The Orient in Transition: Latin American Modernists in Early 20th-Century China

Abstract

Through a reading of the travel chronicles of the Latin American modernists Enrique Gómez Carrillo (1905) and Arturo Ambrogi (1915), this article analyzes the representations of China in the early twentieth century. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on how these authors reproduced or interpreted Orientalist discourse, this analysis examines the traces of the historical context of the Asian nation. By analyzing their itineraries and observations on Chinese culture, it argues that these chronicles articulate an ambivalent gaze: although they reproduce exoticizing elements, they also reveal a growing concern with China’s social and political transformations during the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic. Therefore, these texts suggest an early formation of a Latin American imagination that articulated debates on modernity and colonialism across both regions.