Ge Jianxiong: Confucius and Zhang Ziyi should each get their own place

When I was young, I listened to adults, why do foreign letters bend? Because Confucius led a donkey to a foreign country, foreigners wanted to ask Confucius for advice, but because they did not understand Chinese could not communicate. After Confucius left, they found that the dung pulled out by Confucius's donkey was curved, and they thought that the dung pulled by the saint's donkey must also be exquisite, so they created a curved letter. For example, when eating tangyuan, adults will tell us that foreigners come to China to eat tangyuan, which is incredible: how can Chinese put the stuffing into the middle of the tangyuan, but make the tangyuan unbroken? If these are just adults deceiving children, or just the sayings circulating among the foolish people in the countryside, then the following examples are what I heard from the "situation report" after I became a middle school teacher. When US President Richard Nixon visited China, he was very surprised to see Chinese fried rice flowers once, saying: "This thing should be promoted to the whole world, Chinese has made a great contribution to solving the food problem." "He said that he wanted to bring a stir-fried rice machine from China to go back to study and study." At that time, I was also convinced and conveyed it to the students in class. Until I arrived in the United States twenty years ago, I learned that China's stir-fried rice machine was learned from the West, and the corn flowers burst by the American machine were no smaller than China's fried rice flowers.

These are not jokes, but reflect a long-standing mentality of the Chinese – China was at least once the richest and most civilized country in the world, and Chinese culture is the best. Don't think that foreigners have money and machines and guns, and they are far less culturally than our Chinese. Because of this, Chinese before modern times all believed that "barbarians" (foreigners or foreigners) could only become Chinese and change from beasts to humans if they seriously studied Chinese civilization. But this depends on whether they themselves have enough education, and not everyone has the qualifications to learn Chinese culture. Because of this, Chinese has always been not enthusiastic about exporting civilization, even if foreigners admire The Chinese style, Chinese will worry that they will not learn, it is good to be rough and hairy, and only when they reach the level of proficiency like Matteo Ricci, they can be called "Xiru". Almost all of China's Four Books and Five Classics and Famous Works are translated into foreign languages by foreigners, rather than being translated by the Chinese government or Chinese and provided to foreigners after taking the initiative to translate them.

However, when Chinese finally realized his backwardness, there was a fundamental change in this attitude. Except for a few people who have completely lost confidence in Chinese culture, and even regard it as a burden or a curse, most people still maintain self-confidence, or excessive self-confidence, and always hope that foreigners can attach importance to Chinese culture, learn Chinese culture, and preferably learn Chinese culture like Chinese. This is already a big step forward compared to the attitude of self-congratulation behind closed doors, but good intentions do not mean that there are ideal results. We once politicized culture and discarded the essence of traditional culture, so that foreigners who studied Chinese in Beijing could read the People's Diary fluently, but did not write letters in Chinese. An American scholar once told me about his experience: he was a Chinese studying in Taiwan, and when the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe visited the United States during the Cultural Revolution, he acted as an interpreter and translated the governor's words into: "A little bit of discretion, please enjoy the light." "As a result, the guests were indifferent because they no longer understood the elegant language." The real Chinese culture seems to really have to go to the "wild" outside the mainland to ask for it.

Fortunately Chinese finally re-realized the great power of the essence of traditional culture and committed to disseminating it to the outside world. According to reports, China has set up more than 100 Confucius Institutes abroad and will be further expanded to hundreds. Shandong Province has invested heavily in the establishment of a worldwide "Confucius Prize" at UNESCO. It is only natural that Confucius's name became a symbol of Chinese culture, because he has long been famous in the world as a great thinker and educator. The words Confucianism, Confucianism, and Confucian scholars, translated into Western languages, are almost all derived from transliterations of the word "Confucius.". When it comes to traditional Chinese culture, Confucius is undoubtedly the most representative world figure. Although traditional culture is not only Confucianism, the development of Chinese culture behind Confucius has long surpassed Confucius, but no one can replace him.

However, traditional Chinese culture cannot have only one representative figure, and cannot only have Ya culture, Confucian culture, and spiritual culture. An introduction to contemporary Chinese culture cannot be limited to tradition. Moreover, foreigners have different interests and hobbies in Chinese culture, and different levels and groups have different requirements, and these cannot rely on only one Confucius. From this point of view, all aspects of Chinese culture – tradition and modernity, elegance and customs, Han and ethnic minorities, mainland China and Hong Kong and Taiwan, domestic and overseas – have their own unique roles, can have representative figures, and cannot be substituted for each other. There are indeed many people who talk to me about Confucius, but some foreigners only know Bruce Lee, Yao Ming or Zhang Ziyi; some foreigners appreciate Confucian classics, while others only want to learn Chinese kung fu and play tai chi.

Some people say that Zhang Ziyi is mainly developing in the United States, and the films he plays are mainly American films, which are already "yellow skin and white heart" and can no longer reflect Chinese culture. If you look at it this way, Yao Ming is the same, he plays basketball and speaks English, of course, can not reflect Chinese culture. But they are all Chinese, who have been educated and educated by Chinese culture since childhood, and they inevitably have the influence of Chinese culture. Their ability to take advantage in typical Western cultures such as film, television and basketball just proves that Chinese culture has strong vitality and broad inclusiveness, and also shows the ability of the young generation of China, and of course, it is also part of China's contemporary culture. Just as we never forget that Dashan is a foreigner when we hear him talk to each other in fluent Chinese, Americans also think of their Chinese factors when they admire Zhang Ziyi and Yao Ming.

The status of Confucius is unshakable, and Zhang Ziyi and Yao Ming also need to get what they want, so that Chinese culture can be more colorful in the world. (17 May 2006)