Liang Qichao, who was the first modern scholar to use the term “science fiction”, to begin translating and writing science fiction, and to advocate a revolution in the world of fiction, wrote his science fiction novel The Future of New China in 1902. In The Future of New China, Liang envisioned China in 1962 as a country that had already established a constitutional monarchy through reforms and become a world power, from the perspective of the future perfect tense. Unlike Western utopian novels that mimic travelogues, Liang Qichao does not stretch and fictionalize space, but stretches time to the future, and the place where his story takes place is still the land of China, similar to the transplantation of the imagery of the Western world of the recent past to the China of the future, and the use of utopian imaginings as the political ideals of the future perfect tense, thus forming a transcendence of the Western utopian tradition. Between 1918 and 1920, Liang Qichao personally visited and toured Europe, the blueprint of his utopia, where he accomplished the transformation of his scientific outlook and cultural outlook on the East and the West, realizing a non-dualistic transcendence of secondary school and Western learning, improvement and revolution, and proposing a new conception of the construction of national identity in modern China. Therefore, this paper intends to start from Liang Qichao's science fiction novel the Future of New China during his travels to Japan to his travelogue My Travel Impressions in Europe during his travels to Europe, and explore the time-space transformation of his science fiction and travelogue to the Western utopian tradition, which is implied by the creative transplantation of his creative methods, contents and themes, and the intertextualization of the literary imagination and the social reality, i.e. the entanglement and paradox of scientism and humanism inside and outside of the text, and between the text and the reality. The intertextualization of literary imagination and social reality, that is, the entanglement and paradox of scientism and humanism inside and outside the text, between text and reality. Liang Qichao, from his firm support of Western learning and his advocacy of destruction and revolution to his rethinking of the value of secondary school, tended to a kind of fusion of East and West, and this kind of thinking, which abandons the dichotomy and strives for a certain kind of balance between the ideas of “the world's commonwealth” and “qiqiqi” can be regarded as the “shadow” of science fiction of the later generations. This idea of giving up the binary opposition and striving for a certain balance between the ideas of “commonwealth of the world” and “unity of things” can be regarded as a reflection of the “dark consciousness” and modern consciousness of science fiction in the later generations, as well as a small reflection of the post-human poetics in the birth of science fiction in China.

In 1922, the French newspaper La Politique de Pékin（《北京政闻报》）published Les chevaliers chinois, roman de mœurs et d'aventures, which is currently widely recognized by academic circles as the earliest French single-volume translation of "Water Margin"（《水浒传》）. The translator, Panking, was described as a "French scholar," but there are varying opinions on which chapters of "Water Margin" he translated. This French single-volume edition bears the Chinese title "武松说荟," and it selectively translates the portions featuring Wu Song from chapters 22 to 32 of "Water Margin." In reality, Panking was Pan Jing, a native of Nanhai, Guangdong Province. Pan Jing was not only a student at the Imperial University of Peking, one of the last batch of jinshi (highest degree in traditional Chinese imperial examinations) in the late Qing Dynasty, but also one of the early officially-sent students to study in France. After returning from France, Pan Jing primarily served in the political sphere and later engaged in education and cultural and historical work. In the history of Sino-French literary exchanges, Pan Jing actively participated in the external communication and translation of Chinese culture. His writings possess both distinct era characteristics and a strong personal style and unique ideological perspectives. During a time of social unrest and intense ideological and cultural change, while Pan Jing was not a pivotal figure capable of turning the tide, his ideological concepts and cultural horizons were nurtured in this era of transition between old and new. His writings document the culture and thought of modern China and European society, reflecting the cultural identity, value orientations, and spiritual demeanor of a generation of Chinese scholars. His rich and forward-thinking Sino-French cultural exchanges and literary practices directly participated in the construction of the world identity of Chinese literature and culture. From the list of students at the Imperial University of Peking, government gazette appointments, and notes and articles by figures such as Qian Zhongshu, among other documents, we can roughly outline Pan Jing's life trajectory of academic pursuit and political career. However, it is through his poetry, prose, and translations, to which he devoted great effort, that we gain a deeper understanding of Pan Jing's cultural horizons and ideological concepts. Although his thoughts and voice lie deep within history and memory, they still shine brightly.

With the advancement of media technology, people increasingly rely on images, videos, and even simulacra in the mass media to construct the "collective consciousness" of foreign countries. The result of this deep mediatization is that the imagination of a foreign country becomes a textual representation, blurring the boundaries between "reality" and "virtual," as well as between "author" and "collective." Consequently, the study of foreign country images transcends the scope of comparative literature research and become part of cultural studies. This broad-sense image research has brought a broader research domain for the study of foreign country images, enabling the study to radiate into various aspects of social life.

Macroscopically, the prevalence and over-spread of image research reflect the consequences of the "pictorial turn" in culture. It brings about a series of media landscapes, and even spectacles, generated by stimulating the senses, producing meaning, and guiding consumption under the "logic of visual existence". Microscopically, the construction of exotic images involves cross-regional, cross-national, and cross-cultural communication, which is worthy of further investigation. Therefore, the research on foreign country images needs to transform from the previous scattered research that emphasizes “description” into an integrated research that can interpret and construct the texts of foreign countries in mass media.Semiotics can provide an operational theoretical solution for understanding the production, formation, and evolution of foreign country images.

This study will select Northern Europe as a specific case for the construction of a foreign country image. Firstly, Northern Europe seems relatively unfamiliar and distant, to some extent, marginalizing our perception of it. Secondly, it is precisely the "sense of alienation" in culture, geography, or society that makes our imagination of Northern Europe purer. Brands, geographical landscapes and socio-cultural characteristics have formed a large number of vague and fragmented semiotic impressions, making us more reliant on imagination to build the image of Northern Europe. Finally, we have to pay attention to the rapidly changing world, such as the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, and Finland and Sweden joining NATO. This will have a subtle impact on China's future exchanges with Northern Europe in various fields. In-depth understanding of the Chinese society's image perception of Northern Europe can provide some background references for future peaceful exchanges between the two sides. Ultimately, as an imagination of the "other," the ultimate goal of the image of a foreign country has never been to become a corresponding "fact," but to become a mirror to reflect the "self." This study attempts to find a way to understand the self through the research on the construction of the image of a foreign country.