2019-01-09

There are many words that we use almost every day but may not be clear about what it really means, such as culture. Habitually, we feel as if culture means knowledge. In the beginning, to say that a person is literate is to say that he is literate, and to make everyone literate is called popularizing culture; nowadays, the degree of literacy is to say the educational status of a person. Another type of understanding of the word culture is to refer to experiences and habits in general; doing anything, all walks of life can be said to have developed a culture. According to the region, there are food cultures everywhere: Cantonese culture, Lu cuisine culture, Sichuan cuisine is of course even more culture, as well as hot pot culture and spicy hot pot culture. Drinking tea has tea culture, drinking wine culture, then eat zongzi, should also have zongzi culture, so, about zongzi should put jujube or should put meat debate, seems to be a cultural controversy. What's more, even in the night market to sell deep-fried stinky tofu, publicity slogan is "inheritance of Chinese traditional stinky tofu culture".

The author of this book is Ah Cheng. He is the author of the book, Ah Cheng, a man of many identities. He is the author of the novel "The King of Chess" and "The King of Children", which caused a sensation in Chinese literature in the 1980s. He is the screenwriter and art consultant who has worked with Hou Hsiao-hsien, Ang Lee, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Chen Kaige and other big directors for a long time, and he is also a well-known photographer, painter and curator in the Chinese art world, and at the same time, he is also the planner of cultural projects and a folklorist. A-cheng has dabbled in almost every artistic discipline, and all of them have reached a high level. Almost all of China's most influential writers, painters and directors hold A Cheng in high esteem, saying that he is a man of the world and the inheritor of traditional elite culture.

According to writer Wang Shuo, "A-cheng's insight is clearly above my generation. If every person in the country had to follow a star, I would follow Ah Cheng." When these representatives of China's various artistic fields talk about cultural topics, they often cite A-cheng's views and judgments. This is because his cultural thinking is not based on academic theories, but comes from his understanding of Chinese reality and his artistic practice, which is both concise and to the point. It is not an exaggeration to say that Ah Cheng's cultural viewpoints are influencing the Chinese literary and artistic circles.

The book Culture is Not MSG is the sixth volume of the 2016 edition of the seven-volume A Cheng Anthology, which was selected and edited by A Cheng himself. It is worth mentioning that in the process of compiling and selecting the anthology himself, he also requested that all the words that had been deleted in past publications be re-labeled with squares. The more than sixty essays included in this book are all assembled for the first time,*** and are divided into six sections, namely: cultural topics, movie reviews, painting and photography reviews, music reviews, character commentaries, and prose and miscellaneous essays.

These articles are in the form of book forewords, review articles, essays, interviews, lecture notes, and dialogues. The content is also by-the-side, touching on a wide range of topics, from the course of Chinese culture to contemporary cinema and Chinese literature, from the oil paintings of Liu Xiaodong and Chen Danqing to the art of paper-cutting by Shaanxi peasants, and from the adjustment of the aperture of camera lenses to the dynamic range of audio equipment, both from a macro perspective and full of details. perspective and full of details, vividly reflecting A-cheng's wide range of artistic activities and intellectual composition. The thread running through it is his systematic understanding and interpretation of Chinese culture.

A Cheng has been thinking about the proposition of "what is culture" for thirty years, and in July 1985, he published an article in Literature and Art Newspaper called "Culture Constrains Mankind," discussing how culture affects the lives of the Chinese people from a perspective higher than that of specific artistic disciplines, such as literature, painting, and film. The article caused great repercussions in the literary and theoretical circles at that time, and is considered to be one of the starting points of the "cultural discussion fever" in China in the 1980s. Since then, with his extensive participation in the world's cultural exchanges, A Cheng's thoughts on culture have become more systematic, deeper and clearer. Many of his recent articles on literature and art, including his research on folklore, are closely related to his cultural propositions.

