Chinese characters on old European etchings
Have you noticed the Chinese characters on the pictures in old European books about China? Some of them are OK, others are flipped around, and some are downright illegible. I wonder if anybody has done a study on this, it would be a fascinating topic.
Here are, for example, some pictures from from William Alexander's famous book, The Costume of China, published in 1805 in London. You can see that of the Chinese characters on the pictures look OK, some not. My question is, why? If the artist does not know how to read and write Chinese, and in the case of Alexander I think he did not, then how come some of the characters are legible?
Chinese characters over a window, flipped horizontally.
Chinese characters on a gate. You can recognize the character sheng (holy) but not the other one. And the other characters along the horizontal planks are illegible to me, too.
These characters are completely illegible to me but I can sort of make out that they are flipped.
Here are, for example, some pictures from from William Alexander's famous book, The Costume of China, published in 1805 in London. You can see that of the Chinese characters on the pictures look OK, some not. My question is, why? If the artist does not know how to read and write Chinese, and in the case of Alexander I think he did not, then how come some of the characters are legible?
Chinese characters over a window, flipped horizontally.
Chinese characters on a gate. You can recognize the character sheng (holy) but not the other one. And the other characters along the horizontal planks are illegible to me, too.
These characters are completely illegible to me but I can sort of make out that they are flipped.
Labels: Foreign views of China
