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More specifically, contemporary Chinese peasants’ images were considered as lower class in poor villages. In fact, they were encouraged to be united, educated, and to be stronger. Westerners ignored these personalities of Chinese peasants. The complexity and variability of Chinese peasants’ images had existed throughout the history. According to Liu Suli (2013:43), the publication of The Good Earth by Buck changed the peasant images in Westerners’ eyes. Focusing on Chinese peasants’ life, Pearl did research on the inherited personalities of Chinese farmers and she showed these images to foreigners, which changed Westerners’ traditional views about China and Chinese people.
2.1 Chinese Peasant Images from Westerners’ View
China was a country with a big population, ancient culture, a long history of civilization, and agriculture was essential to this country. Farmers ran the vast majority of the total population. They were the carriers of the long history of China, embodying the Chinese traditional virtues that would not change as the times change. Instead, they were always the same (Li Lin, 2011:43). They had a lot of virtues that we could see from the history, but because of that history, they had many weaknesses as well. Feudalism stifled their thoughts, such as valuing the male child only, superstition, and selfishness. These weaknesses should not be neglected at that time. For these factors, it was understandable that Westerners had negative opinions on Chinese people.
Starting from ancient China, Chinese people were considered as the most feudal group in the world. For example, after the decline of Qing dynasty, Westerners strongly criticized imperial China as a broken-down old ship which was introduced by many travel books. A philosopher called Herder from Germany, straightly pointed out that China was a feudal country, and he also thought Chinese people were smug. In 1748, Montesquieu wrote that the Qing dynasty was an autocratic empire in the principle of terror. After that, an English navy affirmed Montesquieu’s bad statement of Chinese people in his travel notes. The images of a feudal country and vicious Chinese people were showed to Westerners. As the time went, some positive images were improved. However, from the time of 18th century to the beginning of 19th century, Chinese images dramatically declined from “China craze” to the image of barbarous and backward country. Especially after the First Opium War, the national images completely plummeted. Even in modern China, the country was still the sign of stagnation, decline and full of corruption.