The East’s representations are based on foreign relations. By changing foreign policy, the perm takes one step towards solving Orientalism.

Xiaomei Chen’s theories regarding Occidentalism can help situate such adaptive repurposing in the larger context of post-Mao intellectual counter-discourses. In her examination of post-Mao Chinese culture, she distinguishes China’s official government discourses from its (dissident) 20 FLAIR DONGLAI SHI intellectual counter-discourses and defines Occidentalism as ‘a discursive practice that, by constructing the Western Other, has allowed the Orient to participate actively and with indigenous creativity in the process of self-appropriation, even after being appropriated and constructed by Western Others’.49 In other words, Occidentalism in post-Mao counter- discourses often involves the recycling of stereotypes created by Western Orientalism for the purpose of self-criticism, and this constitutes the basic mechanism of the adaptive comparative in post-Mao Chinese literature. As a case in point, Chen devotes a whole chapter to analyse Su Xiaokang’s 1988 documentary River Elegy (He Shang,), which has used numerous Orientalist clichés, including ‘Oriental despotism’ and ‘the Asiatic mode of production’, to criticize Chinese culture. The documentary is often regarded as one of the cultural triggers for the 1989 Tiananmen protest.50  Although Chen does not mention Wang Lixiong in her book, China Tidal Wave’s Occidentalist commonality with River Elegy is more than evident. Su has even written the back-cover blurb for the 2008 Taiwanese edition of Wang’s book, which reads: ‘Such a grand and well-organized political speculation; it might as well be the first in the history of contemporary Chinese literature.’51 Similar to Su’s evocation of Western Orientalist tropes in his documentary, Wang’s Occidentalist appropriation of fin-de-siècle Yellow Perilism can be viewed as a form of mimicry as well. But different from the kind of anti- colonial mimicry mentioned by Homi Bhabha, the Occidentalist mimicry is about constant anti-authoritarian self-mocking.52 This back-and-forth game of appropriation and mimicry is a testament to Chen’s post- structural conclusion that ‘Orientalism and Occidentalism must be seen as signifying practices having no permanent or essential content.’53 The same applies to Yellow Perilism as a travelling discourse: instead of some kind of undisputable metaphysical truth, it is merely a performative cultural practice that shifts its functions and allegiances according to the situated socio-political agenda of its practitioner.