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Abstract Abstract: As the first native writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Sinclair Lewis occupies an important position in the history of American literature. Although he has never set foot on China, in his novels, especially in Main Street, the distant, antique and colorful Chinese culture is interwoven with mottled oriental color, and the author’s demands for changing the status quo and building a beautiful country are surging. Based on Lewis’s classic texts, this article explores the intentional structure of Chinese image generation in American native works by investigating the utopian and metaphorical Chinese cultural elements, such as Chinese clothing, catering, handicrafts and regional features. Lewis’s original intention of romantically writing Chinese culture is to construct the “other” space projected by native culture and take Chinese civilisation as a reference to express the writer’s dissatisfaction and anxiety about the local social and cultural conditions, hoping that the harmful ideas in his own culture will be gradually frustrated or even removed under the background of “other”.
Key Words: Sinclair Lewis; Chinese culture; Main Street; other
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