Taiwan Today

The word culture is at times used interchangeably with the word civilization. But scholars in the Occident as well as those in our country have repeatedly pointed out that there is a dif­ference in the significance of the two terms. Chien Mo, professor of Chinese history, said in the Preface of his book An Introduction to the Cul­tural History of China. "Both we-min (civiliza­tion) and wen-hua (culture) are terms that have come from the West. A differentiation should be made between their meaning. However, our people have often used them in a confused manner." Enough has been said on the distinctive features of the two terms: there can be nothing new in harping on the details on the matter of when to use this word or the other. In this discussion, it is only necessary to look into what is usually implied when the word culture is used.

The term cultural heritage needs to be defined. It may be said to be the sum total of the ideas, traditions and. accomplishments of a people's past to which they attach such importance as to in­fluence their living. Its hold on the people is therefore of a flexible character and is strengthened or weakened by the acceptance or rejection of the generation; its nature therefore may undergo a change as each generation goes its way and a new one is born. So when we begin to discuss the legacy left to us as the culture of old, we should refrain from mentioning innovations and changes that existed for only a short time and then disappeared, and place emphasis on the essential characteristics that have come down from ancient times - or that can be traced as far back as we rationally can - up to the present day.

Much has been written on the cultural heritage of China, both by our nationals and by foreigners. Until recent years, most of the material dwelt upon one of two aspects of the question: culture as conceived in the minds of our ancestors of long ago or that which was upheld by our people for perhaps 2,000 years until the impact with Occidental influences. This impact attained its full strength only in the present century. In spite of moving very slowly, it was so violent that the pendulum swung to one extreme and took more than 50 years to swing back to somewhere near the central point. Those born before the impact was serious and since have felt its full force need to take a new look and make a fresh appraisal of our cultural heritage.

Few students of the advancement and accomplishments of homo sapiens take issue with this description of the dawn of human history: "About 5000 B.C. a few (people) enjoying special advan­tages of location and climate developed superior cultures. These cultures, which attained knowledge of writing and considerable advancement in the arts and sciences and in social organization, began in that part of the world known as the Near Orient. Here flourished at different periods be­tween 5000 and 300 B.C. the mighty empires of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans and the Persians, together with the smaller states of such peoples as the Cretans, the Sumerians, the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. In other parts of the world the beginnings of civiliza­tion were retarded. There was nothing that could be called civilized life in China until about 2000 B.C."

The contributions of the ancient Egyptians to civilization and culture are said to be intellectual and artistic, religious and ethical. But somehow the "seed" of the ancient Egyptians have failed to "inherit the earth." There are fewer than 1,500,000 of the descendants of this ancient race living today; they are known as Copts, the great majority of whom still live in their old land but who do not exert much influence. They even gave up their old faith and adopted the Christian religion. The legacy of the Mesopotamian peoples has been described as relatively less spectacular; but it strongly influenced the course of events in some of the other nations of antiquity. Their land is now inhabited by Arabs and Jews. No trace of their descendants can be found, although some scholars in the past century did play with a theory that has since been discredited that "the original Chinese tribe" moved from the Near East to the Hwangho basin. Some even said that the people of the tribe were descended from the Akkadians.

Without insinuating that there is any serious misstatement in the foregoing description of ancient cultures, it has to be pointed out that the order was not intended to correspond chronologi­cally to the development of cultures. About 2000 B.C., "there was nothing that could be called civilized life in China," leaving room for thought that very soon afterward there might be something. But the Persians and the Hebrews were mentioned before the Chinese. Yet Zoroaster (or Zarathu­stra), the founder of the Persian faith, goes back only to the 15th century B.C.; furthermore, com­paratively little is known of the Persians before the 6th century B.C. In the case of the Hebrews, who influenced European culture to a great extent, Abraham did not live before 1800 B.C. and Moses not until sometime between 1300-1250 B.C.

It may be taken for granted that the only cultures older than that of the Chinese were those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. But the people of truly ancient Egyptian origin have dwindled to no more than a million and a half and exert no significant influence over the rest in the world. Descendants of the Babylonians are no longer to be found. On the other hand, the Chinese population has grown to between 700 and 800 million, approximately a fourth of the inhabitants on earth; and the influence of Chinese culture had extended to the end of known world with the expeditions of Cheng Ho to the Western Seas in the l400s. What are the values of Chinese culture that have sustained its continuity and growth.

