书评The Spirit of the Chinese People
Recently, I have read a book entitled The Spirit of the Chinese People by Gu Hongming. Gu, born in Malaysia, was a very famous scholar in the late Qing Dynasty. Not only was he proficient in English, French, German, Greek and other nine languages, but also he had received thirteen doctorate degrees. This book was written in 1914, trying to defend China's traditional culture, which caused a tremendous response in the western society.
In the book The Spirit of the Chinese People, by comparing the Chinese with American, British, German and French people, Gu pointed out that Chinese have four virtues—depth, broadness, simplicity and delicacy, and advocated using the traditional Chinese Confucian thought to solve problems existing in the western society. This book changed some western people’s prejudice.
From The Spirit of the Chinese People, we can have a good understanding of people’s ideas at that time. Despite a lot of feudal ideology expressed in the book, it has many fashionable concepts which haven’t been out of date nowadays. What attracts me most is the part about Chinese language. First, Gu had a very interesting definition of the Chinese language. He divided Chinese language into two parts—the spoken language and the written language. And he said Chinese language is a language of uneducated people. If you learn Chinese just as little children do, you will be able to learn it well. Many foreign people think Chinese language is very difficult to learn. As native people, we learn this language at a very early age when we don’t know what grammar is and we are just learning it. Without any rules in our mind when we are children, we can learn Chinese easily. In my opinion, Chinese written language is very difficult to learn, because Chinese people tend to use simple words to express mixed feelings. For example, Chinese ancient poetries are simple and plain in words, styles and ideas, but deep in thoughts and feelings. Each word can have different meanings when you put it in different contexts. Some words are the images of poetry, which are of great importance in a poem. These words clearly express the poet’s emotions. That’s the charm of Chinese written language. When these words are translated into foreign languages word by word, the foreign versions can’t convey the poet’s feeling faithfully. After having finished reading this part of the book, I have learned the uniqueness of Chinese language. This is a language only Chinese people can fully understand, and this is a profound but beautiful language.
After my reading this book, I have to admit that Gu is an excellent scholar. Even though he lived in a time when Chinese was despised by the world, he still used his articles to change foreign countries’ views on China. He showed the spirit of the Chinese people to the whole world, and left a valuable cultural treasure to us. Some of his views are still good for the modern people. Most importantly, he has kept us aware that being a Chinese is something to be proud of.
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