Some Thoughts after Reading the Spirit of the Chinese People

When seeing the title of this book for the first time, I was deeply shocked by it. And I guessed this would be a great book because this title was so big that the writer must have detailed understanding of the whole Chinese history and unique angles or perspectives   on this subject . Also I believed it was very brave of he or she to write a book and review the country and its people. Then I knew the writer Ku Hung Ming ,a giant of both Chinese and foreign literature, who was widely regarded as the strange but outstanding person in late Qing Dynasty, and a great modern Chinese patriot， it has granted  me more confidence that the Spirit of the Chinese People was a great book. And before reading the book, I had searched online the creation background of the book. I learned that history of humiliation again: As a backward country at that time in the world, China or Qing Dynasty was misunderstanding by most of the foreigners, especially the people in the developed countries through the Industrial Revolution like Americans and Englishmen. In order to change this situation and prejudice and spread the broad and profound Chinese culture, Mr.Ku wrote this book which had successfully expound the spirit of the Chinese nation and the value of Chinese civilization.

Let’s start reading the book. After the preface, Chapter one is The Religion of Good-citizenship. Why did the author write The Religion of Good-citizenship first? I knew it after reading the whole chapter. The Europeans used to use moral force, which in the past had  been effective in the subduing and controlling the human passions in the population of Europe. And the specific performance of moral force is Christianity. But the rise of militarism had destroyed the original moral force. As it was not effective, the European need a new moral force to help them get out of trouble. So the writer believe the Chinese civilization which can make militarism unnecessary is the Religion of Good-citizenship. Although in China there had been wars, the war was not a necessity like in Europe but an accident. Then we can see the Religion of Good-citizenship in China teaches every child that the Nature of man is good. Because almost everyone in China believes the Nature of man is good, they convince the power of goodness and the efficacy of right and justice. On the contrary, the wrong conception that human nature is evil leads to fundamental unsoundness of the civilization of European. Besides, the Chinese people have the power of sympathy and they live wholly a life of the heart——a life of emotion or human affection. As a result, the Chinese language is also a language of the heart. What’s more, the Chinese remember things with the heart not with the head so they retain things much better. Another fact in the life of the Chinese people is want of exactness. The delicate and sensitive heart isn’t like a hard, stiff, rigid instrument. Finally we can answer the question which we asked in the beginning: What is the real Chinaman? The real Chinaman is a man who lives the life of a man of adult reason with the heart of a child. In short the real Chinaman is a person with the head of a grown-up man and the heart of a child. The Chinese spirit is a spirit of perpetual youth, the spirit of national immortality. That’s all.