This volume explores the notions of excess, intemperance and overabundance in cultures and literatures of both the English- and Chinese-speaking worlds. It concentrates on some aspects of literary and cultural meanings of excess(es) in various theories and practices of these antipodean territories of human experience and consciousnesses, bringing together what is common between them and what sets the West apart from the East: eroticism, drug abuse, alcoholism, urban concepts, music, food, etc. In times of a serious crisis of Western-style capitalism, growing consumerism and the collapse of traditional values, the eyes of the world are now turned to the East, seeking solutions in China, Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong for what may come as Eastern-style neopostmodernism.

This book analyses representations of East Asia, mainly China and Japan, in selected Anglophone novels and films. Starting with the earliest texts and accounts, the first two chapters explore wider historical and cultural contexts of the mutual influences between the cultures of the East and West. The subsequent three chapters discuss symptomatic examples of contemporary Anglophone films and novels and seek to show how various cultural flows have continued to mould Western images of East Asia. The book focuses on narratives that highlight Western subjects transforming or becoming reinvigorated under the East Asian influence and explores such issues as the impact of East Asian martial arts and religious practices on Western masculinities, East Asian motifs in utopian and dystopian fiction, and contemporary depictions of Asian-Western romantic relationships.