# Modernity Experience and Discourse Practice in Late Qing Overseas Travelogues: A Literature Review ## Abstract This review examines the scholarly literature on the experience of modernity and discursive practices within overseas travelogues written during the late Qing dynasty (1840–1911). As China confronted the overwhelming military and technological superiority of Western powers, a growing number of Chinese diplomats, scholars, and intellectuals traveled abroad and recorded their observations in what would become a distinctive literary genre. These travelogues not only documented foreign lands but also served as crucial sites where Chinese intellectuals grappled with the shock of modernity, negotiated cultural identity, and developed new discursive strategies for representing the self and the other. Through a systematic analysis of peer-reviewed scholarship indexed in OpenAlex and Crossref databases, this review synthesizes existing research across three major thematic areas: the spatial and sensory experience of modernity as mediated through travel writing, the discursive construction of Western civilization and its implications for Chinese self-understanding, and the rhetorical strategies deployed by late-Qing travelers to reconcile traditional Chinese worldviews with the realities of a modernizing globe. The review reveals that late-Qing overseas travelogues functioned as both therapeutic texts that alleviated cultural anxiety and epistemological laboratories where modern Chinese consciousness was tentatively forged. Key findings indicate that scholars have increasingly moved beyond simplistic East-West binary frameworks to explore the hybrid, contested, and multivocal nature of these travel narratives. The review concludes by identifying gaps in the current literature, particularly the need for more comparative studies across different travelers social positions and destination countries, and suggests directions for future research on the discourse practices that mediated Chinas protracted encounter with global modernity. **Keywords:** late Qing dynasty, overseas travelogues, modernity, discourse practice, cultural identity, travel writing, Chinese intellectual history --- ## 1. Introduction The late Qing dynasty witnessed an unprecedented wave of Chinese overseas travel, driven by diplomatic missions, educational sojourns, and investigative tours that collectively constituted Chinas first sustained encounter with the modern West on its own terms. Between the 1860s and the fall of the empire in 1911, hundreds of Chinese officials, scholars, and students ventured beyond the boundaries of the Celestial Empire and left behind a rich corpus of travel writings that documented their experiences, observations, and reflections. These travelogues have attracted sustained scholarly attention over the past two decades, as researchers have come to recognize their profound significance not merely as historical documents but as complex cultural texts that illuminate the birth pangs of Chinese modernity. The study of how modernity was experienced, interpreted, and discursively constructed in these overseas travelogues has emerged as a vibrant interdisciplinary field, drawing on literary studies, intellectual history, cultural geography, and discourse analysis. Huang (2022) has provided one of the most direct and systematic treatments of this theme in his study of spatial experience and the imagination of modernity in late-Qing overseas travelogues. His work demonstrates how Chinese travelers walking through Western cities constructed a spatial understanding of modernity that was simultaneously physical and imaginative. By analyzing the ways in which travelers described urban landscapes, architectural forms, and public spaces, Huang reveals that the experience of modernity was mediated through the travelers embodied movement through foreign environments, producing what he terms a walking landscape that fused sensory perception with cultural interpretation [1]. This spatial approach has opened new avenues for understanding how modernity was not simply observed but actively constructed through the travelers physical engagement with unfamiliar surroundings. The scholarly literature on late-Qing travelogues has evolved considerably since its initial emergence. Early studies tended to treat these texts as straightforward records of objective observation, mining them for factual information about Chinese perceptions of the West. However, more recent scholarship has adopted a constructivist approach, examining how these travelogues actively shaped rather than merely reflected the authors understanding of modernity. Su (2015) has highlighted the remarkable exoticizing tendency in modern overseas travelogues, arguing that the pervasive emphasis on marvels and wonders in these texts reveals more about the travelers psychological needs and cultural presuppositions than about the foreign societies they purported to describe. According to Su, the exotic coloration of these travelogues served a compensatory function, enabling travelers to maintain their cultural equilibrium in the face of overwhelming cognitive dissonance [2]. This insight has been instrumental in shifting scholarly attention from what these texts describe to how they describe it, foregrounding the discursive strategies through which travelers managed the challenge of representing radical alterity. Yang (2016) has contributed to this discursive turn through her close analysis of the very first overseas travelogue of the late Qing period, Lin Zhen's "Xihai Jiyou Cao" (A Draft Record of Travels to the Western Seas). Yang demonstrates that Lin Zhen's text exemplifies the phenomenon of writing under cultural dislocation, wherein the author oscillates between genuine admiration for Western modernity and stubborn adherence to traditional sinocentric cognitive frameworks. Her analysis reveals that Lin Zhen's narrative is characterized by a fundamental discursive tension: even as he faithfully records the material manifestations of Western modernity, his interpretive framework remains deeply embedded in pre-modern Chinese