The collapse of traditional world outlook

After the Opium War, the lessons of failure made advanced China people realize that self-centered conceit would lead to China's backwardness. These enlightened people began to face up to western culture and the relationship between China and foreigners, instead of just treating them as barbarians and animals. Lin Zexu, Wei Yuan, Yao Ying and others realized the necessity of understanding the West, and they extensively collected all kinds of foreign materials, which broadened the horizons of Chinese people. Lin Zexu's Annals of the Four Kingdoms, Xu Jishe's Annals of Ying Huan and Wei Yuan's Annals of Hai Guo are representative works of this period. These books started with geographical knowledge and introduced foreign customs, which made modern China people look beyond the traditional geographical orientation, and the traditional world outlook based on heaven and earth began to collapse. Understanding the outside world has broadened China people's horizons, broadened their thinking, fundamentally impacted the traditional world outlook, and the strict world outlook began to show signs of collapse.