The Description of Sicily in Chinese Travel Diaries and Geographic Works of the Qing Dynasty

The Qing dynasty and the 19th century in particular represent one of the most prolific moment in the history of the circulation of information about the Western countries in China, above all after the Opium War and the Unequal Treaties, when many Chinese diplomatic missions were sent to Europe. Consequently, Sicily and the Mediterranean area represent the passage to the Western reality and in this period the information previously conveyed by Ricci, Aleni and Verbiest, and now by Gützlaff and Muirhead, also quoted by Wei Yuan and Xu Jiyu’s works are verified and enriched by the pen of many Chinese travellers. Among the great series of diplomatic and commercial envoys to the West, descriptions of Sicily can be found into the following travellers’ account: Binchun’s Chengcha biji, Zhang Deyi’s Hanghai shuqi and Suishi Faguo ji, Wang Tao’s Manyou suilu, Hong Xun’s Youli Yidali wenjian lu. The continuously growing availability of information about the West also developed the interest of some more open-minded scholars who started accepting the cultural and political influence of the West. As a result, Sicily appears in some of the works of the two important innovators Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. In particular, Liang Qichao, took Sicily and the Sicilian people’s contribution to the Italian unification process as a model and source of inspiration for Chinese people to obtain independence from the foreign oppression. The growing of the quantity and quality of information about Sicily circulating in China represents a slow crescendo in the interest to the Occident and the reasons of it probably lay in the same traditional conception of the world in the Chinese society which needed some centuries to accept the conception that in the world not only existed one “Middle Kingdom” but any country could be the centre of a flourishing culture.