Lessons from Mount Lu: China and cross-cultural understanding

Su Shi, one of China’s greatest poets, has a simple but famous poem on viewing Mount Lu, presenting different images viewed from different perspectives. Reading this as an allegory of understanding China, this article examines the paradigmatic change of Sinology or China studies in the United States with regard to Paul Cohen’s “China-centered” approach, presents a critique of the dichotomous view of China as the reverse image of the West, and argues for the synthesis of different perspectives without privileging either the insider’s or the outsider’s view, hence the necessity to integrate Sinology with Chinese native scholarship, the desirability of a pluralistic view in cross-cultural hermeneutics.