My Country and my People 吾国与吾民书评

My Country and my People—book review

My Country and my People is written by Lin Yutang, an internationally famous Chinese writer who was conversant with English and had deep understanding of both western and Chinese culture. This book was intended for the westerners who want to have a better understanding of Chinese culture, and who indeed need to have a better understanding of china. The publication of this book was like a bombshell in western countries and in China as well, since it was the first book about china that is written by a serious Chinese who analyzed his culture objectively. This book helps the western understand China and also helps Chinese to reflect on their culture.

This book contains two parts—part one the Bases and part two the Life. The first part “the Bases”focus on the bases of Chinese culture, covering the origin and development of Chinese people, the Chinese character, the Chinese mind and the last chapter Ideals of Life, surveying the mental and moral constitution of Chinese people and the ideals of life which influence the fundamental patterns of life. The second part focuses on the study of Chinese life itself in its sexual, social, political, literary and artistic aspects. Stated briefly, this part covers Chinese women, society, government literature and art. Overall, the book was organized logically.

As the author says in the preface, very few people understood China—the western scholars were so arrogant and viewed China by the western standard, consequently reaching no conclusion other than that China is a barbaric country and the Chinese people is a barbaric people; the Chinese scholars, however, were the same arrogant and proud, unwilling to admit the weakness of Chinese culture, only writing songs of extolling and defending Chinese culture and their pride. We can borrow two famous words from Jane Austin—pride and prejudice, to characterize the attitudes of these Chinese and western scholars. One typical example of extreme pride is Gu Hongming, a famous Chinese scholar and professor of Peking University, who, though conversant with English, German and many other western language, was extremely conservative

and indiscriminately defended everything of Chinese culture. He was unwilling to cut his little braid long after the overthrow of Qing dynasty and keep it all his life.

Except the subjective factors, there were other huge difficulties confronting the scholars in surveying China and Chinese culture—China is so big, with a population of over 400 millions and a vast land over 10 million square kilometer and more than fifty peoples; Chinese culture is so complicated, derived from a five thousand years of uninterrupted history and have no uniform religion that dominant the culture. To have a real understanding of China an Chinese people, one must travel lots of places around the vast country to witness the Chinese people’s life, the farmers, the citizens, the drudge, the vendors, watching them, listening to them, feeling what they are feeling, thinking what they are thinking; one must also spend time in their studies, reading the Chinese classic books and studying the folk literature. It’s hard for a foreign scholar to do all this, considering the language barriers, the lack of Chinese common sense and the huge cultural gap between China and the west. Comparatively speaking, it is much easier for a Chinese scholar, who is born and raised in China, receiving traditional Chinese education and is conversant with both the Chinese classics and folk literature, in one word, he has everything needed to study Chinese culture. But the Chinese scholar must also command scientific method of studying history and culture, which is what the western scholars are good at, and he also need a kind of detachment, that is, he must detach himself from the environment so that he can view the Chinese culture with a cool mind.

Before Lin, there were a few attempts made by both Chinese and foreign scholars to view Chinese culture, but none one their works can be called a success. They either view Chinese one-sidedly, or too subjectively. From the failure of the prior efforts of other scholars derived Lin some important lessons and inspirations, the lessons being viewing Chinese culture from a narrow perspective is impossible and subjective or personal emotions are to be avoided when surveying a culture, the inspiration being the possibility of surveying Chinese culture from a macroscopic view.