How to Kowtow

D.J. Enright

  • The Chain’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds by Jonathan Spence
    Penguin, 279 pp, £20.00, May 1999, ISBN 0 7139 9313 8

‘One aspect of a country’s greatness is surely its capacity to attract and retain the attention of others. This capacity has been evident from the very beginnings of the West’s encounter with China; the passing centuries have never managed to obliterate it altogether, even though vagaries of fashion and shifting political stances have at times dulled the sheen.’ In The Chan’s Great Continent Jonathan Spence reflects on 48 ‘sightings’ or mis-sightings of ‘a great but distant culture’, stretching from the 13th century up to the Seventies.

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