnan Arsenal as interpret; in 1890 he was the interpreter for the Chinese delegation in Europe, headed by Xu Jingcheng 许景澄 (1845–1900). The problems concerning this issue are still the subject of research. Several hypotheses have been advanced in Brezzi (2012).
Shan, throughout her text, uses the compound jingzong 景宗 to translate the word ‘pope’; in the first chapter of her text she justifies her choice, explaining two reasons: firstly jingzong is more faithful to original meaning of Latin word that indeed means “father” and not “king”, as the disyllabic word jiaowang 教王 or jiaohuang 教皇 indicate; secondly this is the word used in the famous Nestorian Stele erected during the Tang dynasty; see Shan (1985, p. 767).
The tradition indicates Pope Clement VIII as the figure represented in this picture; he was the pope who condemned Beatrice and her brothers to death.
Indeed she was Francesco Cenci's second wife, Beatrice’s stepmother, Lucrezia Petroni, Velli’s widow.
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Brezzi, A. Some artistic descriptions and ethical dilemmas in Shan Shili’s travel notes on Italy (1909). Int. Commun. Chin. Cult 3, 175–189 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-015-0033-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-015-0033-y