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Macau Periodical Index (澳門期刊論文索引)
- Author
- Cholakova, Rumyana
- Title
- This beautiful, friendly, and materialistic country: the image of America in Liu Zongren's two years in the melting pot
- Journal Name
- 中西文化研究(停刊)
- Pub. Info
- Jun. 2011, 總第19/20期, 第1期, pp. 196-204
- Keyword
- Travelogues； cross-cultural communication；cultural stereotype；Chinese images of America； images of the other
- Abstract
- Abstract : This paper analyzes the image of the USA created in Liu Zongren's Two Years in the Melting Pot (Daronglu liangnian《大熔爐兩年》written in 1984。The officially promoted image of the United States in the early 1980s was based on the standard Marxist depiction of the country as a financial oligarchy Liu's book is one of the first more atheoretical, descriptive, and pluralistic analyses of the United States to appear in China. In addition, Liu Zongren's travel book is concerned with the problems of cross-cultural understanding. This paper analyzes how Liu's commitment to Chinese culture hinders his communication with Americans and how the role of cultural stereotypes are revealed in his travelogue.Two Years in the Melting Pot is among the finest examples of Chinese travel writing in the 1980s,demonstrating both the advance of a more pluralistic understanding of the United States and the challenges intercultural dialogue faces.