Contact Zones in China

Book excerpt: The local experiences of foreigners in China in the 19th and early 20th centuries exemplify the often latent or tacit patterns of social encounters, individually or in groups, with certain cultural boundedness, stability, and homogeneity. This book takes into account virtual, mediated, imaginative contact zones and looks back at much slower and delimited times and focuses primarily on some selective experiences by Italians and Germans. In doing so it accounts for trajectories from individual and small groups with local, territorial, physical and fully sensual interfaces to fully programmed and highly steered contact zones in the 21st century.