A liminal space between the self and the other: the metropolitan-local dynamic in Western travel writing on the Hualin Temple, Guangzhou

This article investigates Western (primarily British and American) travel writing on the Hualin Temple—known to many Westerners as the Temple of the Five Hundred Genii—in Guangzhou (then Canton) from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, to contribute to studies on Western travel writing on China during that approximate period. Placing the travel writing corpus and its key characteristics—marked heterogeneity and weakened otherness—within, first, metropolitan travel writing tropes, and second, local historical-geographical contexts, this article shows how these features were shaped by the dynamic interrelation between the two spheres, in which the metropolitan baggage and identities were constantly disrupted by the on-the-ground cross-cultural realities. By analyzing the Chinese-Western interactions centered on the temple as a Cantonese and Chinese tourist site for visitors worldwide, this article reveals the pivotal role of local and trans-local matters in the global tourist (re)production of (knowledge about) China.