A monument work of an era
The spirit of Chinese people by Gu Hongming is a monumental work of Chinese conservative scholar, which influenced Europe deeply and changed European’s misunderstand of Chinese people to a certain degree. Without doubt, it was a book that shock the whole world.
The analyzation of Chinese spirits and language is so original that looks even a little radical, but most of the discuss is right in a way. The criticism of the contumelious wrong idea of China was sharp, and it also expressed Chinese people’s confidence, which was really rare in the era which was covered with cowardice.
As for the contribution of this book, certainly, it provided a chance of getting to know the real Chinese tradition, culture and spirit to the foreigners. It also made them realize the conservatives in China still had their own courage and insistence, but not just a crowd of coward. The common people in Europe started to know how the real China looks like and what was our spirit. They got to know these no more from the soldiers who came back from the aggression against China or those who insult and vilify us deliberately for some despicable reasons.
This book made a hit in Europe and the even academic world also praised it for its excellent discuss on Chinese spirit. When Mr. Gu was writing this book, the whole Chinese academic world was criticizing traditional culture and even trying to abandon it. Under the fever of the western learning, he chose to fight against the radical in his own way, showed our own insistence to the whole world.
But in an era of feudalism, he did not realize the source of the problem, it was the regime itself that matters. As a conservative scholar, some of his ideas in this book are just waste of the history. For example, he tried to make The three obediences and four virtues reasonable and make excuse for concubinage. He stood for all the feudal ethics, no matter how inferior or stale they were.
The spirit of Chinese people is a book that showed the real old China to the world but it is far from perfect.
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