my country and my people.doc

My People and My CountryTitle: My people and my countryAuthor: Lin YutangPress: Foreign Language Teaching and Research PressAbout the authorLin Yutang, whose original name was Lin Hele, he was born on October 10, 1895,Fujian province, China and died on March 26, 1976,Hong Kong. Lin Yutang, the son of a Chinese Presbyterian minister, was educated for the ministry but renounced Christianity in his early 20s and became a professor of English. He traveled to America and Europe for advanced study. Then he returned to China, he taught, edited several English-language journals, and contributed essays to Chineseliterary magazines.His nonfictional books include My Country and My People (1935); A Leaf in the Storm (1941); Between Tears and Laughter (1943), and The Pleasures of a Nonconformist (1962). Among his novels are Chinatown Family (1948) and The Flight of the Innocents (1965). He translated and edited The Chinese Theory of Art(1968).In his prolific literary career, Chinese author Lin Yutang wrote expertly about an unusual variety of subjects, creating fiction, plays, and translations as well as studies of history, religion, and philosophy. Working in English as well as in Chinese, he became the most popular of all Chinese writers to early 20th-century Americanreaders.AnalysisMy Country and My people contains two partsthe Bases and the Life. The first part “the Bases” focus on the bases of Chinese culture, including the origin and development of Chinese people, the Chinese character, the Chinese mind and the ideals of life, covering the mental and moral constitution of Chinese people and the ideals of life which influence the fundamental patterns of life. The second part concentrates on the study of Chinese life itself, such as its sexual, social, political, literary and artistic aspects. In short, this part covers Chinese women, society, government literature and art. In the authors opinion, very few people understood the real Chinathe western scholars were so arrogant and viewed China by the western standard. Consequently, those scholars draw a wrong conclusion that China is a barbaric country and the Chinese people are barbaric people; the Chinese scholars, however, were the same arrogant and proud, and reluctantly to admit the weakness of Chinese culture. The attitudes of these Chinese and western scholars were so pride and prejudice. Except the subjective factors, there were other huge difficulties confronting the scholars in surveying China and Chinese cultureChina is so big, with a population of over 400 millions and a vast land over 10 million square kilometer and more than fifty peoples; Chinese culture is so complicated, derived from a five thousand years of uninterrupted history and have no uniform religion that dominant the culture. If a person really want to have a understanding of China or Chinese people, he must travel lots of places around the country to witness the Chinese peoples life, the farmers, the citizens, the drudge, and the vendors, etc, watching them, listening to them, feeling what they are feeling, thinking what they are thinking; one must also spend time in their studies, reading the Chinese classic books and studying the folk literature. Its difficult for a foreign scholar to do all this, overcoming the language barriers, the lack of Chinese common sense and the huge cultural gap between China and the west. Comparatively speaking, it is much easier for a Chinese scholar, who is born and raised in China, receiving traditional Chinese education and is conversant with both the Chinese classics and folk literature.Chinese family system, complete absence of established classes, the opportunity open for all to rise in the social scale through the imperial examination system, the pursuit of simplicity, that together serve as cultural forces making for social stability. Firstly is the Chinese character.The process of trying to rise higher teaches people some memorable lessons of life and human nature, and if he escapes all that experience and remains a round-eyed, innocent, hot-headed young man at thirty, still enthusiastic for progress and reform, he is either an inspired idiot or a confounded genius. However, the Chinese people take to indifference as Englishmen take to umbrellas, because the political weather always looks a little ominous for the individual who ventures a little too far out alone, in other words, indifference has a distinct survival-value in China. At the same time, one can be public-spirited when there is a guarantee for personal rights, and ones only look-out is the libel law. When these rights are not protected, however, our instinct of self-preservation tells us that indifference is our best constitutional guarantee for personal liberty.Secondly are the ideals of life. Taoism, in theory and practice, means a certain roguish nonchalance, a confounded and devastating skepticism, a mocking laughter at the futility of all human interference and the failure of all human institutions, laws, government and marriage, and a certain disbelief in idealism, not so much because of lack of energy as because of a lack of faith. It is a philosophy which counteracts the positivism of Confucius, and serves as a safety-valve for the imperfections of a Confucian society.The Chinese are by nature greater Taoists than they are by culture Confucians. As a people, we are great enough to draw up an imperial code, based on the conception of essential justice, but we are also great enough to distrust lawyers and courts. Ninety-five per cent of legal troubles are settled out of court. We are great enough to make elaborate rules of ceremony, but we are also great enough to treat them as part of the great joke of life, which explains the great feasting and merry-making at Chinese funerals. We are great enough to denounce vice, but we are also great enough not to be surprised or disturbed by it. We are great enough to start successive waves of revolutions, but we are also great enough to compromise and go back to the previous patterns of government. We are great enough to elaborate a perfect system of official impeachment and civil service and traffic regulations and library reading-room rules, but we are also play with them, and become superior to them. We do not teach our young in the colleges a course of political science, showing how a government is supposed to be run, but we teach them by daily example how our municipal, provincial and central governments are actually run. We have no use for impracticable idealism, as we have no patience for doctrinaire theology. We do not teach them to behave like the sons of God, but we teach them to behave like sane, normal human beings. The true end, the Chinese have decided in a singularly clear manner, lies in the enjoyment of a simple life, especially the family life, and in harmonious social relationships. Every Chinese is Confucianism when he is successful and a Taoist when he is a failure.In theory at least, Confucius did not mean family consciousness to degenerate into a form of magnified selfishness at the cost of social integrity. He did, in his moral system, also allow for a certain amount of ultra-domestic kindness.Thirdly is the Chinese social and political life. In Chinese towns there was always a male Triad: the magistrate, the gentry and the local rich, (and bandit) besides the female Triad of Face, Fate and Favor.Practically, this turn-about-face has been noticed in every modern successful Chinese revolutionist. He clamps down his iron heel on the freedom of the press more energetically than the militarist he denounced while in his revolutionary apprenticeship. It seems that while it is impossible to define face, it is nevertheless certain that until everybody loses his face in this country, China will not become a truly democratic country. The question is when the officials will be willing to lose theirs.The so-called village or town local government is invisible. It has no visible body of authority like the mayor or councilors. It is governed really morally by the elders by virtue of their great age, and by the gentry by virtue of their knowledge of law and history.According to the beginning of political wisdom，lies in rejecting all moral platitudes and in shunning all efforts at moral reforms. It is still true today that we have too few public citizens and too many private individuals and the reason is to be found in the lack of adequate legal protection. It has nothing to do with morals. The evil lies in the system. When it is too dangerous for a man to be too public-spirited, it is natural that he should take an apathetic attitude toward national affairs, and when there is no punishment for greedy and corrupt officials, it is too m