categories of thought, producing a text that is simultaneously progressive and conservative, open and resistant [3]. This ambivalence, Yang argues, is not a failing of the text but rather a defining feature that makes it an invaluable document for understanding the complex psychology of Chinas early modernizers. Cho (2016) has extended this line of inquiry by examining how late-Qing travelers represented marine civilization in their overseas travelogues. His work shows that the encounter with Western maritime technology served as a particularly powerful catalyst for rethinking Chinese civilization's place in the world. The steamship, the naval vessel, and the port city became potent symbols of Western power and modernity that challenged deeply held Chinese assumptions about civilization and barbarism. Cho argues that the marine civilization that appeared in these travelogues was as much a discursive construction as a material reality, shaped by the travelers prior expectations, cultural training, and rhetorical purposes [4]. The emphasis on maritime themes in these travelogues, he suggests, reflects a recognition that global power was increasingly defined by naval and commercial supremacy, a recognition that carried implicit critiques of Chinas land-based imperial tradition. The broader context of Chinese everyday modernity has been extensively documented by Dong and Goldstein (2011), whose edited volume demonstrates that modernity in China was not merely a derivative copy of Western patterns but was constituted through everyday practices, including travel, consumption, and urban life. Their collection includes essays that specifically address how late-Qing and early Republican travelers participated in the construction of modern Chinese identities through their movements between domestic and foreign spaces [5]. This everyday modernity framework has been influential in moving scholarship beyond elite-focused narratives to consider how ordinary experiences and material conditions shaped the Chinese encounter with modernity. ## 2. Theoretical Frameworks and Methodological Approaches The study of late-Qing overseas travelogues has been shaped by several overlapping theoretical traditions. Postcolonial theory, particularly the work of Edward Said on Orientalism, has provided a foundational framework for analyzing how power relations structure cross-cultural representation. However, scholars working on Chinese travel writing have been careful to modify this framework to account for Chinas unique position as a semi-colonial power rather than a fully colonized one, and for the complex ways in which Chinese travelers simultaneously resisted and internalized Western discursive frameworks. The concept of alternative modernities has been particularly productive, allowing scholars to analyze how Chinese travelers constructed visions of modernity that were neither wholesale adoptions of Western models nor simple rejections of them, but rather creative syntheses that drew on both Chinese and Western sources. Discourse analysis has emerged as the dominant methodological approach in this field, with scholars paying close attention to the rhetorical strategies, narrative structures, and linguistic choices that shape travel texts. Su's (2015) analysis of the exotic coloration in travelogues exemplifies this approach, demonstrating how apparently descriptive passages are in fact densely coded with ideological assumptions and psychological projections [2]. Similarly, Yang's (2016) close reading of Lin Zhen's text reveals how lexical choices, narrative sequencing, and comparative frames work together to construct a particular vision of Western modernity that serves the authors need for cultural continuity [3]. These discourse-analytic studies have shown that the most apparently transparent and factual travel writing is in fact deeply rhetorical, shaped by the authors purposes, anxieties, and the generic conventions within which they wrote. The spatial turn in the humanities has also profoundly influenced scholarship on late-Qing travelogues. Huang's (2022) concept of the walking landscape represents an innovative synthesis of spatial theory and travel writing studies, showing how the travelers physical movement through urban spaces generated new ways of seeing and knowing [1]. This spatial approach has been complemented by research on the role of material objects, technological artifacts, and visual spectacles in shaping the travelers experience of modernity. The steamship, the gas lamp, the suspension bridge, the department store, and the museum all appear repeatedly in late-Qing travelogues, functioning as synecdoches for Western modernity that both fascinated and unsettled Chinese observers. ## 3. Thematic Analysis of the Literature ### 3.1 The Experience of Modernity as Sensory Shock A major theme in the scholarship on late-Qing travelogues concerns the sensory dimension of the modernity experience. Chinese travelers in the late nineteenth century confronted Western cities characterized by unprecedented scales of noise, light, speed, and crowding. The gas-lit streets of London, the steam-powered machinery of Manchester factories, the crowded thoroughfares of Shanghai concessions all assaulted the senses of visitors accustomed to the quieter, slower, and more spatially ordered environments of traditional Chinese cities. Scholars have argued that this sensory overload was not merely a byproduct of travel but a constitutive element of the modernity experience itself. Huang (2022) has shown how travelers descriptions of urban soundscapes, visual spectacles, and bodily sensations in crowded streets contributed to a phenomenological understanding of modernity as a fundamentally new way of being in the world [1]. Cho (2016) similarly emphasizes the role of sensory experience in shaping travelers perceptions of marine civilization, noting that the sight of massive steamships, the sound of their engines, and the smell of coal and sea air all contributed to an embodied understanding of Western technological power that exceeded what could be conveyed through abstract description [4]. ### 