DISTANT AFRICA: CHINESE CULTURAL JUXTAPOSITIONS OF AN AFRICAN CULTURE

Abstract

Culture awareness, consciousness, representations and discernments have been fundamental themes different cultural groups adopt in the assessment of each other. When different cultures interact with each other, we often find them subjected to cultural paranoia, degradation, strengths and phobias as exhibits that are often transmitted in these assessments. The Chinese have made bold attempts to assess what constitutes an African culture through their own lens and their cultural focal view of microscopic instruments. Evidently, they have assumed that African culture is barbaric, uncivilized, archaic and cannibalistic in nature. Such bold assessment of this cultural group reveals the dilemma of most groups in their evaluation of each other. Culture generalizations and cultural strengths have been dynamic factors that come into play in dissecting the cultures of the other. In analyzing what constitutes an African culture, the Chinese adopted the notions of race, colonization, slavery and western literatures to make their judgments of what they termed as an African culture. This work is descriptive in nature because it examines past events and draws references from them.