EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

East-West Contacts & Perceptions 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 152 with particular history and culture, whose rise will benefit to the whole international environment. But we must not forget about the other side of the coin — how China sees the world —Asian andWestern countries that came into contact with China during its history. The answer to this question is quite important, as these Chinese perceptions of the Outer world impose the direct impact on the character of Chinese international interactions on the intrastate and intra-individual levels. Today the construction of images of the outside world is mediated mainly through education and media. In China these two spheres are closely intercon- nected and are intended to fulfil one of the main tasks set by the Party — realization of the Patriotic Educa- tion Campaign, started from the 1990s. The ideology of this education campaign provides quite a distinct interpretation of modern Chinese history when it came into direct contacts with the Western world. — one hundred years of humiliation ( 百年國恥 ) from 1840s till 1949, when China suffered from western military and economic intrusion, and after this — the time of rejuvenation of the Chinese nation after 1949. All these ideas are include into primary and secondary school historical education. And the point is that these historical interpretations are widely used in today’s politics in China, and help to construct the perception of the international order in the eyes of the Chinese youth. So the particular feature of Chinese vision of the outer world is that this perception is mainly influenced by historical memory rather than the actual experi- ence of today’s interactions. Rzanna Ewa (Institute for Polish Literature) Long Yingtai — a Modern Confucian Scholar Between East andWest. A Study of Hybrid Identity Key words: Long Yingtai, hybrid identity, Confucianism versus Western liberalism The background of my project has been provided by the recent discussion on modern Neo-Confucianism. While I accept the premise that in Confucianismwe encounter an autonomous moral order, characterised by a distinct set of values, I reject the implicit idea that these values are fundamentally incompatible with their Western counterparts. Instead of drawing a scenario for another Clash of Civilisations, I wish to examine these two sets of values and show how they can interact with one another in the lives of people who live in the modern, increasingly globalized world. For that purpose, I intend to analyse the work of Long Yingtai, a Taiwanese writer, literary critic, scholar and public official. Long Yingtai was born in 1952 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan as the daughter of refugees from Mainland China. She studied foreign languages and literature in Tainan, and subsequently received her PhD in English and American Literature from the Kansas State University. Her first collection of essays, The Wild Fire, published in 1985, was an instant bestseller and a major political event. In 1986 Long moved to Europe where she spent thirteen years, initially in Switzer- land than in Germany. In 1999 she returned to Taiwan and served as a public official till 2003. In 2012 she became the Minister of Culture of R.O.C. In my project, I plan to draw Long’s portrait as a modern-age Confucian scholar, deeply rooted in Chinese culture and tradition. Simultaneously, I wish to present her as a Western style public intellectual, partaking of liberal heritage of individualism and criticism. I argue that Long’s is the hybrid identity described in the post-colonial discourse. In analyzing Long Yingtai’s attitude towards authority, society, family, nature and civilization, I hope to arrive at insights that might be helpful in understanding not only modern Confucianism, but also Western liberalism. Samoylov Nikolay (Saint Petersburg State University) Chinese and Russian Sources on Visits of Chinese Diplomatic Missions to St. Petersburg in the late 19th — early 20th Centuries: A Comparative Analysis Key words: China, Russia, sources, diplomatic missions, mentalities In contrast to the previous period at the turn of the 20th century, official and unofficial visits of Chinese diplomatic missions to the Western countries, including Russia, gradually became common. At the same time in the context of China's entry into the Western system of international relations these visits grew into an important milestone in establishing a new type of relations between the Qing Empire and the West.