读中国人的精神有感 决赛作品 杨馨怡 E31
In this winter vacation ,my teacher let us read a book called THE SPIRIT OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE by Thomson(辜鸿铭). Thomson is a Chinese and western scholar, who was the first person in China to master western science, language and Oriental Chinese in the Qing dynasty.
He translated three of China’s “The Four Books”—The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, and The Analects of Confucius. He was also the author of The Oxford Movement in China and other English books. He likes to advertise Chinese culture and spirit to westerners and have significant impact. THE SPIRIT OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE is the best reflection of his thought.
The purpose of this book is to reveal the spiritual life of the Chinese people, expound the value of Chinese tradition culture, and let the west know the “true” Chinese people and the correct Chines people’s spirit. Through the PREFACE, INTRODUCTION THE Religion of Good—citizenship, THE SPIRIT OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE, THE CHINESE WOMAN, THE CHINESE LANGUAGE, JOHN SMITH IN CHINA, A GREAT SINOLOGUE, CHINESE SCHOLARSHIP, and APPENDIX, he not only introduced Chinese traditional culture, but also introduced a better way to solve the problems in the west society.
What impressed me most in this book is that he compared Chinese people with people from western countries. Thomson believed that “for the three characteristics of the Chinese character and the Chinese civilization are: depth, broadness and simplicity.” and “delicacy”. He said “the American people, as a rule, are broad, simple, but not deep” “the English people, as a rule, are deep, simple, but not broad” “the Germans people, as a rule, are broad, deep, but not simple” and the French people are rule, broad, deep, simple, but not delicacy. Only the Chinese people have all these four excellent spiritual qualities. He believes that Confucianism is the most important reason why Chinese people can have these four excellent spiritual qualities at the same time. Chinese people will exert a small influence on Confucianism injection into every parts of life, the most commonly use is language. For example the author thinks that Chinese is a language of the soul that’s why foreigners think Chinese is hard to learn, while China's children and ordinary people feel very easy. When a good education of foreigners are learning Chinese, he use a already full of wisdom of the mind, not with the mind. The western languages are mostly belongs to this type, but China's Chinese is the language of the heart. The author gives the same explanation for the extraordinary memory of Chinese people. He thinks that Chinese people are still living a childlike life with the power of ideas, so the Chinese nation is an old and young one full of vitality. The author thus comes to the conclusion that real Chinese people live the life of adults and have the mind of children, that is to say, real Chinese people are those who have the mind of a child and the mind of an adult"
Although some of Thomson’s views are old and even feudal, but he introduced the most real Chinese civilization to the general public of the west in words that westerners can read and languages that westerners can understand. He brought many directions of thinking to us as Chinese descendants and constantly improved our national confidence and pride.
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