关键词: 中美跨国书写, 审美中心主义, 括除, 东方主义

Abstract: English writings introducing China to the general readership started with American Protestant missionaries in the 19^th century and flourished with outstanding achievement in the first half of the 20^th century, represented by a transnational writing community of women authors like Pearl S. Buck, Nora Waln, Alice T. Hobart, Emily Haln and Elizabeth Foreman Lewis as well as a few native informants like Lin Yutang. They tended to focus their themes on arcadianized rural life, aristocratic elegance, and philosophized oriental enchantment. Premodern idyllic sceneries, craftsmanship and aestheticism were bracketed out from the difficult situation and stood for the old China in general. Bracketed aestheticentrism was a form of disaffection against negative effect from western modernity and an effort to find the imaginary antidote from the oriental mystique, while at the same time denied new China the necessity and capacity of modernization.

Key words: Sino-American transnational writings, aestheticentrism, bracketing, Orientalism