The frontiers of the political state which we call China have fluctuated through the centuries but the area of Chinese civilization has steadily increased. No territory once fully subjected to this civilization has ever been wholly lost; no territory permanently incorporated in the Chinese area has withstood the penetration of Chinese culture. The process of absorption has sometimes been slow but always complete and final. Why?

The peoples of the West knew a little of China and Chinese culture as early as the 1st century B.C. Silk was a valued import of the Roman Empire. But the Silk Route was soon abandoned because sandstorms covered the wells which were indispensable to caravans of traders. The image of China fell into oblivion until 1295, when Marco Polo, an open-minded observer, dictated to his cellmate Rusticiano de Pisa in a Genoese prison his "Description of the World." Marco Polo's account of Cathay was at first regarded as fiction. On his deathbed in 1324, he was importuned by pious friends to renounce the lies he had told. The West had no real knowledge of China or her culture until the beginning of the 16th century.

Chinese goods trickled into the Mediterranean market before Marco Polo. But the trade was in Arab hands. Venetians could go no farther east than Constantinople because of Arab sea power. In the 5th century and possibly earlier, Canton had a settlement of Arabs. The Arabian Nights made references to things Chinese, but these tales were not translated into European languages before 1700.

On October 12, 1492, Columbus reached the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas. He believed the inhabitants were Indians. It was something like 30 years before this was corrected. The discovery of America gave further impetus to the venturesome spirit of the Europeans. Portuguese found their way around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1516, Fernao Perez de Andrade sailed into Shangchuen in the Pearl River estuary and obtained permission to sail two of his eight ships to Canton. The Portuguese adventurers were followed by the Russians - the only ones to come overland - the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and other Euro­peans. In 1552, Francis Xavier reached Shangchuen. Diplomatic missions made their first and unsuccessful contacts with China in the 17th century. Three kinds of foreigners had an interest in China: merchants, missionaries and those in government service. Journalists, tourists and technicians came later.

The main incentive was trade. Before and during most of the 18th century, the Portuguese came close to enjoying a monopoly. The English found reasons to push ahead in commercial relations with China. The British East India Company had trouble balancing its budget and approximate­ly a third of revenues depended on the China trade. Therefore the English of the period directed their efforts to increase this trade. Blockade runners and others mustered enough influence to force London to abolish the East India Company monopoly in 1833. The Jardines financed mis­sionary scholars, study and translation of the Chinese Classics. But it cannot be said that foreign merchants had a genuine interest in Chinese cul­ture.

Missionaries sought to propagate their religion. But they were not mercenary and were highly educated. Ricci came to China in 1582 and Subaten de Ursis in 1611. Schaal and Verbiest arrived in the early years of the Ch'ing dynasty. All four were highly respected by the Chinese Court and collaborated with Chinese intellectuals in modernizing astronomy and other sciences. They rose to high positions. Then a political reaction set in. Roman Catholic priests were expelled from China in 1724. There was little missionary work the century before the arrival of the first Protestant evangelist, Robert Morrison, in 1807. After that missionary work in education yielded important results. The Chinese were influenced to accept foreign cultures. They con­cluded that Chinese culture was neither inspiring nor debasing.

Diplomats and other foreigners in government service guarded and developed the interests of their own countries. After their tours of duty, they went home, where their estimates of Chinese culture influenced their countrymen. Some of their views were laudatory side, some derogatory, and most in between. A few returned to China after retirement to translate and write. Journalists, tourists and experts rarely had the time and energy to delve into culture.

Before the physical weakness of China was fully exposed, great men and famous scholars of the West had high praise for China. Napoleon said, "When China is moved, it will change the face of the globe." Lord Wolseley said "To me, they are the most remarkable race on earth, and I have thought and still believe them to be the coming great rulers of the world." After the middle of the 19th century, the respect of Westerners for China and the Chinese people declined and at one time had virtually vanished.

In recent years, the tide has turned. Hu Shih had 39 doctoral degrees from foreign universities. The works of Lin Yutang have been translated into many languages. Dr. Lee Tsung-dao and Dr. Yang Chen-ning were co-winners of the 1957 Nobel Prize for physics. Science and Civilization in China by Joseph Needham of Cambridge Uni­versity had great impact. A new appraisal of Chinese culture is under way.

