THE URBAN HETEROTOPIA CONSTRUCT IN SELECTED BRITISH TRAVEL WRITING ABOUT CHINA IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Ding Meijie; Yvonne Michelle Campbell

doi:10.29121/shodhkosh.v7.i1.2026.8333

Authors

Ding Meijie Faculty of Education, Language and Communication, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Sarawak, Malaysia
Yvonne Michelle Campbell Faculty of Education, Language and Communication, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Sarawak, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v7.i1.2026.8333

Keywords:

Heterotopia, British Travel Writing, Colonial Space, Beijing, Shanghai

Abstract [English]

This paper investigates how early twentieth-century British travel writing constructs Chinese urban space as heterotopia, focusing on representations of Beijing and Shanghai in selected texts by Juliet Bredon and Christopher New. While existing scholarship has examined Orientalist discourse and narrative strategies in Western travel writing, it has rarely treated urban space as a structured, meaning-producing field. This study addresses that gap by operationalizing Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia through two key functions—spatial isolation and spatial juxtaposition—to analyze how these cities are not simply described but actively produced as ideological spaces. Drawing on post-Foucauldian spatial theory and postcolonial criticism, the paper demonstrates that Beijing is constructed as a heterotopia of ritualized isolation, while Shanghai emerges as a heterotopia of colonial juxtaposition. The study argues that spatial heterotopia functions as a narrative technology through which British travel writing organizes imperial vision, cultural difference, and political hierarchy.

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