East Is East: Mapping China in Dickensian London

Abstract:The article focuses on the presence of China—its citizens, its culture—on the map of London during the Victorian age, and on the role Dickens played in locating and describing such space in the eastern part of the great metropolis and hub of the Empire. There is a mirroring between London and Canton, a curious coincidence of toponyms, suggestive of an ambiguous cultural interface.This ambivalence is associated with the victorious wars waged by England against China in order to retain the monopoly on opium trade. The intercourse between the two nations is moulded by Dickens and his contemporary journalists in ways that suggest hegemony, conflict, otherness, and the perils of miscegenation. The small Chinese community of Limehouse becomes part and target of sensational journalism and urban tourism, producing descriptions that include shades of grotesque steeped in exoticism. Opium dens are the targets of such descriptions—fear and fascination colour the spaces represented in a way that increases indeterminacy.The article dwells on the map of China, as in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis trilogy set against the China–Bengal relationship (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, Flood of Fire), as well as on the map of London, especially the Limehouse area, close to the West India and East India docks. This part of London would acquire specific coloration during the Victorian age, owing, among others, to Dickens's role in describing its cultural geography.