Ezra Pound and China, the first collection to explore the American poet's career-long relationship with China, considers how Pound's engagement with the Orient broadens the textual, cultural, and political boundaries of his modernism. The book's contributors discuss, among other topics, issues of cultural transmission; the influence of Pound's Chinese studies on twentieth-century poetics; the importance of his work to contemporary theories of translation; and the effects of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism on Pound's political and economic thought. Richly illustrated, the book draws readers closer to the heart of Pound's vision. Ezra Pound and China will become an invaluable resource to students and scholars of Pound, cultural studies, translation theory, poetics, Confucianism, and literary transmission and reception. Zhaoming Qian is Professor of English, the University of New Orleans. Ezra Pound & China By Zhaoming Qian University of Michigan Press Copyright © 2003 Zhaoming Qian All right reserved. ISBN: 0472068296 Constructing the Orient: Pounds American Vision IRA B. NADEL A three-storied house in a Philadelphia suburb was only one of many locales for Pounds introduction to the Orient. But there, on Fernbrook Avenue in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, the young Ezra Pound encountered his first Chinese object: a Ming dynasty vase. At Aunt Frank Westons in New York, he saw a remarkable screen book, a sequence of oriental scenes adorned with poems in Chinese and Japanese ideograms. The oriental collections in the museums of Philadelphia provided additional exposure to Chinese culture, preparing Pound for his later absorption in Orientalism developed through the work of Laurence Binyon, Ernest Fenollosa, No drama, and his own study of Chinese. Pound, himself, displayed an early interest in things oriental. At one of his first public appearances, he chose an oriental disguise. He was sixteen and attending a Halloween party in Philadelphia where he met Hilda Doolittle, later the imagist poet H.D., for the first time. He wore a green robe that appeared to be Chinese, although he said it was acquired in Tunis some years earlier with his aunt (it washe went there in 1898 with Aunt Frank). This robe was much discussed, writes H.D. I suppose it was something Indo-Chinaish. It went with Ezra. Family interest in China originated in Homer and Isabel Pounds concern with the work of Christian missionaries in China. Accounts of travel, religious work, and trade formed part of the familys reading, encouraged by their involvementfrom teaching to administration and regular attendancewith the Calvary Presbyterian Church in Wyncote. But the oriental objects in the Pound home indicate more than homage to a foreign culture or curiosity with things Chinese for the young Pound. They represent Philadelphias continuing attraction to the material culture of China, which had a formative role in Pounds earliest conception of the Orient. Chinese decorative and fine art formed Pounds initial encounter with China and contributed to his likely being the first major American writer to respond more to oriental art than to its literary tradition. Chinese painting and imagery acted as a catalyst for his writing and formation of his work. Although this vision would overlook some of the harsher aspects of Chinese life, generally absent in the imagery of China represented through the visual arts, and neglect some of the more violent aspects of contemporary Chinese history such as the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, Pound nevertheless found in the cultural heritage of Philadelphias celebration of China the beginnings of a lifelong preoccupation with the country. Philadelphia, where the Pounds had moved in 1889, was at the center of Americas response to the Orient, reflecting a national fascination with oriental art. The citys link with China originated in eighteenth-century trade, and Philadelphia soon became one of the earliest repositories of Chinese art and decorative objects, the bounty of traders, collectors, and importers. Americas supposedly first sinologist, Robert Waln Jr., author of an important 475-page history of China (published 1823), was from Philadelphia. The prominent China merchant Benjamin Chew Wilcocks of Philadelphia was known for his Oriental collection, which included a mezzotint of a famous Canton merchant, Houqua, symbolizing a link between the commerce of China and Philadelphia, intensified when it was discovered that Beijing and Philadelphia shared the same latitude (forty degrees). This led some to believe that Chinese silk and tea could easily be cultivated in Pennsylvania. In 1828 construction began of a one-hundred-foot pagoda with a Chinese garden and pavilion in Philadelphias Fairmont Park (where the Philadelphia Museum of Art would be located), a copy of a tower in Canton. It was popularly known as The Temple of Confucius. The 1839 opening of Nathan Dunns museum of Chinese object