Reading the Transpacific Journey as Borderspace: the Critical Accounts of Zhang Deyi and Fu Yunlong (1868–1888)

Abstract

Abstract In this article, travel narratives by two late Qing diplomats, Zhang Deyi 張德彞 (1847–1918) and Fu Yunlong 傅雲龍 (1840–1901), are examined to explore global history from the perspective of Chinese travelers, revealing how discriminatory laws, imperial desires, mass migrations, power imbalances, and economic interests affected Chinese travelers who were distinct from other ethnic Chinese and non-ethnic Chinese itinerants traveling across the Pacific Ocean on the same ship and in the same era. Many of these Mandarin-speaking diplomats traveled on vessels with Cantonese-speaking ethnic counterparts, an indication of the multiplicity of “Chinese” migration experiences and distinct intraethnic encounters in the nineteenth century. This article shows how the embodied experience of Chinese travelers on ships affected not only the way they recorded the experience but also their understanding of the position of the Chinese empire with respect to the world at large.