China spent the greater part of the last century struggling to become a modern nation.
But after so many years spent looking outward and forward, some Chinese are once again looking inward and back -- way back, to the golden age of philosophers like Confucius (
The current rage for things ancient -- known as "national studies fever" -- has led in several cities to a revival of private schools known as si shu (
Contemporary analyses of classic novels have become best sellers, and televised lectures in which professors expound on esoteric areas of Chinese culture and history draw tens of millions of viewers.
But perhaps the most conspicuous symbol of national-studies fever is the continuing popularity of Yu Dan's Reflections on The Analects, by a professor of media studies at Beijing Normal University, Yu Dan (
The book is based on seven lectures that Yu gave last fall on the popular prime-time television program The Lecture Room. It is a simply written, highly personal interpretation of The Analects, which are commonly attributed to Confucius, but were actually written by his disciples. But it offers a somewhat unorthodox premise: that the purpose of Confucian thought is to explain how to live a happy life in the modern world.
"Nobody should think that the Confucian Analects are so high we can only gaze up to them," the book begins. "Really, The Analects are meant to teach us how to attain spiritual happiness, adjust our daily routines and find our place in modern life."
Yu sifts through The Analects to find quotations and stories that support this quest for personal fulfillment, mixes them with references to Buddhism and Taoism, Hegel and Tagore, and ties everything together with anecdotes from contemporary life. In The Analects, a major text of the Confucian philosophy that dominated (critics would say oppressed) China for most of two millennia, she finds advice for stress reduction, forgiveness, simple living, friendship and achieving one's dreams.
Under her pen, the story in which Confucius tells a student who complains of having no siblings, "if you are a gentleman, all men within the four seas are your brothers," becomes a parable about learning to let go of regrets before they destroy you. Some maxims that are unpalatable in the modern age are ignored, like this one: "Women and people of low birth are hard to handle; if you let them get close, they presume and if you keep them at a distance they resent it."
Yu said in an interview: "Many of the things in the more than 2,000-year-old Analects are not suited to today's society. Not everything in The Analects is good, but some of it is. I look at it objectively and then highlight some of the things that are good. For instance, I teach people to emphasize the positive things in their lives, not the negative things."
Yu attributes the tremendous popularity of her work and of national studies in general to historical factors -- since traditional thought was criticized for so many years, there is genuine interest in rediscovering it -- and to the stresses of life in modern China.
"When I was young, in the 1960s and 1970s, we didn't have many choices," she said. "You never changed your job, or your house -- and whoever thought of going abroad? Poverty brought stability; there were no inequalities. But now it is different; there are many gaps and people are unsettled. They want to find a way to live a less anxious life."
Some have accused Yu of dumbing down the intellectual legacy of China's greatest philosophical school, and creating a kind of Confucian chicken soup for the modern Chinese soul. Such criticisms leave her unfazed.
"I have a right to speak, and they have a right to speak," she said of her critics. "I believe in a diversity of opinions. And my critics have their logic. You have to understand that some of these people have been studying Confucius their whole lives."
People's University in Beijing opened a College of National Studies in 2005 and even erected a statue of Confucius. Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) has made the Confucian concept of a harmonious society a cornerstone of his ruling ideology. But the success of Yu's take on The Analects has caused some observers to question the direction of this trend and encouraged critics to speak out.
Some who have been recently exposed to national studies "tend to place it on a pedestal," the China Daily columnist Raymond Zhou wrote in a June editorial. "In essence they want to revert to the old days," when national studies "was a force of suppression rather than a source of inspiration."
Even Yu said the temperature of national studies was getting too high.
"National studies fever is not good," she said. "You need to have a calm and sincere attitude toward it. We cannot go back to a single culture theory anymore. Chinese culture and Western culture must complement each other."
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