Characteristics of traditional culture?

I. Various Opinions on the Types of Traditional Culture

Chinese people have long been aware of the types of culture, the ancient people have been the Central Plains of the Chinese farming culture and the surrounding four barbarians of the nomadic culture or fishing and hunting culture to be compared, after the two Han Dynasty, and the local spirit of the spirit of entry into the world as a characteristic of the Confucian culture and the spirit of emergence from the South Asian features of the Buddhist culture to be compared,

Modern In the modern era, the modern thinkers such as Yan Fu and Li Dazhao, 1893-1988, a native of Guilin, Guangxi, one of the early representatives of modern Neo-Confucianism, insisted on telling the truth throughout his life, and was known for his public "struggle" with Mao Zedong in 1953, and his incomplete endorsement of the class struggle that took place in the period after the founding of the nation. The first opinion is to differentiate cultural types according to geographic environments, arguing that the culture of any nation, its emergence, derivation, enrichment and development are all accomplished in a specific geographic environment and unique economic and social soils, and thus roughly divided into river-valley, steppe-type, mountain-type, and ocean-type, while the main body of Chinese culture belongs to the river-valley type.

The second opinion categorizes culture according to the intrinsic connection between conceptual culture and a certain mode of production, and divides culture into agricultural, industrial and commercial, and nomadic cultures, etc., and holds that Chinese culture belongs to the type of agricultural culture.

The third opinion, examining the journey that Chinese culture has taken in its formation and development, holds that Confucianism, Taoism, Mohammedanism, Dharma, Buddhism, and other schools of thought and doctrine constitute the main content and core of Chinese culture, and that Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Taoism, and Dharma ran parallel in its formative period, and Confucianism, Taoism, Dharma, and Buddhism ran parallel in its developmental period, and that Confucianism has always been in a predominant position despite the fact that the ideas of all the schools of thought are complementary and related. The fourth opinion is that traditional Chinese culture is the culture of Chinese feudalism. The nominal field system was a system of land management and land use developed in the Qin and Han Dynasties based on the military title system and under the conditions of vast land and sparse population.

1 According to Mr. Leung, "culture can also be said to be the pattern of a nation's life", that is, "the method of solving problems in life", and "the life of all human beings does not come out of these three paths". The first is "the original way: to strive to obtain what is demanded and to try to satisfy it"; the second is "to meet a problem and not to seek a solution, to transform the situation, but rather to think of it as it comes to him; his method of coping with the problem is simply the reconciliation of his own desires". The method he holds to deal with the problem is merely a reconciliation of his own desires"; thirdly, "when he encounters a problem, he simply abolishes the problem or demand, when he neither transforms the situation as in the first way, nor changes his own meaning as in the second way, but only wants to abolish the problem fundamentally", and concludes that the Westerner "are following the first way", and that "Chinese culture is based on the intention to harmonize itself and hold the center as its fundamental spirit", and "is following the second way", and that "Indian culture, which takes the desire to turn around and ask for the backward as its fundamental spirit", "is following the third way".

In the first year of the Tang Longshuo era (661), Huineng visited the Fifth Patriarch of the Zen sect, Hongneng, in Huangmei. The Fifth Patriarch ordered his attendant to do the work, chopping wood and treading pestles for more than eight months. At that time, Hong Neng was already very old and was eager to pass on his teachings, so he ordered his disciples to make a gatha to present. Shenxiu presented the following verse: "The body is a Bodhi tree, the mind is like a mirror, always brush it diligently, don't make it dusty." Hongneng thought that he had not yet seen his true nature, and did not pass on the law. Huineng recited a verse and inscribed it on the wall: "There is no tree of Bodhi, nor is a mirror a stage; there is nothing in the first place, so don't stir up the dust." Seeing this, Hongneng called Hui Neng to the hall for him to talk about the Diamond Sutra, and passed on the mantle of Dengjiao.

Second, the characteristics of traditional Chinese culture

In addition to the general characteristics of ethical-political culture, traditional Chinese culture also has the following significant features:

1. Unity and continuity

As one of the earliest scripts in the world, Chinese characters, although in the generation of the age of the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia and the holy book of ancient Egypt, are a little later than the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia and the holy book of ancient Egypt. Although Chinese characters were created a little later than Mesopotamian cuneiform and ancient Egyptian holy script, both cuneiform and holy script have already disappeared from history. Only Chinese characters, after a long history of 4,000 years, still have a strong vitality, and are still in use today and will be used for a long time to come.

