Romance with the periphery: Chinese travel writing about the ‘frontier’ during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937)

Abstract

ABSTRACTDuring the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937), amid a context of foreign encroachment on China’s frontiers and surging Chinese nationalism, frontier travel arose in popularity and took on special significance. Many Han intellectuals and officials travelled to the frontiers. They left a copious body of literature discussing their experiences. Through reading some key travel accounts, especially those by Dai Jitao (戴季陶), Ma Hetian (马鹤天), and Fan Changjiang (范长江), this article explores how travellers represented frontier landscapes and peoples, what they saw and what they missed, their preoccupations and assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and narrative conventions. My analysis indicates that the frontier fulfilled multiple functions: as metaphorical potential for the expansion of the modern Chinese state; as home to non-Han denizens who were both candidates for representation within that state and targets of its modernising zeal; as point of reference and redemption for Han Chinese problems of modernity; and finally, as site of personal exploration and adventure. The travellers’ romance with the frontier was no less exploitative than it was unreal, no more innocent than it was hegemonic.