Elements of Chinese Culture in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220306.054How to use a DOI?

Keywords

John Steinbeck; East of Eden; Elements of Chinese culture

Abstract

The Western imagination of the East has a long history of worship, misinterpretation and distortion. A large number of elements of Chinese culture appear in Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, covering many aspects of life, including ritual, literature and art, and thought, with the number and depth much more than people can imagine. Steinbeck had no experience of living in China, and only visited Hong Kong in his later years. These elements of Chinese culture reflect his understanding and imagination of China and are regarded as interpretation of China from the standpoint of Westerners. However, Westerners are deeply influenced by mainstream western values and stereotypes and cannot be divorced from the historical inheritance of the era in which they lived. The elements of Chinese culture in Steinbeck’s writing provide a favourable perspective for Chinese to understand the influence of Chinese culture on Westerners, and also lay the foundation for Chinese to understand Westerners’ impressions of China, to change Westerners’ inherent prejudices about China, and to successfully build China’s national image in the world, ultimately realizing the aim of communication across cultures and values.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xincun Huo
AU  - Jingwei Zhong
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/03/30
TI  - Elements of Chinese Culture in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden
BT  - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 337
EP  - 342
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220306.054
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220306.054
ID  - Huo2022
ER  -