Previously, most researchers regarded Chinese characters as ideographs, along with ancient Egyptian sacred script and the cuneiform script of the Two Rivers Valley. But ideographs do not fully summarize the entire nature of Chinese characters. This is because ideographic characters, which make up more than 80% of the Chinese characters, are phonetic characters. For example, in the characters "婚" and "姻", "女" (female) on the left is the ideographic part, and "昏" (faint) on the right, On the right, "昏" and "因" are ideograms. More importantly, there are also some words in Chinese that do not have a special symbol to record them, but are borrowed from a character with the same or similar sound. For example, the character "而" which originally means "beard" was used to record the Chinese conjunction "而", which has the same pronunciation as "而". In this case, Chinese characters were already completely phonetic. Therefore, in the latter half of the 1950s, some scholars in China suggested that the nature of Chinese characters should be a phonetic script combining ideograms and expressions.

The "Six Books" theory proposed by Xu Shen, a scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty, was the earliest theory to systematically analyze the structure of Chinese characters from a scientific point of view. Xu Shen in the "Shuowen Jiezi - narrative" in the systematic exposition of the "six books" of the regulations, pointed out that "the weekly rituals at the age of eight into the elementary school, the Paul's teach the state son of the first six books, one said that refers to the matter; two said that the pictogram; three said that the sound of the shape; four said that will be the meaning of the five said that the transfer of the note; six said that the false borrowing." Later generations in the elaboration of the "six books" theory, more than Xu Shen's "six books" name. Shaped-sound characters is the most capable of creating words of a word-making method. Of the nearly 10,000 characters included in Shuowen Jiezi, more than 80% are morpho-syntactic characters. In modern Chinese characters, the proportion of form-sound characters has exceeded 90%.

Chinese characters have a long history. The so-called legend of Cangjie, the historian of Fuxi and Huangdi in ancient times, who created characters, reflects the long history of the generation of Chinese characters in China. According to archaeological discoveries, and the origin of Chinese characters related to the information, one is the late primitive society, Yangshao, Liangzhu, Majiayao and Longshan culture period of engraved marks; a late primitive society, Shandong Dawenkou culture period of hieroglyphic symbols. Paleographers used to think that the engraved images on pottery unearthed at the Dawenkou site (about 3,000 - 2,500 B.C.

3,000 B.C.

were already a more mature kind of engraving on tortoiseshell and animal bones. Oracle bone writing refers to a kind of text engraved on tortoise shell and animal bone unearthed in Yinxu, the capital site of the Yin Dynasty in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province, and is also known as Yinxu Oracle Bone Writing Characters. It was first discovered and collected by Wang Yirong, who was the priest of the Imperial College in 1899, and was studied by the scholars at that time, such as Sun Yijiang, Luo Zhenyu, and Wang Guowei, who determined that it was a kind of instrument of the Yin Dynasty, which recorded many events of the Yin Dynasty, and it was a precious material for the study of the history of the Yin Dynasty. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 200,000 pieces of oracle bones unearthed in Xiaotun Village, Anyang.

Napoleon once said, "Don't wake the sleeping giant" to the past "China". The British defeated Napoleon and immediately started the Opium War, which awakened China.

East Asia, consisting of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, has a large population. These peoples are more vigorous, industrious, courageous, and intelligent than any other people in the world. And in the case of the Chinese, they have succeeded in uniting hundreds of millions of people politically and culturally for thousands of years more than any other people in the world. They have demonstrated this ability to unite politically and culturally with unparalleled success.

World unity is the way to avoid collective suicide of humanity. On this point, the most prepared of all peoples now is the Chinese nation, which has cultivated a unique way of thinking over the past 2,000 years.

From the historical experience of maintaining unity over the past 2,000 years, China is qualified to become the new spindle for realizing a unified world. (English) Arnold J. Toynbee Toynbee and Daisaku Ikeda, "Prospects for the 21st Century," International Cultural Publishing Company, November 1985, 1st edition, pp. 291-295.)

"It is probably not the Western European countries or Westernized countries that will unify the world in the future, but China," he said. I am afraid it may be said that it is China that shoulders the destiny of bringing political unity and peace not only to half the world but to the whole world" (ibid., p. 289)

This is the view expressed by the renowned British historian, Minister of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of London, Arnold Toynbee, and by the renowned Japanese religious and cultural figure, social activist Daisaku Ikeda, a prominent Japanese religious and cultural figure and social activist, spoke in a few paragraphs during a discussion on human society and contemporary world issues.

