ABSTRACT
The increasing importance of the Sinosphere on global politics and economics in the early twenty-first century has led to a reevaluation of Chinese culture in transnational contexts. The Beat Generation writers of the 1950s and 60s forged a new cultural sensibility through new, experimental, and spontaneous literary forms. They attempt to capture their desire to experience physicality and the natural world through travel and lifestyle experimentation in their works, and by doing so created a countercultural movement and literary sensibility that continues to inspire cultural production across the globe. The context of post-1949 Communist China in terms of literary production and criticism can appear bewildering to a Western reader. The alterity that existed between the United States and China could in effect be bypassed by the narratives of dislocation and transnationalism of Beat literature. Representations of China in Beat texts, and the interaction of Beat writers with China reveal a significant aspect of Beat sensibility.
