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Return to traditional cultural root promises key to our rejuvenation
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A couple of weeks ago Chinese President Xi Jinping attended an international seminar marking the 2,565th birth anniversary of Confucius, becoming the highest official ever to attend such a seminar.
This is a significant gesture confirming the relevance of Confucianism to the modern age. We have come a long way to this understanding.
More than a century ago, China, in its eagerness to modernize in the presence of Western gunboats, had found Confucian orthodoxy vastly inadequate in meeting the challenge.
As a matter of fact, the gospel of benevolence, politeness, modesty, and the imperative of lifelong dedication to the explication of Confucian canon on the part of the scholars significantly impaired China’s capacity to “strengthen” itself.
In its despair to save itself from Western bullies, there had been many radical proposals to disburden China of the weight of its past. This started with a systematic debunking of Confucianism and the establishment providing for its propagation.
That lashing and lambasting came from the most unexpected quarters — from those scholars endowed with an acute sense of mission owing, ironically, precisely to consequence of traditional education. Lu Xun, one of the most celebrated men of letters in recent memory, became one of the strongest advocates for the vernacular literature.
Abolition of characters
Another scholar, Qian Xuantong, came up with the slogan that “there is no saving China without total abolition of Chinese characters,” in the belief that mastering the extremely complicated Chinese written scripts had prevented the best Chinese from pursuing more worthy goals.
He started with experiments in simplifying Chinese characters.
Qian’s proposals did not get much headway in his lifetime, for some educators argued that a truly powerful nation cannot but be founded on espousal of its traditions, and that simplified Chinese characters would weaken the perception of the national identity.
During the “cultural revolution” (1966-1976), Confucius was systematically demonized, so successfully that for people my age the mention of Confucius always conjures up an image of a droll figure, a sangjia quan (a homeless dog), a hypocrite born of a family of slave-owner fallen on hard times, forever dreaming of fubi, or restoring the despotic rule of the aristocratic.
These are stereotypes impressed on my childhood, thus very strong.
If anything, this impressionability does suggest the vital importance of education at an early age.
Root and soul
For children my son’s age, in view of their frequent lack of a truly inspiring ideology, their attitudes and outlooks are more likely shaped by cyberspace, their pals, and, most important of all, the society they find themselves in.
Some of the obscenely rich become the new gods, and the skimpily clad actresses the new goddesses.
Thus to have Confucius rehabilitated in the mind of the Chinese people will represent a strong antidote to the situation.
As People’s Daily observed in an article headlined “Why we should return to Confucius” (September 25), “Traditional culture is the root and soul of Chinese civilization that sets us apart as distinctly Chinese. Desinicization is no more than severing from one’s spiritual root and fountainhead.”
This new insight calls for a re-evaluation of our education, with a view of saving it not only from the narrowly utilitarian objectives, like scores, or money-making credentials, but also from the no less limiting goal of turning out good experts.
The first objective of education, as suggested by Confucius, is the provision of an outlook, a steadfast, life-sustaining attitude that can inspire in spite of setbacks, hardships, and difficulties.
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