Chinese culture is characterized by a continuous unity and a monolithic continuity. In the course of its historical development, Chinese culture has gradually formed a unity centered on the Huaxia culture and at the same time bringing together the cultures of various nationalities within the country, and has been able to develop independently of external influences, with great spatial and temporal continuity. The specific manifestations are as follows:

(1) Political unity

Dong Zhongshu, a Confucian scholar from Guangchuan, responded to the situation with his profound Confucianism, and offered the "Three Strategies for Heaven and Man," a systematic exposition of the theory of the induction of heaven and man based on the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) ram theory. He said in "Countermeasures for Lifting Sages and Liangs III": "The Spring and Autumn Annals is a great unification of heaven and earth, and the common friendship between the ancient and modern worlds. Now the teacher of different ways, people different theories, a hundred different parties, meaning different.

Beginning in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the agricultural economy of the Central Plains gradually took over the mainstream, and the agricultural culture assimilated and fused with other cultures, thus contributing to the pragmatic and rational spirit of the people who valued the personnel of the present world.4 Therefore, from the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the humanistic religious consciousness began to replace the divine religious consciousness, so the Book of Rites - The Book of Tables says, "The Yin people honored the gods, and led the people to sacrifice to the gods, and the people were very happy to see the gods. The Yin people honored the gods, led the people to sacrifice to the gods, and the ghosts came first and then the rites." "The Zhou people honored rituals and gave thanks to the gods and respected them from a distance." Confucius also said, "If you can't do anything for people, how can you do anything for ghosts?" "If you don't know how to live, how can you know how to die?" Although there have been gods and religions in history, they are all beliefs within a certain condition and scope, and once the divine power exceeds the power of the ruler, they will be mercilessly annihilated. Therefore, Chinese culture focuses on the rights and wrongs on earth, and pursues the ethical norms and moral laws that people should follow, and pays little attention to the afterlife. Therefore, in the early stage of ancient civilization, there was no theocratic state, and after entering the Middle Ages, there was no Christian theocracy like that in Europe. (2) Respect for the king and the people's people-oriented thinking

In the Yin and Zhou dynasties, China has appeared the germ of people-oriented thinking 5, the Duke of Zhou put forward the idea of "respect for virtue and protection of the people", Confucius put forward the idea of the people's richness, Mencius put forward the idea of the people's nobility and the king's lightness, Laozi also has a saint's "unchanging heart to people's heart" tendency. Lao Zi also had the tendency of the sage to "have no constant mind, but to take the people as his mind". In the Avatamsaka Sutra, "If you make all beings happy, you make all Buddhas happy".

The progressive ideas expressed in Zuo Zhuan through the words and deeds of the characters are very remarkable. The first is the idea of people-oriented, for example, when the Wei people expelled their ruler, Jin Hou thought it was too much. Shi Kuang said: "Or **** the king is really very. The king, the Lord of God, the hope of the people. If the Lord of the people, lack of God and lack of sacrifice, the people are desperate, the gods of the earth and grain have no master, will be able to use it? What is the point of not going?" Also said: "God's love for the people is very much! Will it make a person wantonly on the people, in order to from (indulge) its lust, and abandon the nature of heaven and earth? It must be otherwise." (Xiang XIV), on the surface does not seem to get rid of the idea of heaven and earth and ghosts and gods, but in fact expresses his political views according to the interests of the people. This is just like his discussion of Shi Yan (Zhaoyan 8), both of which were utilized to give the ruler a wake-up call. Ran Ming said to Zi Chan when he asked about governance, "Treating the people as if they were your children, and seeing those who are not benevolent, is like an eagle chasing a bird or a finch from its horns." (25th year of Xiang) Feng Slip said to Duke Huai of Chen, "I have heard that it is a blessing for a state to treat the people as if they were injured when it is rising, and a curse for it to treat the people as if they were dirt and mustard when it is dying." (Lamentations of the first year)

3, emphasis on the group light individual

The most important feature of Chinese society is the family-oriented, the home is both the dependence of the human life, but also the growth of the personality of the mother's womb, the blood in the Chinese ethic, not only is a kind of basic human relations, but also the prerequisites of all other relations, the individual is first a member of the family, and then a citizen of the community, in dealing with the relationship between the individual and the family. In dealing with the relationship between the individual and the family, the family is often regarded as more important than the individual, and special attention is paid to the ethical relationship among family members and to the individual's responsibilities and duties, i.e., "doing one's best". Love for the family was further extended to loyalty to the state, and when it was not possible to have both, loyalty was the most important thing, i.e., the so-called "Seek a loyal minister at the door of a filial son", and fulfill one's filial piety at home, and fulfill one's loyalty outside the home.

