《中国人的精神》决赛书评
The spirit of the Chinese people——The masterpiece to defend the Chinese traditional culture & lead foreigners approaching to the truly great era of China
After about a month of reading on the book The spirit of the Chinese people. I finally completed it. It is a really wonderful book!
The author, GuHongming, a Chinese who used the English language to write this “tremendous biography of Chinese, wanted to refresh the foreigners’ impressions on Chinese and make his contribution to protecting the traditional customs in China during that special period of time.
GuHongming, was affronted by most Chinese who wanted to use the western culture to convert the embarrassing situation of China, when the war had broken out in China for a few years. He is knowledgeable, and is conscious of the drawbacks in the root of the system that western countries use. In that case, he can’t wait to announce the traditions to all the Chinese, and giving the invaders and other foreigners who were prone to explore China the real Chinese culture and the real Chinese spirits.
The author interprets three corn in the spirits of Chinese people: depth, broad, simplification and delicacy. These are the basic differences between Chinese folks and citizens from other countries, especially the British German and French, who invaded China in the late 19 century and early 20 century.
The outstanding part of the Chinese characteristics is “gentle”, which hit me most. The author comes up with it as the initial spirit of Chinese people. What impressed me most is that the spirit of gentle along with the perfect good taste of real Chinese gentleman makes it possible for wives in China not to feel hurt when there were also concubines in the house. In Mr.Gu’s eyes, husbands with concubines are not as cruel-hearted as some men in Europe, who play the poor women wandering along the streets for a night but swept them out in the next morning, for not taking any responsibilities for these women. However in this way, these women with little economic sources would just get more and more hurt like this instead of being protected like “concubines”. They have to experience more difficulties than the concubines do in China, and to some degree, live a miserable life. Think about the concubinage following that profound but novel theory, yes, we have no choice but to acknowledge that it totally makes sense! And surely, in this way can some pitiful women’s basic rights as human be actually maintained due to the concubinage. Confucius said :”The Law of the Gentleman takes its rise from the relation between husband and wife.”. Thus, gentle is the foremost quality that the real Chinaman has.
The second part which left a sketch in my mind is a puzzle that puzzled many foreigners. That is: Europeans have God to believe in and the Indians have the Allah to admire, so that they can keep obeying the laws and regulations which make the society in harmony. Whereas Chinese live peacefully without even a religion. The author encouraged me to understand that, it is the source of inspiration that is the nuclear thing in religions. However, Chinese people learned the primitive commandments when they were little, so that they would be easier to bare them in mind in their entire lives. Therefore, without religions’ help, Chinese can remain organized and feel content nearly all the time. Confucius and Lao tze respectively found the Confucianism and Taoism, which acted like the religions in China. I tell they are just “acted like”, since they are not the authentic religions at any degree in the author’s opinion. “The religions to the Chinese mean education, culture.”. The theories and wisdom of ancient philosophers influenced the thinking and behavior of the Chinese people. That’s why Chinese can enjoy happy lives with no religions’ help.
Eventually, I sincerely recommend every Chinese to appreciate this amazing book to clutch better inspiration of our culture, have deeper impression of that era, and be proud of the traditional Chinese culture.
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