An Introduction to Chinese Culture

In brief, Chinese culture can be summarized as continental culture. Let's take two obvious examples.

The first example is the "basin culture" of Chinese culture. The basin model is the ideal Chinese model. The interior should be rich, the back should be supported, and the front should be open. This is basically what is meant by "left blue dragon, right white tiger, front Zhu Bird, back Xuan Wu". Think of the Kunlun Fairyland in the old books and Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Garden, these are the places that the Chinese aspire to. Look at the Eight Great Places, the Thirteen Tombs, the Suzhou Gardens, and the Courtyards in Beijing, all of which are embodiments of the Basin Model. This mentality of the basin model has been preserved until now. For example, the first wave of people who go to a restaurant or cafeteria to eat will definitely look for a place that is more to the side, where they can see others but others cannot see them. This is creating a basin.

The second example is the Chinese wall culture. Europe and the United States can not have a wall around the company's business, at most only set up a sign or something, but China's major units are bound to buy a lot of bricks to enclose themselves to form a compound. Chinese people must live inside the wall, the heart is solid. The world's largest, the Great Wall, is a typical representative of the wall culture. However, from a functional point of view, the wall may not be able to external defense. Northwest minorities simply do not put the Great Wall in their eyes, but successive dynasties have to build the Great Wall. This reflects the Chinese mentality of defense and self-sufficiency.

To elaborate a bit more, China's mainland culture is a small-farmer culture with a kind of native feeling. China has been an agricultural country for thousands of years, with little population mobility, so Chinese culture has to be centered on blood and land. Chinese culture seeks a kind of stability, which is different from marine culture. The Chinese believe that you get what you work for, and you have to work hard to get a good harvest. This is not the case with Western culture, which is speculative, and what they get from one trip to the sea can last for a year. Because of this, Westerners have a lot of free time to study the arts and sciences, whereas Chinese people do not have this free time and have to be pragmatic. In China, technology takes precedence over science. For example, ancient China's agriculture, medicine, military science, astronomy have reached a very high level, because the Chinese have a kind of pragmatic rationalism, a discipline must have "xx use" is considered good, otherwise it can only be a strange skill.

As a result, Chinese society is characterized by a patriarchal culture. A good example of this is the New Year greeting. Many relatives may not usually see each other, but they must go to pay New Year's visits every year so that the relationship can be confirmed over and over again. The Chinese believe that the family is the foundation of the country. In ancient times everything was managed by the county magistracy and there was no need to set up the Procuratorate Court Public Security Bureau Civil Affairs Bureau because of this. In ancient times, there was only criminal law and no civil law, and once something went to the Yamen, it was bound to be a criminal case, and all civil disputes could be solved at home. In this way, the head of the clan at home is extremely important, relying on him to mediate family relations. Ancient people believed that in order to pacify the world, it was necessary to unify the family, because at that time it was really challenging to deal with family relations. In modern times, a disagreement in the family could probably be simply resolved by slamming the door, not eating, staring and other means, but not in ancient times, especially in large families, where the relationship between people was not generally complex, and the Dream of Red Mansions is a typical example of this. Another example is Qi Jiguang, a great general of the Ming Dynasty, who was able to wipe out Japanese invaders outside, but was afraid of his wife at home -- this shows that dealing with family relations is much more difficult than resolving conflicts between enemies.

In a patriarchal culture, people are bound to look to their ancestors and to pass on their heritage. Chinese people do not worship God, but they must worship their ancestors. Ancestor worship has become a very important religious activity in China, and anything that happens must be reported to the ancestors. Because there are ancestors to take care of, the Chinese are not alone, ancient China can not produce the kind of post-modern sense of being thrown into, each generation, are closely related to their ancestors and future generations. For the Chinese, people basically live to pass on their heritage. To establish virtue, to establish merit, to establish speech, this is called the three immortality - this is too difficult for the average person! How can the average person be immortal? It is to have children. To make oneself the ancestor of a child, to perpetuate the bloodline, nothing makes the Chinese happier than that. There is also the Buddhist concept of karma, which may have been about retribution, but the Chinese believe that retribution is given to the child, so when something good happens, the Chinese will think, "It's the ancestor who has accumulated virtue"; and if that person does something bad, they will scold him, "Having a child is no good for him", and so on. These are examples of Chinese patriarchal culture.

What is the spirit of traditional Chinese culture? The Neo-Confucianist Xu Fuguan believes that it is the "sense of worry", which can be reflected in the wall culture and the basin culture. And Li Zehou confirmed that Chinese culture is a culture of joy. (In contrast, the West is a culture of guilt, and Japan is a culture of shame.) In ancient times, there was Yan Hui, who never changed his joy, and today there is Zhang Damin, who is good at playing the poor mouth, which can reflect the "joy" of Chinese people. Pang Park combines these two concepts and argues that Chinese culture is a culture of "harmony", a culture of neutralization. The virtue of mediocrity, Chinese culture emphasizes harmony and difference. As a whole, Chinese culture is a continental culture that is internally diverse yet unified.

The greatest advantage of Chinese culture is that it can handle three relationships well. One is the relationship between man and himself, which can achieve harmony between body and mind. Western culture, on the other hand, is dichotomized between subject and object, separating spirit from flesh and emotion from reason. The second relationship is the relationship between man and nature, and the highest state of Chinese culture is the unity of heaven and man. The third relationship is the relationship between man and society, Chinese patriarchal culture requires social harmony. However, at the same time, Chinese culture is also reducing the value of the individual and erasing individuality. The problem with traditional Chinese culture is that it does not protect the value of the individual.