Chinese temperament likes to harmonize and compromise

This quote comes from a speech by Mr. Lu Xun, "Silent China". In February 1927, at the invitation of the Hong Kong Youth Association, Mr. Lu Xun took a boat from Guangzhou to Hong Kong and delivered this speech to the youth of Hong Kong.

To say that a person likes to "reconcile and compromise" is in fact to show that the person is indecisive and unable to recognize the truth completely. When Mr. Lu Xun said that "Chinese people like to be moderate and eclectic", he was pointing out that the people of old China had accumulated a kind of psychology that liked to be moderate and eclectic, and that for generations the Chinese people had quietly endured the oppression and exploitation of the rulers, and were afraid of reforms instead.

Because of the feudal culture, people's thoughts were suppressed for a long time. Even after the Xinhai Revolution (1911-1912) overthrew the feudal dynasty, the New Culture Movement (1915) and the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal "May Fourth Movement" (1919) took place, the Chinese people at that time still didn't know how to express themselves and were unwilling to accept new things. The Chinese people at that time still did not know how to express their thoughts, were unwilling to accept new things, did not like change, and were stubborn and silent.

Reluctant to take the initiative to change themselves, they had a great deal of inertia and inferiority. Until the old tradition of watching themselves guarded by the reality of the trend will be killed, desperate, into a desperate situation, only willing to "open the window" to avoid being "demolition of the roof. Without more drastic claims, they always refuse to carry out even peaceful reforms.

Expanded Information

In China's feudal and authoritarian society, only a handful of people knew the traditional literary language, and the average Chinese did not know how to write or understand it. Even those few essays written in the ancient script were devoid of real thought and feeling, but instead were filled with hypocrisy and sycophancy. In this way, the whole of China has become voiceless.

The Chinese people are there, but they have no voice. In the face of a "voiceless China", Lu Xun was extremely saddened. If the nation is to survive, if China is to be revitalized, the first thing to do is to "restore this silent China of many years", in addition to boldly speaking the truth, but also to speak modern and their own words, and thus language and writing changes have become very critical and important.

Before Mr. Lu Xun made this speech "Silent China", the domestic political and cultural atmosphere at that time was full of repression, destruction and dullness, people's voices wanted to send out but could not send out, so Lu Xun had to make this speech, in the silence of the new sound of the trumpet.