To evaluate China's traditional culture we first should look to trust worthy books of ancient origin. Mencius said: "Opportunities of time vouchsafed by Heaven are not equal to advantages of situation afforded by the Earth, and advantages afforded by the Earth are not equal to the union arising from the accord of Men." Here we find three elements mentioned, Heaven, Earth and Man, a fundamental which our forefathers grasped millennia ago. Here, also, we find a distortion: the emphasis on Man over and above Heaven and Earth. The whole course of our history has been affected, - favorably or adversely depending upon the individual view, by this distortion.

We have to turn to circumstantial evidence to demonstrate that the central point in our ancient culture was the harmony or the uniform advance­ment of our "knowledge" of the Laws of Heaven, Earth and Man. The legends about the Three Supreme Rulers (T'ien Huang, Ti Huang and Jen Huang in reality Heaven. Earth and Man personi­fied, or what was thought of as the Laws of Heaven, Earth and Man) were transmitted to posterity through word of mouth and were not recorded in the Hsiang Shu, which begins with a chapter on "The Canon of Yao." However, it has to be remembered that Mencius described the way Confucius obtained knowledge of the doctrine of old in the following words:

"From Yao and Shun down to T'ang were 500 years and more. As to Yu and Kao Yao, they saw those earliest sages, and so knew their doctrines, while T'ang heard those doctrines as transmitted, and so knew them.

"From T'ang to King Wan were 500 years and more. As to I Yin and Lai Chu, they saw T'ang and knew his doctrines, while King Wan heard them as transmitted, and so knew them.

"From King Wan to Confucius were 500 years and more. As to T'ai-kung Wang and San I-shang, they saw Wang, and so knew his doc­trines, while Confucius knew them as transmitted, and so knew them."

The written History of China begins with the Shih Chi. We find in the last paragraph of the 130 chapters in this work by the historian Szu Ma Ch'ien that although many scholars said; "The period of the Five Emperors is far away; the stories concerning them appear to be hearsay, raw and crude, and are not to be taken seriously," he was disposed to accept the records in the Hsiang Shu as trustworthy, because he had traveled all over the country and found elders everywhere recounting the doctrines taught by Huang Ti, Yao and Shun. Szu Ma Ch'ien lived after the time of Mencius; possibly he could have been influenced by the passage quoted above and so did not go further back than the period of Yao. At any rate, as concerns antiquity, we have to place a certain amount of confidence in what has been transmitted to us by word of mouth.

It is a matter of conjecture whether our earliest ancestors took "The Story of Creation" seriously. Some scholars maintain that the legend of P'an Ku and Nu Wa (sometimes transliterated into Nu Kua) first appeared in the Shen Hsien Chuan ("Biography of the Gods") written by the Taoist priest Ko Huang as late as the Tsin dynasty (265-420 A.D.). The cosmogonies in the I Ching ("Book of Changes") and in the literature attributed to Confucius and Mencius, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were all impersonal.

But the story of the Three Supreme Rulers fall into a different category. The reference made by Mencius shows that some legends about Heaven, Earth and Man could have existed at the time. There is no proof, however, that those legends ever existed in accepted written form before Szu Ma Tsun wrote his "Additional Sections to the Shih Chi." In the "Trimetrical Classic," which was an elementary guide to knowledge for children up to the beginning of this century and which is still read and studied today, it is said, "The Three Forces are Heaven, Earth and Man."

It may be taken for granted that the structure of ancient Chinese culture was not based upon Monism, nor Dualism, but on some kind of theory that the most durable of all things had to be built upon three cornerstones. Our ancestors believed that there would be no purpose for Man - an ephemeral creature - to speculate upon existence, if he had to leave himself out and worship only Heaven and Earth. The symbol of the highest ruling authority in ancient China was not the scepter, as in the Occident, but the ting, a bronze vessel with two ears resting on three feet. It may be deduced that the ting represented "all that was China;" its ears, the Ying and the Yang principles; and its three feet, Heaven, Earth and Man. Inci­dentally, the combination and permutation of 2s and 3s form the signs of the Pa Kua, or "Eight Diagrams," the basis for the science of mathematics in ancient China.

