Facing the world, we can tell the Story of China well

General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward five hopes to the vast number of literary and art workers in his important speech at the opening ceremony of the Eleventh National Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Tenth National Congress of the China Writers Association. It should be said that these five aspects are a whole, reflecting the consistent ardent hope of the CPC for literary and art workers over the past hundred years, and also highlighting the special requirements of the new era. Among them, the fourth point emphasizes: "I hope that the vast number of literary and art workers will tell the Chinese story well with affection and strength, and show the world a credible, lovely and respectable image of China." Chinese people have always had a profound sense of the world, and contemporary Chinese literature and art should turn their attention to the world and to mankind. The vast number of literary and art workers must have confidence and ambition, inherit the flow of hundreds of generations, will change today, and create more excellent works that highlight China's aesthetic interests, disseminate contemporary Chinese values, and reflect the common value pursuit of all mankind. ”

Credible, lovely, and respectable: China in the new era must have a new aesthetic image

Chinese civilization is the world's longest-standing civilization, and compared with other equally ancient civilizations, it has not yet broken down. Our literary and artistic works since ancient times, from the "Book of Poetry" and "Chu Ci" to the Tang poems and Song Ci, to the Novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, all shine with the light of Chinese civilization. If the basic characteristics of literature and art are to reflect the social life at that time, then relying on the rich collection of ancient and modern literary and artistic treasures is enough to let the world feel the long-established China from one side. In the new era, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that "tell the Chinese story well with affection and strength, and show the world a credible, lovely and respectable image of China." The fundamental reason for this is that the development of Chinese civilization in the past five thousand years has reached the present day in the 21st century, unprecedented historical changes have come, China's image and relations between China and the world have undergone tremendous changes, and it is no longer possible to rely solely on ancient works to show China's image.

Following the path of continuous development, human beings have constructed a civilized world on earth. However, due to the limitations of the development of productive forces, especially the ability to communicate, in a fairly long historical stage, human beings in different regions were isolated from each other, each building its own civilization, not knowing how big the outside world is, what the state is, can only imagine. The same is true of the Chinese nation in the land of China, although the Silk Road has continued to develop since the Han Dynasty, but for the general public, it has little impact. Therefore, Chinese imagination of alien people and the world, full of relatively strange and strange images. The Qing Dynasty novel "Mirror Flower Edge" depicts overseas countries such as the intestinal country, the inuyasha country, the Nie Er country, the Xuangu country, etc., or people's strange shapes, or strange lifestyles, which is a fantasy technique of art, in fact, at this time, China's imagination of foreign countries is no longer so fantastic. However, this kind of fantasy imagination is believed to be true in more ancient texts, such as the Overseas Western Classics and the Great Wilderness Western Classics in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. This is enough to prove the depth of the gap between ancient civilizations.

Conversely, the same is true of the foreign people's understanding of China. From the 18th century onwards, the literary and artistic works created in ancient China gradually attracted more attention from Europeans. Goethe once mentioned a Ming Dynasty romance novel, "The Legend of the Wind and Moon", and greatly appreciated the etiquette tradition in it. However, the meta-drama "The Orphan of Zhao" has become an important text showing the Chinese spiritual outlook through voltaire's hand, fabricating a plot that Genghis Khan was also impressed by. Not long ago, preply, a Ukrainian online education platform based in the United States, used a variety of data to depict literary books that were translated from various countries in the world, and the representative of Modern and Contemporary Chinese literature was Lu Xun's "A Q Zheng Biography". This is not surprising in terms of literary achievement. However, for China's image, there are still some regrets, because the Chinese image represented by Ah Q is after all a backward cultural expression of China. An important fact in China's relations with the world is that in modern times, when Europe achieved modernization through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, China fell behind due to its old conventions, conformism, and rigidity. After the Opium War, China was forced to open its doors and Westerners came in. They constructed an image of China in their own sights, such as an article published in the New York Times in the 1870s depicting how the Chinese was outside the world trend, blindly hysterical in defense of Confucianism.

However, it all passed. After entering the 20th century, China underwent a great historical awakening. The New Culture Movement has activated the mechanism of internal self-examination and innovation of Chinese culture, on the one hand, China has revolutionized itself and criticized the backward aspects of traditional culture, on the other hand, it has opened its eyes to the world and absorbed and studied the world's advanced ideological concepts. At this time, with the influx of advanced ideas from other regions, Marxism entered China. In the words of Mao Zedong, "Chinese learn something new, this is Marxism-Leninism", and it is true that it will work as soon as you learn it. After a hundred years of struggle, the Communist Party of China led all the Chinese people to create a great unprecedented miracle. With the rise of China, China has made remarkable achievements and washed away the shame of modern history. American diplomat Kissinger described the 2008 Beijing Olympics as follows: With a loud bang, two thousand large drums broke the silence and continued to play for 10 minutes, as if to say: "Here we come!" We have become a fact, no longer ignored, no longer ridiculed, we are ready to dedicate civilization to the world! The period of poverty and weakness in China, the so-called "long 19th century," officially came to an end. At that moment, Beijing once again became the center of attention of the people of the world, and Chinese civilization once again became the focus of people's attention. Yes, China is coming. In 2010, China officially became the world's second largest economy.