(2) Principle of patriarchal collectivism

(3) Pursuit of social values

Traditional Chinese culture tends to understand human beings as a whole "class" as opposed to livestock and animals,6 and considers human beings to be social animals, thus attributing the individual value of human beings to their social value and labeling them as individuals by society. It emphasizes man's social obligations and responsibilities and his obedience to society. Thus, it emphasizes the dedication and sacrifice of the individual to the society.

4 First, Yi Yin's statement that "Heaven is not to be trusted, and fate is not to be changed" ("咸有一德"), on which the later Zhou rulers based their conclusion, "Heaven is not to be trusted, and the only thing that I can do is to make King Ning Deyan" ("君奭"), is not to be trusted. Xunzi, "Heaven has its own way of doing things, not by Yao, not by Jie," and "the great heaven and think of it, who is with the animal and the system; from the sky and praise, who is with the system of heaven and the use of the order of the day."

5 Shangshu said, "The people are the foundation of the state, the foundation of the state", "the sky is smart since the people are smart", "the sky sees the self people see, the sky listens to the self people listen to", "the people's desires, the sky will be from".

6Xunzi's "The Ninth Book of the King's System" said: "Water and fire have gas but no life, grass and trees have life but no knowledge, and animals have knowledge but no righteousness, but human beings have gas, life, knowledge, and righteousness, so they are the most valuable in the world. Strength is not like cattle, walking is not like horses, and cattle and horses for use, why? They say that people can group, they can not group also. How can people group? Said points; points how to be able to do, said righteousness; Therefore, the righteousness to points and, and then more power, more power is strong, strong wins things, so the palace room can get and live? Therefore, life can not be no group, group and no points are fighting, fighting is chaotic, chaotic is away, away from the weak, weak can not win things? The king is good group also, the king when the road, then all things are appropriate, the six animals have their long, the group of life have their lives"

4, heavy human nature light Chinese traditional philosophy of "one day people", "with the knowledge of the behavior", The traditional Chinese philosophy of "one day man", "with knowledge and action" and "with truth and goodness" does not study the external natural world as an objective object of knowledge, but as a whole with human emotions to experience, as a result of which it does not pay attention to the search for the laws of nature, but only focuses on the fulfillment of human relationships and moral obligations.

5, respect for the old and the ancient Chinese people's values are the ancient "golden age" as the value orientation, to abide by the patriarchal ethics and morality as the highest ideals of personality, patriarchal social traditions as the standard of value judgment, people always look back to the past to find the social ideals, the law of the former king, the restoration of the "three generations". People always look back to the past to find social ideals, follow the way of the former kings, restore the rites of the "Three Dynasties", and take the picture of the life of the clan society in the ancient Three Dynasties period as the highest social pursuit and ideal realm. Therefore, Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism and Legalism all emphasized the teachings of the late king and used the late king to promote their political ideals. Therefore, not only the "Rites of Passage" in the "commonwealth" ideal is the mouth of Confucius on the pre-Confucian society of the recounting, Mencius also said: "the world has up to the respect of the three: Jennings a, teeth a, Germany a", and the pre-Qin scholars, Confucianism, the other characters are also words must be called Yao, Shun, Taoism words must be called the Yellow Emperor, Mohist words must be called Dayu, agriculturalists words must be called Shennong, as Mr. Hou Wai Loo said, "they wear ancient clothes, speak ancient words, while attempting to illustrate the future world of their own visions and dreams." Not only that, even since the Qin and Han Dynasties, "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" talk about the social ideals of "the public is the peace of the world", still trust to start from the era of "the former Sage King's rule of the world".

6. The fictional "Land of the Huaxu Clan" in "Lie Zi - The Yellow Emperor" is also said to be the place where the Yellow Emperor dreamed and wandered by day, and Ruan Ji likewise sent his naturalistic ideals to the time of the flood, when "heaven and earth were opened up in the past, and all living things were nurtured," as Bao Jingyan put it. Bao Jingyan's ideal of "no ruler and no ministers" was even placed in the "ancient age of Xianggu".