We may metaphorically say that these corner­stones manifest signs of life; in other words, they grow. When the growth in all three is uniform, there is balance; when one of the three grows disproportionately, the balance becomes tilted; and when there is an abnormal, malignant or elephantiac growth in anyone of the three, the center of gravity will fall outside its base and the whole thing will topple. Being a thing that grows, our cultural heritage may be affected by outside influences; but once such influences have been absorbed into our culture, they become part of our heritage, although it would be wrong to forget where they come from. In this connection, it may be interesting to recall a few instances showing the tendency to appropriate foreign discoveries and inventions as our own:

1. A poster distributed by an optical company depicted Confucius and his disciples wearing glasses in disregard of the fact that spectacles were in­troduced into China by the Spaniards towards the end of the Ming dynasty. They were known at that time as 靉 靆, a transliteration of the first part of the Spanish word anteojos.

2. Some people insist that the Chinese smoked from times immemorial. Actually, when we first heard of tobacco, we had no name for it: our ancestors transliterated the word into 淡巴孤.

3. Many Chinese have pointed to the instru­ments atop the walls of the Observatory Peiping as proof of the antiquity of Chinese knowledge of astronomy. These instruments were built by Ferdinand Verbiest and his Roman Catholic colleagues around 1680.

4. Who among us has not told a foreign friend that the "Chinese violin" is called the huch'in. Bu t the very word hu signifies that the instrument is of Tartar or Mongol origin.

Digressing for a moment, we may recall that the importance of the Renaissance in Europe does not lie in the revival of the painting, sculpture, architecture and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, but in the spirit of the movement. Some authorities say that this spirit is but the idea of Humanism, or that humanity must "study man himself. " The Renaissance was not strictly a renaissance. It was a revelation to the peoples of Europe: the revelation that Humanism must be added to Religion, Philosophy and Technology or Science. These coincide with the spirit of our own cultural heritage.

Studying the history of our people - even solely from the versions accepted as authoritative before the beginning of the present century - we can trace "barbarian" (namely, I, Man, Jung and Tih) blood in almost all of us. Even the founder of the Chou dynasty (1122-221 B.C.) is of doubt­ fully pure Chinese parentage. In the Nan-Pei Chao (the Epoch of Division into North and South, 420-589) we find the Northern Division ruled by an alien tribe, the Tobas, and not by Chinese. The founder of the Tang dynasty (618-907) is only half-Chinese. The history of the Five Dynasties (907-960) is chronologically almost identical with that of the Liao (or Khitan Tartar) dynasty. The Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1278) overlaps the Yuan or Mongol dynasty (1280, but traceable to 1206 when Ghengis Khan led his troops south­ ward, to 1368). Inevitably, there was a tremendous amount of intermixing of blood among the various races during these periods and immediately after­ ward. In modern times, the Manchus occupied the throne from 1644 to 1912. The vast territory they ruled was known as the "Chinese Empire," not the "Manchu Empire." Although intermarriage was not tolerated during the period, descendants of the Manchu race call themselves Chinese. The word "Chinese" is not an ethnical term, but a cultural one.

Chinese culture thus may be taken as the true strain that runs from ancient times to the present. The ethnical factor does not. Supposing someone asks the average Chinese of good education what constitutes Chinese culture. In nine cases out of ten, the answer will be along these lines: (1) It is the doctrines of Yao and Shun. (2) It is the teachings of Confucius and the other sages and philosophers who lived long ago. At times, more specifically, (3) it is jen or virtue; yi or right­eousness; tao or the Way, the Truth; teh or moral conduct or goodness. Or (4) it is hsiao or filial piety; ti or fraternal love; chung or loyalty; hsin or the quality of being trustworthy; li or propriety; yi or righteousness; lien or absence of an avaricious nature; ch'ih or the sense of shame. Or (5) it is siu sheng or the cultivation of one's self; ch'i chia or the regulating of one's family; ch'ih kuo or governing the country in a proper manner p'ing t'ien hsia or making the whole world peaceful. All of these answers are based on humanitarian doctrines (i.e. Man) without much thought given to the existence of an Almighty (or Heaven) or the advantages offered by our physical surround­ings (Earth). The pendulum is swinging back strongly.

It would be belittling one of the vital elements in our culture to say that any of the foregoing answers is wrong. But to limit our answer to any one of these, or even to all of them combined, would be to overemphasize Man alone. Our culture is based on the harmonious and uniform development of metaphysical thought, physical achievement and humanist doctrines. Unfortunately, the overemphasis on Man has thrown the whole structure out of balance. Before the days of the Republic (1912), many intellectual households all over the country had tablets with the inscription T'ien, Ti, Ch'uin, Ch'in, Shih carved or written in gold. Obeisance was paid to these tablets. We may interpret the cultural history of the past two millennia as follows:

CHINESE CULTURE

Man had taken up three-fifths of the whole substance that constituted our culture, leaving one-fifth to Heaven and the remaining fifth to Earth. That is a lopsided structure.

