Mutual Mimicry: China and the Francophone World

My project focuses on the mutual influences between China and the French-speaking world. This phase of my research will involve traveling to China and visiting sites of contact with Francophone culture; for example, the African quarter in the city of Guangzhou depicted in the Malian film Black Tea and the simulacrum of Paris named Tianducheng. My working hypothesis is that the power dynamic between China and France does not easily fit Saïd's or Bhabha's Orientalist paradigms of colonizer vs. colonized, since both empires have taken turns dominating each other and have imitated each other without coercion.