Culture is a very big proposition. Humans create culture, and culture constrains humans. In recent times, China's cultural reflection has often centered on how to introduce Western culture to transform Chinese culture because of its eagerness to change its backwardness. A Cheng, on the other hand, believes that the occurrence and development of Chinese and Western cultures have different faces, and although it is said that there can be exchanges, in a sense, the cultures are not able to guide each other.

This conclusion comes from the following three questions, which are also the three we will focus on in this issue of the audio: the first question is: what is the original meaning of culture, and what role does culture play in human society? The second question is: when we recognize culture, of course, we must first recognize Chinese culture, and what kind of elements and characteristics does Chinese culture have? The third question is: since it is said that culture constrains us, how should we deal with our relationship with culture when we are in Chinese culture?

Part I

Let's first look at what culture is meant to be and what it does. In Ajo's definition, culture is the maintenance of relationships between people and bodies of interest in a normative and civilized way, and culture plays a fundamental role in maintaining stability in society.

There are many definitions of the word culture, and from the role of culture, Ah Cheng believes that culture, in its true sense, refers to a relationship between people and people, groups and groups. Therefore, culture is a big concept, which is neither equivalent to knowledge nor to the modification of oneself by all walks of life. Regarding the misuse of the word culture like the use of monosodium glutamate (MSG), A-Shing thinks that the most inappropriate example is "military culture", which is completely opposite to the original meaning of culture. In Ah Cheng's observation, the relationship between culture, the meaning is very clear, is opposed to the "militarization" of the conflict struggle.

Martialization came before culture, and is a primitive instinctive relationship. More than twenty years ago, A-cheng published a series of articles in Harvest magazine called "Common Sense and General Knowledge", in which he introduced the Nobel Prize winner, the father of modern animal behavior, Konrad Lorenz's research on human nature. Modern Animal Behavior argues that human nature has its roots in animality, of which, aggression is the most important. Aggression is the fighting instinct used to aggress against and fight against one's own kind. This nature is widespread in human society in the form of violence, predation and oppression. If one makes an acquired moral judgment about such human nature, then martial undoubtedly represents evil. The logic of martialization is: as long as I am strong and powerful, I can snatch all your resources, and you have no way to protect yourself.

What about culture? It is the method of suppressing the aggressive nature of human beings, developed and built up in the development of society, through the widespread adherence to the ethical laws of society, the formation of the relationship of the text, and the realization of long-term peaceful ****existence. In the word "culture", the original meaning of the word "text" is "pattern", which is derived from the system and contract developed by human beings in accordance with certain rules; the meaning of the word "culture" can be referred to a saying in the past, which is called "melted in the blood, implemented in action", which means that this kind of thing was not originally in the blood, but was integrated later on. In other words, the content of culture is not instinctive, but is prescribed by nature. The process of culture is to go through the way of chemicalization, so that the details of human behavior, including the details of thought, are gradually in line with the requirements of the text.

So, according to A-Cheng's explanation, to say that a person is cultured is not to say that he has knowledge, but to be able to handle his relationship with others as 文, not 武. Here's where we need to talk about Ah Cheng's personal experience.

He was born in 1949, and went to the countryside in his first year of high school to work in the army, and went there for eleven years before returning to Beijing in 1979. Throughout his adolescence, he had a deep and painful memory of the martial scene of China's special historical period. Knowing this, we can understand why he kept thinking about the proposition of Chinese culture. He said, for example, that at that time, the old ladies in the street committee had no knowledge and were arbitrary; they pushed open the door of anyone's house and entered it without knocking on the door to ask for consent, which was not a cultural concept at all. In the early 1980s, the restaurant near his house had a notice that read "We do not scold customers", which we find funny now, but at that time, it was common for restaurants to scold their customers. He felt that the interpersonal and inter-group relations of that era were so completely martial that the country, with its thousands of years of cultural history, had to learn to say please, thank you and sorry again.