Looking at the past century, this is a great historical process in itself, in this historical process, many Chinese writers and artists have made their contributions and created many excellent literary and artistic works, which can let the world feel the credible, lovely and respectable image of China. Although Ah Q himself is a backward Chinese image, Lu Xun's profound revelation of its existence means the great awakening of the Chinese nation. However, it should be admitted that the story of China's rise has come too quickly, the self-consciousness of Chinese is still lagging behind, and the works that truly consciously show the image and spirit of China's rise are still very insufficient, and the epic works with sufficient height are not enough. Therefore, literary and art workers should be fully conscious of the great changes of the times, tell Chinese stories well, and display the new and true Chinese spirit, which is the lofty historical mission of Chinese literary and art workers.

To tell the Chinese story well, we must look to the world and to mankind

According to General Secretary Xi Jinping, in order to show the world a credible, lovely and respectable image of China, contemporary Chinese literature and art should turn its attention to the world and to mankind. That is to say, when highlighting China's aesthetic interest and disseminating contemporary Chinese values, it is necessary to reflect the common value pursuit of all mankind.

This is a statement with a high aesthetic interest. This means that Chinese literary and art workers use their own works to show China's image, not only to focus on China itself, but to invest in the world, to human beings, to use the world vision to build China's image. What is involved here is the relationship between the nationality and the universality of literature and art.

As Lu Xun said, the more local the color, the easier it is to become the world. The nation-state is a part of the world, especially a big country like China, the comprehensive scale accounts for a large proportion of the world, leaving China to talk about the world must be too big a gap. The national literature and art created by China will inevitably become a part of the world's literature and art. In this sense, the transformation of the national consciousness of the Chinese and even the customs and customs of China into literary and artistic works has added endless treasures to world literature. China is constantly moving towards the world, and our modern vision is to live in friendship with the world and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind. So, what kind of intention does China want to convey to the world through its own literature and art? How can China prove itself to be credible, lovely, and honorable? That is in line with the spirit of the common pursuit of mankind, that is, truth, goodness and beauty. In this way, Chinese writers and artists are faced with the problem of connecting Chinese values with the common values of all mankind, and Chinese writers and artists cannot only understand their own values and embody this concept in their works, but also understand the common values of all mankind and their aesthetic expression.

General Secretary Xi Jinping said in his literary self-description: "Dostoevsky is the most in-depth Russian writer, Tolstoy is the most extensive Russian writer, compared to the two, I prefer Tolstoy." Of Tolstoy's three masterpieces, I prefer War and Peace, of course, Resurrection gives people a lot of spiritual reflection. I also like Sholokhov, and his "Quiet Don" is indeed a very profound reflection of the changes and human nature of the big times. "I was impressed by Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea's depictions of wild winds and rainstorms, huge waves and boats, old men and sharks. So, I wanted to experience the spiritual world and the atmosphere of the field when Hemingway wrote those stories. It should be said that General Secretary Xi Jinping's self-description has touched on the expression of the common values of all mankind in foreign literature. These works are not only of their own people, but at the same time they are of the world and all mankind. Only in this way can readers of other nationalities feel the existence of a common value of all mankind.

The era of globalization has provided us with the opportunity to go global in terms of concepts and technologies, and the peoples of all countries have exchanged with each other, are close to each other, and directly integrate values. However, the direct exchange of peoples, especially the substantive integration of peoples, is limited after all, and the existence of the treasure house of world literature and art can be spiritually compensated. That is to say, Chinese writers and artists must deeply understand the common values of all mankind and their aesthetic expressions, and then creatively integrate them into their own creations.

In fact, in modern times, especially in the process of the new cultural movement at the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese people have accepted the positive aspects of the common values of all mankind when reading literary and artistic works from other regions, realized the shortcomings of their own national values, and at the same time integrated the advantages of the two, enhancing the epochality of Chinese culture and civilization. Chinese writers and artists such as Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Ba Jin, Lao She, Cao Yu and others have set their sights on the world and to mankind, thus showing the integration of Chinese values and the common values of all mankind in their works, making Chinese works more modern and adding Chinese characteristics to the common values of all mankind in the world literature and art. Those who once had a cultural conservatism stand to resist foreign literature and art and social ideological trends, which violated the trend of world civilization and naturally encountered elimination.

Lu Xun said it well, "Although the Han and Tang Dynasties also had border troubles, their courage was great, and the people had the self-confidence not to be slaves of other races, or they did not even think that when they took foreign things, they were like capturing them, driven freely, and never minded." As soon as the decay comes, the nerves are weakened and allergic, and whenever I encounter something foreign, I feel as if he has come to capture me, pushing back, trembling, retreating, escaping, shaking into a mess, and must think of a reason to cover up, and the national essence becomes the treasure of the king and the slave. In today's China, "boldness is great" has far surpassed the Han and Tang Dynasties, far from the "time of decay and decay", and has turned its attention to the world and to mankind, which is an inevitable choice for Chinese literary and artistic creation in the new era, and there should be no hesitation.

(The author is a professor at the Party School of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China)