At the beginning of this century, critics asked whether there was even a grain of logic in the way we Chinese were trained to think. They pointed out that a vast number of our intellectuals accepted Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism at one and the same time. They considered these three to be incompatible. They had forgotten that there was and always has been a common denomi­nator in these and other religions. This factor is the existence of an Almighty, whether he is called Chu-Tsai, Shang-Ti, God, Buddha or Allah. The Chinese intellectual of the old or the new school believes this is the essence of all religions.

At the same time, every religion includes a certain amount of superstition. The belief in Heaven, or the Creator, has to be negatively acknowledged, that is to say, Man has to believe that God does exist, unless and until it has been proven that he does not.

Superstitions and cults may be considered virtual religions during the period when they cannot be explained or nullified by logical or scientific explanations. After such an explanation, they ought to be given up. Before such explana­tion, there can be no serious harm in allowing them to remain in circulation. Until recently, Chinese knowledge of the Earth was inferior to that of the peoples of the Occident. We had scarcely any competition from the races that lived around us. Territory of our ancestors was bounded by barriers which were insurmountable at the time (the sea to the east, the malaria-ridden areas in the south, the impassable mountains in the west and the Gobi desert and extreme cold in the north). But the land was self-sufficient. So there was no necessity to overcome the barriers. The people felt their country was the center (chung) of the world and they themselves the flower (hua) of Mankind. There existed no impulse to push them to exploit further the resources provided by Earth. The destruction of books and the massacre of scholars ordered by Emperor Shih Huang Ti in 221 B.C. drove knowledge underground.

Under such circumstances, the element Man grew disproportionately in importance. It came to be subdivided into three parts: Ch'uin (meaning the Ruler or Political System), Ch'in (meaning Parents, signifying the basis for the Social Struc­ture) and Shih (meaning Teacher or Intellectual Achievement). Culture as a whole, instead of being built only upon the three cornerstones of (Heaven, Earth and Man) came to be based on Heaven, Earth, Ruler, Parents and Teacher. The division of Man into three parts is in itself not an error. The lesson is that none of these parts should be allowed to assume the role of the whole Man or to be of importance equal to Heaven and Earth.

A study of what our ancient sages thought of Ch'uin, Ch'in and Shih reveals that in recent centuries we have again distorted the significance of these factors. The word Ch'uin or "Ruler" should not be identified with the colloquial term "boss," "highest boss" or "king," but to the political system that the people have acknowledged as the ruling force of the nation. Otherwise, Confucius would not have found it necessary to wander from one place in search of a ruling prince or duke under whom he could serve. It is also wrong to presume that the significance of Ch'in or Parents could be fully exemplified by the "Twenty-Four Cases of Filial Piety," some of which are naive as judged by the hindsight and knowledge of those living today. Ch'in signifies the Social Structure or Social Order under which the people have learned to live. The distorted importance of Shih or the Intellectual Power has caused the greatest damage. Shih must not be identified with the Person-of-the-Teacher and not even with scholars as a whole, but with the Truth-Taught-by-the-Experience-of-the-Past. However, until recently the scholar class virtually monopo­lized "knowledge" and assumed the role of teacher and preceptor rolled into one.

With the understanding that our cultural heri­tage is descended from ancient times and has undergone changes as each generation went its way and a new one was born, the current Wen Hua Fu Hsin Yuin T'ung or "Movement for the Revival of Traditional Culture" should emphasize the following points:

1. That there is something intrinsic in the culture of our ancient forebears which enabled it to last longer than those of the other branches of Mankind, and that this something is Faith in the balanced development of Acquired Knowledge concerning the Laws of Heaven, Earth and Man.

2. That because of the absence of competition from rival cultures for tens of centuries, distortions and mislaid emphases left our people unprepared to meet the exigencies growing out of the impact with modern Occidental culture at the beginning of this century.

3. That we must learn from the mistakes which accompanied the transmission of our culture from generation to generation and adjust our future actions accordingly. "Choose the good qualities in others and follow them; find out their bad qualities and learn to mend our ways," Confucius said. Blindly to follow the teachings of our schol­ar class of recent centuries or to adopt the teach­ings of the Occident wholesale would not give the desired results.