So, the role of culture in society is never a modifier of MSG, but the foundation of stability, the guarantee of people's well-being. This role is very obvious, for example, many people sitting in a room to argue about the problem, if the implementation of the martial law of the jungle, arguing may fight, there will be people who can not go out; only the relationship of culture to ensure the safety of everyone.2016 Disney's popular animated film "Crazy Animal City," set up a world in which all the mammals have evolved a high level of intelligence. To be able to have herbivores and carnivores living in the same city and following the same social rules, where the animals have established equal rights, is to realize a cultural relationship. In the film, the animals are poisoned by the "Midnight Howl" and turn back into beasts of nature, which we think is a degradation because it recognizes the animals' identity as social beings, and this identity is a cultural identity. On the contrary, we encounter do not know how to knock on the door, casually interfere with the order of public ****, you look at him and he asked viciously "what are you looking at" behavior, will find it more difficult to accept than the cartoon animals, this is not based on race, but based on the concept of the identity of the standards of behavior, that is, cultural identity.

Speaking of cultural identity, we often hear the expression of cultural pluralism. Recognition of cultural pluralism is to recognize that different cultures between national regions and ethnic groups can communicate and ****exist on an equal footing. This requires a distinction between two different concepts: culture and civilization: civilization is the level of human development, including mainly the accumulated experience and science and technology, etc., there is a unified standard of value, with a degree of high and low points, is monistic. The so-called nativism refers to bringing the achievements of advanced civilizations in science and technology. The term "backwardness" also refers to the backwardness of military civilization. Culture, on the other hand, has different styles and characteristics because of different people and different environments. Culture has its strengths and weaknesses, but it cannot be arbitrarily differentiated from one another, nor can it be transplanted in a rigid manner. Among the diverse human cultures, we are of course most concerned about Chinese culture. So what are the elements of Chinese culture?

Part II

In his inquiry into what constitutes Chinese culture, Ajo mainly analyzes the cultural order formulated by the Confucian tradition and the secular spirit in the concept of life.

The most prominent element in Chinese culture is, of course, Confucianism. This still begins with Confucius. Confucius lived in the late Spring and Autumn period, and in his eyes, the cultural situation at that time was "rites and music were broken", and it was about to become a bad martial age. His ideal society was the society of the early Zhou Dynasty, because the Zhou Dynasty had established the Wen system, which was orderly and prosperous. In the cultural make-up of Confucianism, the foremost thing is to establish and maintain order. This order is based on ethics, and everyone within the family is expected to follow the ethics determined by blood, and accordingly, in politics, everyone is expected to follow the political ethics, and everyone is expected to act in accordance with the rights and obligations defined by their position.

Confucius believed that the way to rebuild culture was to make rites and music. Rituals are the norms that govern cultural relations, and different social classes must abide by different etiquette and not step out of line. Music is an important means of practicing rites and suppressing nature. The time of Confucius was still the age of witchcraft, and Confucius opposed witchcraft means and relied on music to regulate human spirituality. As we know from reading the Analects, Confucius always played the piano and sang in the classroom while lecturing, like a talk show program, which was to help students get into the mental state of listening.

The most obvious feature of Chinese culture is that it gave rise to the concept of filial piety, which has almost no equivalent in Western languages. Filial piety is not a natural instinct; the laws of survival in nature are cruel, and once an animal ages, it is disqualified from resource allocation. The concept of filial piety, developed by Confucianism, was meant to curb this animal nature and establish a firm order. In terms of social relations, filial piety at that time was a kind of old-age insurance system, which decentralized the socialized old-age care that emerged later into different families, so that the court could be free of specific burdens. "Everyone has to grow old at some point," so the concept of filial piety, which seemed to benefit everyone, was particularly humane and easily and widely accepted. And filial piety can also be extended, "old as we are as well as people old", it will have affinity, hierarchical Confucian cultural concepts subconsciously promoted.

