The traditional Western view of China often presents it as a homogeneous civilization shaped by Confucianism and the Central Plains. However, contemporary scholarship increasingly emphasizes China's cultural diversity, historical complexity, and regional differences. Southwest China, with its multiethnic communities, diverse landscapes, and rich biodiversity, offers a particularly important setting for examining China's pluralistic identity and its encounters with the outside world.

In Stage and Shutter: National Geographic and Southwest China, Luo Anping examines how National Geographic represented Southwest China over the past century. Through an analysis of the magazine's photographic and written coverage, the book explores how Western perceptions of the region developed and how these representations reflected broader encounters between Eastern and Western civilizations. The study focuses on four major themes: botany, transportation, ecology, and ethnicity.

The book is divided into five parts comprising twelve chapters. Its opening chapters introduce the history of the National Geographic Society, the magazine's editorial principles, and its coverage of China. Luo examines the relationship between photography and power, arguing that photographs do more than make distant places accessible to readers. They also construct particular narratives about people, cultures, and landscapes. The author traces the magazine's representations of China through five historical phases: “Encounter,” “Hand in Hand,” “Low Point,” “Reunion,” and “New Millennium.” These periods reveal changing American attitudes toward China and the evolving ways in which the country was presented to Western audiences.

The second part explores the magazine's coverage of Southwest China's plants and botanical resources. Luo examines Western plant collectors and their contributions to botanical science, focusing on figures such as George Forrest, Ernest Henry Wilson, and Joseph Rock. Their expeditions expanded Western knowledge of China's flora, but they also raise questions about imperialism, cultural appropriation, and the relationship between knowledge and power. The author highlights how Western scientific institutions often marginalized indigenous Chinese knowledge while presenting botanical discoveries through a Western-centered perspective.

The book's third part examines transportation and the representation of Southwest China as a remote and mysterious region. Early twentieth-century accounts frequently portrayed its roads and mountain passes as obstacles to modernization, reinforcing an image of China as stagnant and isolated. The magazine's coverage of the Burma Road during World War II provides another perspective, illustrating how transportation infrastructure connected Southwest China to international political and military developments.

Throughout the book, Luo demonstrates that National Geographic was not merely documenting Southwest China. Its photographs, narratives, and editorial choices helped shape Western understandings of the region. By connecting visual representation with the histories of science, imperialism, transportation, and cultural exchange, the study reveals the complicated relationship between knowledge production and cultural power.

Ultimately, Stage and Shutter offers a critical examination of how Southwest China was represented to Western audiences and how these representations influenced perceptions of China's cultural diversity, regional identity, and place in the modern world.

Text in Chinese, illustrated with b&w photos.

2023, Social Science Academic Press, paperback, 352 pp., as new