1) In China's modern history, a large number of writers and scholars have made profound and severe criticisms of the national character of the Chinese, among which the most influential are Lu Xun and Bai Yang. Lu Xun used ** to criticize the ignorant and numb Chinese of that generation, and fully expressed a complex emotion of "lamenting their misfortune and being angry with them". In the 80s, Taiwanese writer Bai Yang gave a series of speeches to once again address the national character of the Chinese, this time putting forward a more poignant term - "ugly Chinese".
2) In the "Uncle Ming's Miscellaneous Talk" readership, a friend blurted out "ugly Chinese" when he saw some people splashing and rolling around through the short **. This statement immediately caused a "counterattack" from other group members. My basic stance is that when discussing specific issues, we must adhere to the principle of judging things on a case-by-case basis, and we must not go to the top of the program at every turn; in particular, we must not generalize the situation of an individual and elevate the good or bad of an individual to the good or bad of an entire nation.
This involves how we should view the fierce criticism of the Chinese national character of the generations of Lu Xun and Bai Yang. My view is that Lu Xun and Bai Yang were not wrong, and they made a profound criticism of the shortcomings of the Chinese national character that they saw under the local conditions at that time. However, we must also be clear about the historical background in which this critique arose. Is this critique still relevant today? If Lu Xun's criticism of the national character of the Chinese in the late Qing and ** periods is taken out of context and rigidly applied directly to the criticism of today's Chinese, then we will make the mistake of eating the past and carving a boat to seek a sword.
4) Since the Opium War in modern times, the Chinese nation has been sinking on the world stage, and finally it is on the verge of extinction. In the process of exploring the road to salvation and survival, several generations of Chinese intellectuals have sharply criticized traditional Chinese culture. Around the time of the Xinhai Revolution and the May Fourth Movement, a new generation of Chinese intellectuals completely repudiated traditional Chinese culture. Their logic is very clear - if China is so backward, then the traditional Chinese culture that caused all this must also be backward, and only by defeating and discarding all traditional things can we build a new and modern China. At the time, the most vehemently iconoclastic voices even called for the abolition of Chinese characters in favor of pinyin. Looking at it now, this kind of thinking of "overthrowing all traditions" is somewhat extreme, and it is a typical example of "throwing away the footwash water with the children".
5) Today, when we discuss the fierce anti-traditional ideology among Chinese intellectuals during the May Fourth Movement, we should understand that their criticism of traditional Chinese culture has a clear and specific historical background. Chinese often say that overkill. The Chinese, who have slipped to the brink of extinction, have to rebel against tradition in the most drastic way in order to create a new world. From today's point of view, the intellectuals of the "May Fourth Movement" generation were one-sided and extreme in their view of traditional Chinese culture, but this mistake is a mistake in the process of historical development.
Since it is a mistake in the process of historical development, it must be discovered and corrected in the course of historical development. Today, the times are different; under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese have combined the basic tenets of Marxism with the practice of China's revolution and construction, opening up a completely new stage of development in the history of the Chinese nation. In this process, the Chinese people have awakened, the Chinese people have been organized, and the Chinese nation has burst out with a strong revolutionary spirit and innovative spirit. It is precisely because of this that we have put an end to the situation of China's semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in modern times and established a brand-new people's republic. It is precisely for this reason that it took us only 75 years to solve the problem of Chinese being beaten and starving in modern times, and now we are gradually solving the problem of being scolded.
7) Today's Chinese are definitely no longer the numb, ignorant, and ignorant generation of Chinese written by Lu Xun, nor are they the "ugly Chinese" of the next generation of Bai Yangbi. As far as individuals are concerned, there are of course good people and bad people among the Chinese, noble people and mean people. However, on the whole, today's Chinese, after being organized, have fully carried forward the good aspects of traditional Chinese culture, including a strong spirit of patriotism, the collectivist spirit of "one side is in trouble and all sides support", and the strong sense of crisis, fighting spirit and pragmatism inspired by thousands of years of severe living conditions. These are all important reasons why New China has created the largest modernization in human history in a short period of more than 70 years.
Today, it is still necessary for us to examine the collective ideological concepts of contemporary Chinese and then stir them up, but we must emphasize the need to regain historical and cultural self-confidence. The Chinese civilization has been around for 5,000 years and is the only civilization in the world that has not been interrupted, which has its own profound logic. In modern times, when the Chinese nation was sinking, Westerners used to despise us with a sense of racist superiority, but today, more and more Westerners recognize the uniqueness of Chinese civilization.
9) James Cleverly, the former British Foreign Secretary, once quoted the opening sentence of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and said, "The general trend of the world must be united for a long time, and it must be divided for a long time." He stressed that in the past 2,000 years, China has experienced many brutal wars, but China has always been able to stand up again in the end. Jimmy Rogers, the founder of the American quantum ** and a famous investor, also said that he has always understood why many countries, including ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, the British Empire, etc., can only be great once in history, but for thousands of years, China has been great and declined, but it can stand up again after each decline, as many as three or four times.
10) When more and more foreigners re-understand the unique charm of Chinese civilization based on the reality that the Chinese nation is moving towards great rejuvenation today, as Chinese, we ourselves must re-examine the traditional Chinese culture, criticize and transform the bad things, but we must inherit and pass on the good things well. To give a simple example, many people say that today's world is a world of great controversy, but I have seen in many parts of China that the three religious beliefs of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism coexist in harmony and do not contradict each other. This non-bigotry, non-extreme, and inclusive nature of Chinese culture is particularly important in today's world. The idea of "self-supremacy" based on monism in the United States and the West is narrow-minded, backward, and sometimes barbaric. Only the ideas of "one family from all over the world", "great harmony under heaven" and "beauty in its own way" based on the excellent traditional Chinese culture can allow different countries, nations, cultures and civilizations to learn from each other and appreciate each other, and finally move towards the era of a community with a shared future for mankind.
Finally, I especially recommend everyone to read the book of the great Confucian Gu Hongming in the late Qing Dynasty and **. While he criticized traditional Chinese culture throughout the era, he still firmly believed that our nation is spiritually worthy of being inferior to any other nation. It is particularly difficult for Gu Hongming to travel all over the world and be proficient in many foreign languages, but still maintain this kind of confidence and identification with traditional Chinese culture.
On November 17, 2021, Bai Yang's widow, Ms. Zhang Xianghua, officially issued a statement to publishers on both sides of the strait: "Yi Bai Yang confessed before his death that he will now stop publishing "The Ugly Chinese" forever." It is reported that in 2024, the contract signed between the book "Ugly Chinese" and the original publishing house on both sides of the strait will expire and will never be renewed thereafter. Ms. Zhang Xianghua even hopes that the cross-strait publishing house will no longer publish this book from now on. She stressed that Bai Yang repeatedly explained before his death that when the mainland civilization had progressed, the publication of this book would be abolished. What a far-sighted decision!