In ancient times, the duty of filial piety included the duty of loyalty to the monarch, so the imperial power was happy to use the Confucian cultural system to adjust social relations. Later generations observed elements of Confucian culture and found that they were severely alienated because of their precocity. In particular, the Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties changed the ideas of Confucius beyond recognition. For example, the saying "there is no such thing as a bad parent", which was resented by later generations, came from the Confucian Taoists of the Song and had nothing to do with the filial piety of Confucius. The main problem with Confucian culture is that it has been alienated.

In his observations of Chinese culture, Cheng emphasized another cultural element: the spirit of secularism. His observation is that Chinese culture has a formidable metaphysical content, but is essentially secular in character and secular in spirit. Confucianism is responsible for the cultural order of China, while the secular spirit is responsible for the quality of life of the Chinese people. To be secular is to be preoccupied with real life and very much enamored with life. In novelist Yu Hua's masterpiece "Alive", the main character Fugui, after a rough and bitter life, loses the people and beliefs that sustained him in his later years, and although he has neither hope nor faith, he still lives with fortitude. It is a natural choice to interpret this story in terms of secular life, and the core spirit of secularism is "better dead than alive". It is this secular spirit that has enabled the Chinese people to continue as a cultural group after millennia of disasters and wars.

The main feature of the Chinese secular spirit is self-purification: the use of realistic methods to solve realistic problems. For example, to persuade a grieving widow, will not say that your husband has gone to heaven, the ultimate happiness and so on, but will say, "you cried bad body, how to do in the future, who will take care of the children," the person who is persuaded to think about the need to live, and will not cry. The secular spirit determines that the Chinese people, from tradition to reality, will not be immersed in religious beliefs that emphasize the other side of the world. Many foreign cultures that try to change the spirit of the Chinese people end up being assimilated by Chinese secularism. For example, Indian Buddhism, which does not recognize the present world and advocates leaving the real world, was transformed in China into a better life in the afterlife through faith in Buddhism and good deeds.

In its daily activities, Buddhism merged with Taoism and Confucianism, and together they served the secular life of the Chinese people, who burned incense, worshipped Buddha, and made wishes to ask the gods and Buddhas to solve the troubles in reality. Matteo Ricci, a Catholic missionary who came to China in the Ming Dynasty, encountered Chinese people who asked him if they could worship their ancestors, and since he understood Chinese culture, he answered that they could. Because he knew that if he answered that he could not, according to the teachings, the Chinese congregation would immediately decrease. The content of secular life is nothing more than eating and drinking, marriage and funeral, old age, sickness and death; in terms of emotional experience, it is sorrow and happiness, and sorrow and separation are also the self-purification of the secular world, in order to better experience joy and harmony. Although the secular spirit seems to be trivial and superficial, or even vulgar, it is extremely tenacious in its vitality. In modern China, there have been many systematic criticisms of the secular spirit in order to reform the culture, and to promote social reform from the national level, trying to reverse the old traditions and customs of the Chinese people, and completely cut off the secular culture.

These attempts either fizzled out quickly, such as in the 1930s, when the Republican government pushed the artistic, productive, and militarized New Life Movement, which tried to transform the old secular life of the Chinese people with the lifestyle of the Christians, and which ended up in a hasty manner; or they resulted in a cultural rupture, such as in the period of the Republic of China, when intellectuals made a thorough critique of the national character and the Chinese culture, and tried to introduce both Western civilization and Western culture, but the cultures could not be directly replaced, and the result was to leave a fault line in Chinese culture. Destroying the culture itself, as defined by Acheng, may cause society to retreat into martial relations. Even though the secular spirit is considered to have many conservative and backward elements, it is the underpinning of Chinese culture and cannot be replaced at will. Following the order of Confucianism and conforming to the needs of the secular spirit is the effective way to maintain the concept of Chinese life and cultural relations.

