風和馬來世界：王大海《海島逸志》的華夷風土觀 = Wind and the Malay World Sinophone/Xenophone Terroir in A Desultory Account of the Malay Archipelago
Journal
中山人文學報
Journal Issue
51
Pages
13-50
Date Issued
2021-07-01
Author(s)
Abstract
This article examines how Chinese encountered with the Malay world, particularly the South China Seas and the Malay Archipelago. Through the cross- reference of travelogue and Chinese poetry, this article attempts to reconstruct the contact zone between Chinese and the Malay world through a perspective based on the voyage to and life experience in a foreign land. Through the visions of the travelogue, we are able to understand, from different dimensions of literary, cultural and historical experience and imagination, the possibilities and limitations of the travelogue in representing the new world. We observe how writers of these documents see Chinese and how Chinese sees the Malay world. This article analyses of the descriptions of the landscape and geography of Java and its surrounding islands in Haidao Yizhi (A Desultory Account of the Malay Archipelago, 1791), by Wang Dahai, who lived in Java during the Qianlong period and later became a member of the local Kapitan family. Wang Dahai's vision of the island and the multifaceted view of "wind" is formed through the intertwined perspectives of the Chinese on the Dutch, the English and the Austronesian, as well as the exploration of colonial and Nusantara history and customs. The descriptions of the Malay landscape in a Chinese Nusantara framework, in effect, reveal the subtle changes in the trajectivity of self- and other- identification and the Chinese and foreign landscapes, providing a glimpse into the cracks and possibilities of "changes" within the dualistic framework of Sinophone/Xenophone.
Subjects
A Desultory Account of the Malay Archipelago;Mesology;Nusantara;Sinophone/Xenophone;South China Seas
Type
journal article