Chinese Values at Crossroad

Chinese Values at Crossroad

What they have achieved in the past, what was the legacy, what has been going on in their minds, and how this people have been living in the society maybe is quite different from the western part of society. Even more important, anything that we can share, the west can share with the east, will be very educative and important to us. For example, in the western society we have a very much modernized process. Sometimes very materialistic. Chinese long traditions have provided a lot of things very beneficial for us to learn and emulate. Even we simply use the theory of Darwinism, anything that doesn't fit will disappear. Now for some culture and civilization, lasting for five or six thousand years, then anything can go to the test of time. Certainly we can learn a great deal from them. China now is a very materialistic society, too. So it becomes very important how China can preserve its legacy and its past heritage to serve its present and future benefits. A lot of people say China has suffered so much, poor and all the difficulties. We have to put aside the rest, the spiritual, the proper behavior. It cannot become better than the whole society become wonderful, and all the human relations become wonderful, and our more valuable part of history and culture will be able to resurface again.

China is not only famous for its national treasure, the giant pandas, but also the giant panda’s staple food -- bamboo. The Chinese love bamboo, and bamboo culture has been rooted in their minds for a long time. To the Chinese people, bamboo is a symbol of virtue. It reflects people’s souls and emotions.Bamboo is viewed as a symbol of traditional Chinese values. It is an example of the harmony between nature and human beings. Ancient Chinese people designated the plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum as the "four gentlemen", and pine, bamboo and plum as the "three friends in winter". People think its deep root denotes resoluteness; its tall, straight stem represents honor; its hollow interior modesty and its clean and spartan exterior exemplify chastity.Ancient Chinese literature held bamboo in profound esteem. This explains why there are so many writings and paintings dedicated to the plant

throughout history.

Possessing the most bamboo of any country in the world, China is well known as the Kingdom of Bamboo. China grows 400 species of bamboo, and one third of all known bamboo species in the world are grown in China. China has the largest bamboo planted area, and the area which produces the most bamboo in China is the south Yangtze River area -- a very popular destination among tourists from all around the world. Bamboo is mostly produced in South China, including regions like Sichuan, Chongqing, Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu provinces, as well as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The history of Chinese people planting and using bamboo can be traced back 7,000 years. As early as the Shang Dynasty, bamboo was already used in various aspects of ancient Chinese peo ple’s daily lives. It was used for food, clothing, housing, transportation, music instruments and even weapons. Before the Eastern Han Dynasty when paper was invented, strips of bamboo had been used as the most important writing medium more widely used oth er materials, such as silk, animal furs and rocks. China’s first books were crafted from bamboo strips on string. Thus bamboo played an important part in the daily life of ancient Chinese people, and its role as a writing medium helped keep history records and traditional Chinese culture for us to study today.

In traditional Chinese culture, bamboo is a symbol of Oriental beauty. It represents the character of moral integrity, resistance, modesty and loyalty. It also stands as an example of loneliness and elegance, among others. This value becomes one of the major themes in Chinese painting, calligraphy and poetry. For thousands of years, generations of artists praised bamboo in the name of this spirit. Bamboo has the title of "gentleman" among other plants. As a symbol of virtue, bamboo is always closely related to people of positive spirits. Famous Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Bai Juyi (772-846) summarized the merits of bamboo according to its characteristics: its deep root denotes resoluteness, straight stem represents honorability, its interior modesty and its clean exterior exemplifies chastity. Bamboo culture always plays a positive role in encouraging people to hold on when facing tough situations. Is this a loss? Every multilingual speaker knows instinctively that what you say is inseparable

from the way in which you say it. What is more, multilingualism is a daily intellectual exercise. Call it mental Tai chi, if you will. Not much can be done to safeguard linguistic persity at the village or even the regional level. Do not try to interfere with spoken languages either by banning them, or by artificially crystallizing them. They represent a natural process, best left alone. Written languages have also suffered from globalization – in ways that are rarely recognized. Borrowing words is not a problem in itself. All languages borrow a lot, at all times. Some have a double vocabulary, like English, half-Saxon, half-French or Latin, or Persian, two-thirds Iranian, one third Arabic. In both cases, the process has been one of slow cultural evolution, essentially steered by literate elites.