Therefore, Ah Cheng's discussion of culture is not a discussion of how to manage society from the perspective of power or a critique of nationalism from the perspective of reflection, but rather, he is happy to recognize the various elements of Chinese culture and advocates a deeper understanding of culture, the protection of secular experience, and the preservation of the vitality of culture. He emphasizes the importance of culture and, moreover, the need to respect people's autonomous life under culture. Compared with the cultural mission, he prefers to talk about how to live with culture and how to live better from a personal point of view when one is in the atmosphere of Chinese culture.

Part III

We have just said that culture is the guarantee for people to live in peace. In the big environment and systematic relationship of culture, we face the problem of how to live in culture and how to live at all times. Ah Cheng first emphasizes the need to maintain one's secular living space.

There have been many interpretations of the phrase "rites are not inferior to those of the common people", for example, Prof. Qian Wenzhong interpreted it as "rites are not inferior to those of the common people" in The Hundred Schools of Lecture, which means that the common people should not be excluded from the rites. A-cheng's understanding of this phrase is that the scope of rites is aimed at the power class, excluding the secular world. This enables the secular world to have room for flexibility and to maintain its vitality. Once the rites went down to the common people, the common people had a hard time. For example, initially, the rites did not constrain women from remarrying, and things like chastity pagodas did not flourish until after the rites had been lowered to the common people, until women began to be required to have their feet wrapped. A-cheng advocates the establishment and protection of a secular life that is tended by people on their own.

For a sample of secular life, he chose two developed cities: Shanghai and Hong Kong. The hallmark of Shanghai's prosperity is the establishment of secular life on a massive scale, where a wide variety of cultural elements have been able to flourish and coexist from the time of the opening of the city, the period of the Concession, through to modern times. As an extreme example, during the period of the Concession, it was popular for high-class prostitutes to wear yellow-colored clothes with dragon and phoenix motifs, which were exclusive to the royal family and forbidden to the private sector, while the coachmen of the brothels wore yellow waistcoats, which were reserved for court ministers who were rewarded for their service, because it was in the Concession, which was out of the reach of the British, and out of the reach of the Qing government. Always at the forefront of secular culture, the relative lack of taboos was one of the foundations of Shanghai's economic prosperity.

Hong Kong's secularization is much more complete, and many elements of Qing culture have been preserved directly, and almost all of the customs that have disappeared in the Mainland have been preserved in Hong Kong. For example, Hong Kong's Chinese language is a mixture of English and Chinese, but also preserves the conventions of the ancient Chinese language, and there are very few "的" words in popular lyrics. "The Chinese language is a mixture of Chinese and English, and the ancient language is also preserved in Hong Kong.

Along with the preservation of witchcraft and superstition, for example, under the downtown flyovers, there are still people "beat the little man" under the curse of the stalls, which is still popular among the public, the white-collar workers in the financial district often go to patronize after work, to vent their dissatisfaction with their colleagues and supervisors. Ah Shing also has a different view on the claim that Hong Kong is a "cultural desert". He feels that the other side of Hong Kong, which is so lively that it is regarded as tacky, is that those who like music and reading can easily buy any records and books from anywhere in the world, depending on how you choose to do so. So what is most important to uphold when culture is specific to one's personal life is the spirit of being chosen by oneself and being responsible for oneself.

While upholding the secular spirit, the attitude towards cultural order should be to follow the inner law. In Ah Cheng's view, cultural conservatism is a positive word, first to preserve and keep, in order to implement the progress, the formation of culture in the chemicalization. In the development of British culture, the conservatives played an important role, they kept every progress down and did not make it backward. In social operation, every time a social conflict has been dealt with, the experience is fixed as a legal text, so that when such a problem is encountered in the future, the jurisprudence can be directly quoted. The rules and taboos formed in the culture should not be easily violated. Primitive peoples possessed many taboos that originated from things that had once destroyed the clan or neighboring clans. These things are kept as cultural memories and are directly related to feelings, and once cultural taboos are offended, there will be relationship cracks between people and groups that may never be repaired.