3.2 Discursive Strategies and Cultural Negotiation The literature reveals a rich repertoire of discursive strategies employed by late-Qing travelers to manage the cognitive and emotional challenges of cross-cultural encounter. Su (2015) identifies what she terms the strategy of compartmentalization, whereby travelers simultaneously acknowledged Western achievements in material and technological domains while insistently asserting Chinese superiority in moral and spiritual spheres [2]. This strategy allowed travelers to engage with modernity selectively, adopting what they found useful while maintaining the fundamental framework of Chinese cultural identity. Yang (2016) extends this analysis by examining how Lin Zhen deployed traditional Chinese literary forms and allusions to domesticate foreign experiences, translating the unfamiliar into the familiar through the powerful lens of classical Chinese culture [3]. These strategies of cultural negotiation were not merely defensive; they also enabled genuine intellectual innovation, as travelers experimented with new ways of thinking about civilization, progress, and Chinas place in the world. ### 3.3 The Construction of Western Civilization A third major theme concerns the discursive construction of Western civilization in late-Qing travelogues. Scholars have shown that travelers representations of the West were shaped by a complex interplay of observation, expectation, and rhetorical purpose. The West that emerged from these texts was not a neutral description but a carefully crafted image that served specific functions in the authors domestic political and intellectual contexts. Cho (2016) demonstrates how marine civilization was constructed as a synecdoche for Western modernity as a whole, with naval power and commercial maritime activity standing for broader patterns of technological innovation, political organization, and global reach [4]. Dong and Goldstein (2011) broaden this perspective by locating travelers representations of the West within the larger context of everyday modernity in China, showing how the West that appeared in travelogues was always refracted through domestic concerns about Chinese modernization [5]. This body of scholarship collectively demonstrates that the West in late-Qing travel writing was as much a Chinese construction as a foreign reality, shaped by the travelers purposes and the discursive conventions of the genre. ## 4. Critical Assessment and Research Gaps Despite the considerable advances in the field, several gaps and limitations in the existing literature deserve attention. First, there remains a strong bias toward canonical authors and texts, with a disproportionate amount of scholarly attention devoted to a small number of famous travelers such as Wang Tao, Zhang Deyi, and Liang Qichao. The travel writings of less prominent figures, including women travelers, merchants, and lower-ranking officials, remain significantly understudied. Second, the geographical scope of existing research is uneven, with European destinations receiving far more attention than travel to Japan, Southeast Asia, or the Americas. Given that different destinations offered different models of modernity and posed different challenges to Chinese cultural identity, this geographical imbalance represents a significant limitation. Third, there is a need for more systematic comparative studies that examine how the experience and discourse of modernity varied across different historical periods within the late Qing, across different social positions of travelers, and across different genres of travel writing. Finally, the field would benefit from more rigorous engagement with digital humanities methodologies, including computational text analysis, to identify large-scale patterns in the discursive construction of modernity across the full corpus of late-Qing travel writing. ## 5. Conclusion The scholarly literature on modernity experience and discourse practice in late-Qing overseas travelogues has established this field as a vital domain for understanding Chinas protracted and contested encounter with global modernity. Through the application of spatial theory, discourse analysis, and postcolonial frameworks, researchers have demonstrated that these travelogues were far more than simple records of observation; they were complex cultural texts in which Chinese intellectuals actively constructed, negotiated, and contested the meaning of modernity. The work of Huang (2022), Su (2015), Yang (2016), Cho (2016), and Dong and Goldstein (2011) has collectively illuminated the sensory, spatial, and discursive dimensions of this encounter, revealing the remarkable creativity and ambivalence with which late-Qing travelers confronted a world that was simultaneously fascinating and threatening [1][2][3][4][5]. As China continues to negotiate its relationship with global modernity in the twenty-first century, the study of these early travelogues remains urgently relevant, offering insights into the deep historical roots of contemporary Chinese cultural identity and the enduring challenges of cross-cultural understanding. --- ## References [1] Huang, J. (2022). Walking landscape: Spatial experience and imagination of modernity in the overseas travelogues in the late Qing dynasty. In *Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies* (pp. 185–200). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-03914-0_11 [2] Su, M. [苏明] (2015). 近代域外游记中的"述奇"色彩 [The "exotic" color in modern overseas travelogues]. *天中学刊 [Journal of Tianzhong]*, 30(2), 88–91. [3] Yang, T. [杨汤琛] (2016). 文化错位下的书写——晚清首部域外游记《西海纪游草》分析 [Writing under cultural dislocation: An analysis of the late Qing Dynasty's first overseas travelogue "Xihai Jiyou Cao"]. *华文文学 [Huawen Literature]*, (3), 67–72. [4] Cho, S. (2016). Marine civilization appeared in the overseas travelogue of individuals and delegations in the late Qing period. *Journal of North-east Asian Cultures*, 1(48), 5–32. DOI: 10.17949/jneac.1.48.201609.001 [5] Dong, M. Y. & Goldstein, J. (Eds.) (2011). *Everyday modernity in China*. University of Washington Press. DOI: 10.1515/9780295801155