“Such Will the Chinese Be as Their Mandarins Are Raised”...
China for the Pre-War Youth in the Books of Anna Lewicka
Abstract
In her novel Danusia i Chińczycy (Danusia and the Chinese) (1932), Anna Lewicka presents a selectively exotic and often ahistorical depiction of China. The descriptions reflect not the interwar period but rather the late 19th century. Analysis reveals that Lewicka based her portrayals on her 1894 publications, which were derived from French and American sources intended for readers more familiar with the Far East than Polish audiences. Although Lewicka adapted these texts to make them less “foreign” and more engaging, she still described the world of 19th-century imperial China when referring to the Chinese Republic of the 1930s in her later works. The modernization of certain facts suggests that these historical inaccuracies were not merely oversight but rather a deliberate adherence to the myth of an “unchanging, eternal China.”
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