While complying and conforming, it is also important to be aware that culture is built on the animal nature of man. While restricting and inhibiting, it is important to rely on the channels identified by culture to rationalize the release of instincts. Confrontational sports, for example, are an effective way to release aggressive instincts. Scandinavia, the Netherlands, these countries and regions, relatively high tolerance for violence and pornographic elements in the arts, they believe that literature and art can disperse animal instincts, in turn, is conducive to maintaining psychosocial health.

Emphasizing the conservatism of conformity culture is not the same as stagnation, nor is it the same as intellectual self-enclosure, but it is more necessary to establish an open knowledge structure and enhance the discernment of culture. A viable culture will always evolve, and the composition should be the more open the better. Discernment of culture requires individuals to be open-minded and able to make judgments about various factors.

Conforming to the characteristics of Chinese culture begins with an understanding of Western culture. If one rejects Western culture on the pretext of nationalism, one must at least know that the concepts of nation and doctrine both arose in the West, and that even these two words were taken from the Japanese language. In building one's own knowledge structure, it is not necessary to pursue a uniform educational model or ready-made standardized answers. For example, when reading a book, don't judge whether it is good or bad just by looking at it, read everything first, see what it says, and then talk about it with your own accumulated thoughts. After the eyes and knowledge broadened, in order to find their own model, not to see what all feel fresh and can not grasp the core, this is the necessary process of learning.

Speaking of the composition of knowledge, Ah Cheng also made a point of saying that it is necessary to have secular social experience. Speaking of secular experience, it is easy to link to the jianghu qi. Ah Cheng said, Jianghu qi is the human condition, not hooliganism, but with Jianghu qi, you can learn to deal with hooligans. Interpersonal relationships in secular life are the atmosphere of Chinese culture, and the ability to deal with and anticipate changes in people's feelings, that is, "insight into world affairs is all learning, and the practice of people's feelings is an article", is an important ability to get along with Chinese culture.

First, the meaning of culture is to standardize the relationship between people and people, groups and groups with the standards of the text. The role of culture is to maintain social stability and ensure that people can settle down in society.

Second, the two most important elements of Chinese culture are Confucianism and secular spirituality. Confucianism is responsible for establishing order in culture, and secular spirituality is responsible for ensuring the quality of human life.

Third, we are in the atmosphere of Chinese culture, how to get along with the culture and live better? It is important to maintain the necessary secular spirit in the culture, to maintain the space for personal life. At the same time, it is important to respect the inner laws of the cultural order. To establish an open perspective and knowledge structure.

In the past, when we mentioned Chinese culture, we felt both a vague concept and a vague sense of bondage and heaviness, as if culture for us is either a heavy responsibility to inherit and carry forward, or an object of criticism and resistance. This time, Ah Cheng succinctly and clearly restored the original meaning of culture and sorted out its inner nature. However, his view of culture as a relationship is not the final word in political science or sociology, but more like A-cheng's "private cuisine" of culture. He has not written a monograph to systematically discuss this kind of insight, and in this book, A-cheng's talk about culture is scattered in many interviews and lectures. We would do well to treat his views in the same way as he did when he talked about how to read more without prejudging the point of view: look at what it says, and then compare it with what we have accumulated to enrich our knowledge structure.

After comparing the two, we realize that Ah Cheng's cultural interpretation is significant in at least two ways: on the one hand, it removes a lot of plausible and implausible things attached to the concept of culture, and helps us to clarify the relationship between the individual and the culture, especially Chinese culture; on the other hand, his point of view fills up a gap in the discussion of Chinese culture.

In the past, discussions of cultural construction, especially artistic concepts, always emphasized the cultivation of a spirit that transcends the mundane, but few recognized, as A Cheng did, that the mundane is the underpinning of Chinese culture, and that literary and artistic creations should restore the mundane spirit and the mundane character of the tradition. Secular life is not opposed to refined art and excellence of thought. Chinese and foreign history has proved that when the secular life of mankind shows prosperity and diversity, thought and art will find the soil and usher in opportunities.