Abstract

Lobster Land: A Traveler in China

This article focuses on the views of the author on the Great Wall of China. According to the author, the Great Wall defended and protected China from the void, from nothing. China was what was, what existed, what was important. Outside China there was nothing, nothing existed, and nothing had any importance. The message of the Great Wall and its ideology, then, are strictly Chinese. They are the message and the psychology of a conservatism that is rather special. It is not political not military, not social and not economic, though there is something of all those in it. One might almost say it was biological and aesthetic. The Great Wall was built against the barbarians because the barbarians might have introduced new blood and new ideas into China.