A little superficial thoughts about Chinese traditional culture 关于中国传统文化的一点浅薄思考 | Monthly Review

There is a famous saying in China, "Humans are born to be simple, they have similar natures, however, their habits will be carved differently by the environments they are living."

Thanks for @clovertrefoil 's post "What I see and hear, what I think and consider", which gave me some inspirations to think further about Chinese traditional culture.

Many scholars believe that the "May 4th Movement" caused a breakdown in Chinese traditional culture. Personally, I cannot agree more with this opinion.

As we all know, the "May 4th Movement" was an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal patriotic movement, marking China's entry into the stage of new-democratic revolution from the old-democratic revolution and of great significance in the modern history of China. However, while advocating the new culture, this campaign criticized the traditional culture too harshly, and some traditional culture was even totally ignored. From the "Down with Kong's Shop" slogan, you can detect a portion of the extreme of this movement.

After the founding of the New China, the full promotion of simplified Chinese characters further hindered the development of traditional Chinese culture in a sense that not only undermined the traditional features of traditional pictographic and acoustic forms, but also increased the resistance for people who want to understand traditional culture.

E.g. the Chinese character "脏(pronounced as 'zang')" is polyphonic and can be both "心脏(heart)" and "肮脏(dirty)." In traditional Chinese, when the "脏" means "heart", it is spelt as "臟," if the "脏" means "dirty", it is spelt as "髒". Chinese characters themselves are combinations of three elements, "tone, shape and meaning" .

It is easy to comprehend traditional Chinese character "臟" and "髒" from these three elements: tone, shape and meaning. The side "月(pronounced as 'yue')" in Chinese means "flesh". When it is next to the "藏", is easy to remind us of organs hidden inside the body - “臟”. "骨(pronounced as 'gu')" means "bone", which is functioned as a shape here, "葬(pronounced as 'zang')" means "burial", which is functioned as a tone here, literally, "髒" means "Bone is buried", it is easy to think of something not clean -"dirty". Simplify as "脏", it is completely unable to vividly convey the meaning of the original characters.

Nowadays, we go farther and farther from Chinese traditional culture, we even show up the feeling of cultural inferiority. When it comes to traditional Chinese culture, it seems that it is old-fashioned, that is, it can not keep pace with the times and it is more cutting-edge to learn foreign cultures in order to be align with the world. It is undeniable that some portions of the traditional culture are obsolete thus they limits development of society. However, there are always essence and drawbacks in any culture. There is a famous saying - "take its essence and drop its dross." If we overact to abandon Chinese traditional culture, how can the excellent part of Chinese traditional culture be inherited and how can it be carried forward.

With the loss of traditional culture, the codes of ethics once existing are no long applying to modern people and we are generally lacking in faith. As a consequence, many events, which can destruct our cherished view on the world, life and value from our childhood, occurred over and over again in this society. It is hard to imagine these incidents could happen in such a nation where traditional virtue such as filial piety, loyalty, righteousness and shame were always respected!

"If you are poor, you should take care of yourself, being wealthy, you should care about all the world."

As an ordinary people, it is just like a pretending moaning to express a personal opinion on a social phenomenon.

I love Chinese culture so much and all I can do in my life is to review Chinese culture with my friends and learn Chinese culture from the bottom of my heart.

If I have a child in the future, I would like to accompany him to read "Three Character Classic", "Thousand Character" ... (Individually I am not keen to "Disciple Rules".)

I attached a photo which was taken when my wife and I attended a presentation on Chinese national culture in 2016.

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“人之初，性本善。性相近，习相远。”

感谢@clovertrefoil的文章《所见所闻，所思所想》给了我启发，让我对中国传统文化进行了一点浅薄思考。

不少学者都认为，“五四运动”使中国传统文化产生了断层。个人是非常赞同这个观点的。

我们都知道，“五四运动”是一次反帝反封建的爱国运动，标志着中国由旧民主主义革命进入到新民主主义革命阶段，在中国近代史上具有重要意义。可是这次运动在提倡新文化的同时，对传统文化进行的抨击太过猛烈，有些传统文化甚至被全盘否定。从“打倒孔家店”这一口号中，便可见一斑。

而新中国成立后，全面推行简体字，在某种意义上，又进一步阻碍了中国传统文化的发展，既破坏了传统繁体字象形、声形的特点，又增加了了解传统文化的阻力。

举一个很简单的例子，“脏”这个字，是多音字，既可作“心脏”，又可作“肮脏”。在繁体字中，心脏的“脏”写作“臟”，而肮脏的“脏”写作“髒”。汉字本身是“音、形、义”三者相结合的。繁体字“臟”和“髒”是非常好从“音、形、义”这三方面来理解的：月肉旁加上藏，很容易就能联想到藏在身体内部的器官——“臟”；骨字旁作为形旁，葬作为声旁，掩埋的骨头，也很容易能想到不干净——“髒”。简化作“脏”字后，就完全无法再生动形象地表达这个字的意思了。

到了当今社会，中国传统文化断层更甚，甚至出现了文化自卑现象。一提到中国的一些传统文化，仿佛就是老一套，就是跟不上时代的，学习外国文化才是更前沿的，才能与国际接轨。不可否认，传统文化中确实有些是落后了，限制了人们的进步，但是，任何文化中都存在精华、存在糟粕。还是那句老话——“取其精华去其糟粕”。全盘否认，中国优秀的传统文化又如何能传承、如何能发扬。

而随着传统文化的缺失，曾经的道德准则不复存在，人们也都普遍缺乏信仰，社会中各种“毁三观”的事件屡见不鲜，很难想象这些事件是发生在一个以“孝悌忠信礼义廉耻”作为传统美德的国度！

“穷则独善其身，达则兼济天下”。

作为一个普通小老百姓，对于一个社会现象发表下个人看法，也不过像是无病呻吟。

热爱国学的我在生活中所能做的，就是和身边的好友一起重新认识国学，从心学习国学。

将来我有孩子了，我想我会从小陪他读《三字经》、《千字文》......（个人对《弟子规》持保留态度。）

Author: @intmilanmilano 关于中国传统文化的一点浅薄思考 | “三个一”活动 | 月旦评

Translator: @chenlocus