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April 26, 2017

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

To revive diminishing interest in the wonder of life, feed people’s passion for real books

By Wan Lixin | 00:01 UTC+8 April 26, 2017 | Print Edition

ONE of the most discussed topics over last weekend was reading, as Sunday was World Reading Day (or World Book and Copyright Day).

There were postings emphasizing the significance of reading. One of the largest online stores, dangdang.com, marketed many of its books at less than half price. There were even reports suggesting a renaissance of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

On April 18, an institute published a survey suggesting that adult Chinese read on average 8 books last year, of which 4.6 were paper books.

This was only a fraction of that for Japanese or Russians. But take heart: the figure has been going up steadily in recent years. An added solace is that half of the surveyed express their preference for paper books.

Liang Junjian from Qinghua University explained this as a result of people’s disenchantment with the “fragmentized absorption of knowledge.”

“The ease with which one can turn the pages of paper books back and forth means longer reading time and higher concentration,” he said.

There was a time when knowledge was power. But you are not so sure if you have been immersed in the virtual space of scandals, slurs, shocking truths, or lies, even for a few hours. You become easily aware of the danger of a brave new post-truth world born of the disdain for the world of life, trees, and flowers.

Last Friday my son took a school tour of Guyiyuan in Jiading, a famed 10-hectare landscaped garden of bamboos, secluded trails among flowers and rocks, elegant antiquated buildings, and wooden boards inscribed with poetic couplets. A place I have often heard of, but yet to visit.

Simply boring

So I asked my son how he thought of it. There is nothing to see. Boring. Once inside the garden, all the class in other groups quickly dispersed, finding place so that they could stoop over their mobile phones. The group my son belonged to were better. They spent the time lining up for the famed authentic Nanxiang dumpling marketed by crafty vendors from outside the garden fence, at 55 yuan (US$8.0) for one basket of 30 diminutive dumplings. My son ate half of it for his breakfast the next day.

Many children have lost any interest in the world of life, even at this glorious season of flowers. Apparently reading no longer comes to us naturally. It has to be attempted at with an effort, and only after you are unplugged from the online fantasy.

And then, miraculously, we care about issues of import, like where we came from, and where we are heading to.

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Little Prince,” a small book recently assigned by the teacher to my son that had come to my attention, the little prince had a talk with a railway signalman, whose job it was to shunt the trains carrying the travelers, “now to the right, now to the left.”

A brilliantly lit-up express train roared in. The little prince, finding them in a great hurry, wondered “What are they looking for?” Even the locomotive driver didn’t know.

A second brilliantly lit express train thundered by in the opposite direction, and the little prince asked, “Are they already coming back?”

The signalman answered, “those are not the same ones, but an exchange.”

“They were not satisfied where they were?” The little prince asked.

“No one is ever satisfied where he is,” the signalman replied. “The travelers sleep in there, or they yawn. Only the children press their noses against the window-panes.”

“Only children know what they are looking for. They dote on a rag doll and it becomes very important to them, and if it is taken away from them, they cry …” the little prince said.

Our children no longer press their noses against the window-pane, and they only cry when their tablets or mobile phones are taken away.

Further down the little prince observed that “men crowd into express trains without knowing what they are looking for. So they become agitated and rush round in circles …” After a pause, he summed up, “it is not worth the trouble. ”

“They grow five thousand roses in the same garden … and they do not find what they are looking for.”

Thought-provoking. The number of books we read is a point of national pride, but in the case of real books, even one book can go a long way.

Zhao Pu helped the founder of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Zhao Kuangyin ascend to the throne and advised the next emperor in administering the state affairs. In confronting accusations about his inadequacy in statecraft — it was rumored that the only book he read was the Confucian classic “The Analects” — he replied that actually he had read only half of it.

He had used half of it helping enthrone Zhao Kuangyin, and would save the other half helping the next emperor achieve peace and prosperity. Zhao knew how to prioritize, in being so taken up with the one book that so informed Chinese attitudes and outlooks. If you find the 11,000-character “The Analects” too long, then make do with “The Great Learning” and “The Doctrine of the Mean.” There are less than 6,000 characters combined.

It is what you read that counts. But to read at all, you have to fight back.

Chinese Views


 

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