7, the difficult road of studying abroad After the reparation of Gengzi in 1901, the U.S. used the reparation money to finance China's study abroad, and up to this time, Chinese people still regarded studying abroad as a very shameful and terrible thing. The first batch of international students planned to enroll 120 people, but few people enrolled, so they had to be assigned to various places as a political any, even so, it was difficult to recruit students, so they had to go to the southeast coast and other relatively open-minded areas to recruit, and finally recruited some students from Hong Kong before they could barely complete the task. This was so because people were afraid of studying abroad. According to legend, foreign students had to be skinned after leaving the country and then replaced with dog skins for exhibition purposes. Zhan Tianyou, the engineer division of China's first railroad, the Beijing-Zhangzhou Railway, only agreed to his son's going abroad when his neighbor, surnamed Xie, promised to marry his daughter to Tianyou, Zhan's father.

So China for a long time, there is only a feudal court without the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and six ministries in the "ritual" department to deal with relations with neighboring countries, until the Ming Dynasty also retained the "four barbarians Hall", responsible for diplomatic translation and other matters, even so, it is still difficult to meet the needs of the Qing Dynasty signed the "Niwan" agreement, which was signed by the Qing Dynasty. Even so, it is still difficult to meet the needs of the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk is to ask the two missionaries as an interpreter. After the Qing Dynasty, the establishment of the "Minister of Commerce", but also not full-time, first by the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, and then by the Governor of the two rivers, and the northern part of the relationship with Tsarist Russia by the Ili General and Heilongjiang General. After the Second Opium War, Xianfeng Emperor still refused to set up British and French legation in Beijing, finally, as a last resort, according to the Russian way to set up a "foreign students hall", instructing foreign ministers "do not have to travel every year". 1860, foreigners attacked Beijing after Xianfeng Emperor In 1860, after the foreigners fled Beijing to Jehol, Prince Gong Yi asked for the establishment of a "Premier's Office for International Affairs" to deal with "foreign affairs", and the Xianfeng Emperor still suggested the "Premier's Office for Commercial Affairs", but it was still a temporary organization, and its chief was a military officer. Temporary institutions, the chief also by the Minister of military affairs, and co-existing with the Minister of the North and South Pacific, its office space than the other six ministries of simplicity, until after the Boxer Rebellion, 1901, 2, 24 to set up a permanent foreign institutions in the United Kingdom, the establishment of embassies abroad.

Lin Zexu as modern China's first "eyes open to the world", still believe that the British legs can not bend, so as long as each Chinese soldier holding a bamboo pole, you can defeat the British army; and Yang Fang that the British gunboat for "evil arts "and advocated" to fight evil with evil "on the bamboo rows, put all kinds of filth inside, especially women's products to defeat the enemy. Wei Yuan, "the sea state chart", Xu Jishe's "Ying Huan Zhi Lu" is the first introduction to the four sides of the book, "Zhang foreign barbarians of the flames, damage to China's prestige" and was criticized by the people, and its "division of the barbarians of the long technology to control the barbarians," the advocate of the people are still known as the The idea of "learning from the barbarians to control the barbarians" is still referred to as "barbarians", and they are still criticized for "using the barbarians to change the Xia".

The Boxer Rebellion called the missionaries "big hairy", Chinese "religious" for "two hairy", the use of foreign goods, "three hairy "and so on, to" ten Maozi "that by practicing boxing can be invulnerable to knives and guns, Empress Dowager Cixi actually also believe to be true.

Overall, the Spring and Autumn period of the many ethnic groups, some with the integration of China, such as the East Barbarians; some of them are growing dramatically, and China's countries to separate, such as Chu, is based on the integration of nationalities, the hegemony of a party. If we look at the overall trend of ethnic struggle in this period, the northern Di and Chu had the greatest impact on the Chinese Xia. Northern Di south invasion of the Central Plains, Chu to the Central Plains expansion, constituting the Spring and Autumn period of the Central Chinese vassal states of the two powerful opposing forces, for this reason, the Spring and Autumn period Gongyang Zhuan records that: "the South Barbarians and the Northern Di intersection, China is not endless as if the line". The Spring and Autumn Period was the first period of great integration of all Chinese nationalities. The integration of all nationalities was realized with the Huaxia race as the main body and the great powers as the center. After more than two hundred and forty years of development during the Spring and Autumn Period, the Chinese nation entered the Warring States Period. After that, China's various ethnic groups and their relationship with each other and profound changes, some powerful, some died out, some fused with other ethnic groups, some inherited the old name, some inaugurated a new name, but no matter how the changes, the various ethnic groups are still in the great land of China interlaced *** living, interdependent, migrating to and fro, and gradually fused.