The novelty of, say, the last three decades, is the massive instant exposure through the media to foreign languages. It leads to the instant adoption of words which are not even phonetically adjusted to the borrowing language, be it French, Persian or Japanese. Worse, it results in word for word translations of phrases that neither fit grammatically, nor make clear sense. There have been equally drastic cases in history of massive borrowing of costume, music, eating customs, vessels included. In Tang China the adoption of Iranian dress forms and customs, which began already in Han times on a limited scale, became torrential. The face of China changed overnight, at least in aristocratic courts. The horsemen and court ladies in glazed pottery or the murals recovered from Tang tombs give us a graphic illustration of the phenomenon.

Traditionalists fulminated against the new fashions. They hated the Iranian rouge that Chinese ladies applied to their cheeks. The furious xenophobic Anlushan rebellion in the mid- 9th century AD devasted Buddhist sites (Buddhism was still seen as a foreign import) and tried to do away with all foreign influence. When the dust settled, the imprint of the loans remained, thoroughly recast in Chinese terms.

Before western and Chinese civilization came into close contact, Chinese people had always longed for a life depicted in traditional Chinese paintings. Those paintings present a harmonious coexistence of people and other life forms. Regarded as the essence of ancient Chinese philosophies, harmony has been deeply-rooted in the

minds of the Chinese people. On the one hand, it has contributed to the unique continuity of Chinese civilization. On the other, Chinese people became too much contented with their achievements to desire any further changes. As globalization deepens, it is bound to affect our ideal of harmony.

First, globalization urges China to speed up its modernization, which threatens our regard for the harmony between Man and Nature. For instance, many dams and hydropower stations are being built for economic benefits at the expense of the well-preserved natural habitats. However, ecological malpractice of such kind goes against the notion of harmonious coexistence in ancient Chinese philosophies. More than 2,000 years ago, long before the concept of environmental protection came into being, DuJiang Weir, a great irrigation project was built in southwestern China's Sichuan province. It succeeded both in controlling floods and in facilitating the agriculture without posing a threat to the environment. Moreover, globalization has brought with it intense competition. Traditionally, moderation is a golden principle, presiding over inter-personal relations in China. Today, however, motivated to come to the top, some people become so self-centered that they choose to sacrifice love, friendship and even family ties. Last but not least, perse cultures have met in China as a consequence of globalization. Therefore, a clash of cultures becomes inevitable. Unfortunately, the past decades have witnessed a huge loss of cultural heritage in China. In cities like Beijing and Xi'an, hundreds of century-old Chinese-style houses are being demolished to make room for skyscrapers, shopping malls and eight-lane expressways. From these examples, we see the disharmony brought about by globalization. Yet it is not globalization that is to blame. As long as we approach globalization with harmony in mind, its benefit will outweigh its cost. Take my hometown, Hangzhou, for example, thanks to the strenuous efforts made by the municipal government in achieving eco-development, various water birds have returned to the West Lake, calling it home again after years of migration elsewhere. From the lake bank, we see skateboarders and trick cyclists showing off together with people flying kites and kicking shuttlecocks on the plaza nearby. Although they

compose a picture quite distinct from traditional Chinese paintings, this picture conveys a modern sense of harmony in this era of globalization.

To conclude, I would like to quote from British philosopher Bertrand Russell. In contrasting Chinese and Western civilizations, he observed: "The distinctive merit of western civilization is the scientific method; the distinctive merit of the Chinese is a just conception of the ends of life. It is these two that one must hope to see gradually uniting." As we see the tremendous progress China has been making drawing on experience abroad, we may also expect the Chinese traditional value of harmony to enrich the world. I look forward to the time when Russell's prophecy comes true.

本文来源：https://www.bwwdw.com/article/pfpl.html