International Journal of Current Chinese Studies. 3 (2012): 05‐05 ISSN: 2171‐6374 THE HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF CHINESE‐WESTERN INTERCULTURAL MARRIAGE IN MODERN CHINA (FROM 1840 TO 1949): AN EARLY SAGA OF CROSS‐CULTURAL INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP Bo Qin1, Huan Xiong2 In the era of the global village, intercultural marriage between different races and nationalities is frequent. Although marriage is a very private affair for the individuals who participate in it, it also reflects and connects with many complex factors such as economic development, culture differences, political backgrounds and transition of traditions, in both China and the Western world. As a result, an ordinary marriage between a Chinese person and a Westerner is actually an episode in a sociological grand narrative. This paper reviews the history of Chinese‐Western marriage in modern China from 1840 to 1949, and it reveals the history of the earliest Chinese marriages to Westerners at the beginning of China’s opening up. Four types of CWIMs in modern China were studied. Both Western and Chinese governments’ policies and attitudes towards Chinese‐Western marriages in this period were also studied. This paper tries to find the connections between the micro private affairs and the macro national power, and seeks the possibilities to construct the explanatory mechanism from macro reality (nation, state & race)to micro variables (intercultural marriage). It provides an academic perspective of producing the general knowledge on the basis of constructing a local knowledge. Key words: Intercultural Marriage, Modern China, Gender, Conflict, Government Intervention Accepted 1 The School of Social Development & Public Policy, Fudan University (China),
[email protected] 2 School of Physical Education & Sports Science, South China Normal University (China),
[email protected] Correspondence to: Qin Bo, 10th floor of Arts Building, The School of Social Development & Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.