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bandit will bear the name of France, the other the name of England . . . I hope that some day, France once freed and cleansed will send back to China the booty she has plundered.'
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Incidentally, the Summer Palace of Peking, sacked and burned by French and British vandals, had been restored in the time of Emperor Qianlong (eighteenth century) by Jesuit architects and painters such as the famous Castiglione. The very contribution of European culture to China was smashed down by European militarism in China.
That French intellectuals concerned with China not only were very few, but also showed little interest in the political China, is supported by the non-committed attitude of that strange Jesuit, palaeontologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. His Chinese years in the 1920s and 1930s were most productive intellectually. He elaborated his partly mystical, partly anthropological views on man's fate and future. Yet, he was utterly indifferent to the complex developments of the Chinese revolution at that time, epoch-making as they were. He was living in a China almost without Chinese --- except fossils.
Teilhard de Chardin was an intellectual explorer, almost an adventurer, and so was the energetic Pelliot, one of the founding fathers of modern French sinology. He had established his reputation with his expedition to the Dunhuang Buddhist caves in the Gobi Desert, had not hesitated to bribe and to steal, brought back to France a unique Chinese library and became a Professor at the College de France at the early age of 27.
French sinology then was still entirely oriented towards classical China. Just as British sinology was a by-product of missionary studies on China, French sinology was a distant replica of Latin and Greek studies in the Jesuit tradition. The teaching aids which the Jesuits had prepared for classical Chinese often used Latin. Classical Chinese studies did not have to pay attention to the China of that time, any more than Latin and Greek studies did to the Italy and Greece of modern times. And classical sinology remained quite marginal in French academic life, just as much as China-inspired novels and poetry in French literature. Yet, the
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bandit will bear the name of France, the other the name of England . . . I hope that some day, France once freed and cleansed will send back to China the booty she has plundered.'
16
Incidentally, the Summer Palace of Peking, sacked and burned by French and British vandals, had been restored in the time of Emperor Qianlong (eighteenth century) by Jesuit architects and painters such as the famous Castiglione. The very contribution of European culture to China was smashed down by European mili- tarism in China.
That French intellectuals concerned with China not only were very few, but also showed little interest in the political China, is supported by the non-committed attitude of that strange Jesuit, palaeontologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. His Chinese years in the 1920s and 1930s were most productive intel- lectually. He elaborated his partly mystical, partly anthropological views on man's fate and future. Yet, he was utterly indifferent to the complex developments of the Chinese revolution at that time, epoch-making as they were. He was living in a China almost with- out Chinese --- except fossils.
Teilhard de Chardin was an intellectual explorer, almost an adventurer, and so was the energetic Pelliot, one of the founding fathers of modern French sinology. He had established his reputa- tion with his expedition to the Dunhuang Buddhist caves in the Gobi Desert, had not hesitated to bribe and to steal, brought back to France a unique Chinese library and became a Professor at the College de France at the early age of 27.
French sinology then was still entirely oriented towards classi- cal China. Just as British sinology was a by-product of missionary studies on China, French sinology was a distant replica of Latin and Greek studies in the Jesuit tradition. The teaching aids which the Jesuits had prepared for classical Chinese often used Latin. Classical Chinese studies did not have to pay attention to the China of that time, any more than Latin and Greek studies did to the Italy and Greece of modern times. And classical sinology re- mained quite marginal in French academic life, just as much as China-inspired novels and poetry in French literature. Yet, the
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