Foreignness and Othering in Somerset Maugham's on A Chinese Screen

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From the very beginning of On a Chinese Screen China impresses with its unmistakable foreignness. The opening passage is characteristic of the writer’s style and is extremely symptomatic of the way the country will be portrayed throughout the travelogue. The very first images with which the author presents us are images of exoticism, backwardness and dilapidation: “You come to the row of hovels that leads up to the gate of the city. They are built of dried mud and so dilapidated that you feel a breath of wind will lay them flat upon the dusty earth from which they had been made. A string of camels, heavily laden, steps warily past you” (Maugham 1922, 11).

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