Chinese Tradition in Cultural Interaction and Inter-cultural Dialogue

It is my pleasure and honor to be with you and offer a presentation.  Anyway, I have to apologize for talking about my own culture in a foreign language.  It is said that some Chinese uses English better than he does in Chinese, but I never believe so.  I think it just proves that his/her Chinese is not good enough.

My topic today is something about Chinese culture and tradition.  Actually no culture or tradition could stay in its original state, especially in a globalized world.  It is the same to speak of Chinese tradition.  An English speaking theologian, Martin Marty, believes that “Christianity comes to us in many forms and we’d better to talk about multi-Christianity.”  It is also true in the case of Chinese tradition.  That is why I prefer to gear the topic in a comparative and inter-cultural context, and include five parts with a brief conclusion as follows.

1.  Shared Points in Morality and Philosophy: Every Chinese knows Confucius (BC 551-479) and his famous teaching in the Analects: “Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.” This Golden Rule is also recorded in the New Testament (Mathew 7:12 and Luke 6:31). The same ethical requirements in Chinese and western civilizations institute this ethos as “global ethic”, in terms of a Catholic theologian Hans Kung.

Soon after the idea of “Global Ethic” or “World Ethic” was born in 1990s, Chinese scholars had been involved in the related argument, dialogue and dissemination in forms of academic conferences and publications.  I feel it an honor to say that the 1st international conference on Traditional Chinese Ethics and Global Ethic was co-organized, in 1997, by the Institute for the Study of Christian Culture of my University, together with the Global Ethic Foundation and Prof. Hans Kung himself, with 24 influential Chinese scholars co-signed a positive Summary as our identification to the principles in Declaration of Global Ethic approved at the Parliament of World Religions in 1993.  In 2001, the 2nd Conference on Traditional Chinese Ethics and Global Ethic welcomed Prof. Hans Kung participating in discussions with 30 representative scholars from the top universities in the mainland of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.  The participants signed another Summary after the Conference.  In both of the Summaries, we offered positive responses to the two basic principles: “Every human being should be treated humanly”; and “what you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others”, and actually, we could find rich similar resources in Chinese classics.

The traditional ethical requirements same with the basic principles:

1.  WHAT YOU DO NOT WISH DONE TO YOURSELF, DO NOT DO TO OTHERS.

1)   In its negative form:

“Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire”.

“Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.”(己所不欲，勿施于人).

2)  Although it is argued to be too much pushing one’s own way to others, the positive form of the requirement is found in many classics:

 “Do to others what you wish others do to you” (欲人施诸己，亦施于人).

“A benevolent man helps others to take their stand in that he himself wishes to take his stand, and gets others there in that he himself wishes to get there” (己欲立而立人，己欲达而达人).

2. EVERY HUMAN BEING SHOULD BE TREATED HUMANLY.

“To do humanly is to be human” (仁者人也)

“’Benevolence’ means loving your fellow men” (仁者爱人)

Chinese tradition even advocates both the respect for human life and even the respect for all kinds of life, which seems to be very close to the idea of “Green Peace” and ecological criticism. These thoughts do not only seek for human peace but also for the harmony between human and nature and other creatures.  And therefore, “the virtue of respecting for life” (生生之德) and “friend others and affiliate with all creatures”(民胞物与) is always taken as the great virtue in Confucian teachings and philosophy.

There are many other traditional Chinese ideas related:

1. In regard with the human relationship, “Harmony in diversity” or “harmony with diversity” (和而不同) is typically emphasized in Confucianism.  Compared with “Baha’i”, a new religious community who takes “Unity with diversity” as the main doctrine, the Confucian spirit of the harmonious co-existence of different cultures might be more relevant for the foundation of human existence and development.

2. Confucius believes “honesty-sincerity is the Dao of Heaven” (诚者，天之道也) which is out of the control of human beings,  and “to be honest and sincere is the Dao of human beings” which is the only thing we could do (诚之者，人之道也).  In this case, a gentleman （君子）should “cultivate himself to be honest and sincere” in accordance with the Dao of Heaven, which is something upper or a more or less religious standard of honesty and sincerity.  This might be clearer in the interpretation of Dao.  In Chinese, I think either道 (way) or 德 (virtue) means “to walk your talk” originally, because both走 and 彳are symbols of walking carefully with small steps.  In this case, “way” is formed in the walking and in virtue of moral practice “virtue” appears.  Just as David Tracy noticed, the famous saying of Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living” is in sharp contrast with a saying in a Buddhist scripture, “The un-lived life is not worth examining.”

3. So Dao is not only metaphysical but also physical; “honesty-sincerity” is above us and what we could do is nothing but learning to be honest and sincere; Dao could be justified in faith, as well as in behavior.  I am not sure if it is “religion”, but it is of course something like “Acts of Religion” (in terms of Derrida) or “Acts of Faith” (in terms of Rodney Stark).  You may know that the sacred “Word” or “Wisdom” in the Gospel of John and other biblical scriptures is translated into “Dao” in this sense.

4. For the same reason, traditional Chinese ethics ask for our “Consideration for others” (恕) and a spirit of tolerance: “great virtues have a huge capacity to contain things” (厚德载物), and “to tolerate is a sign of greatness” (有容乃大).

5.  And probably related to the consideration for others, traditional Chinese ethics place a great emphasis on family, viewing family as the foundation of society.  Among the “five cardinal relationships” (emperor and his officials, fathers and kids, husbands and their wives, brothers and sisters, and friends), three of them are concerned with family relationship.  It is even believed that “The relation between the officials and the emperor may find origin or archetype in the relation between husbands and wives, which even extends to the relation of heaven and the earth.” (君子之道，造端乎夫妇。及其至也，察乎天地).

6.  And so, in Chinese traditional philosophy, “humanity is Benevolence” (博爱之谓仁), “filial piety” is the origin of human morality and sentiment (立爱自亲始).  And, it is encouraged that “love your family so as to love others and all creatures” (亲亲而仁民，仁民而爱物), “cultivate moral character, and then you could cultivate your family, administrate the country, and bring peace all over the world” (修身、齐家、治国、平天下).  When it is promoted to the realm that “honor the aged of other people as we honor our own, take care of the young of other people as we take care of our own” (老吾老以及人之老，幼吾幼以及人之幼), we may naturally relate the traditional Chinese teachings with the famous prayer by St. Francis in the Medieval Europe: to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love; it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

All above mentioned are in the perfect agreement with the basic spirit of global ethic and western civilization. And besides the similarities in the core ideas of Chinese tradition, such as “harmony with diversity”, “self-cultivation”, “consideration for others” and “taking family and private morality as the foundation of society and justice”, the probable differences or comparable elements between China and the West should not be neglected.  So let’s come to the 2nd part.

2. Religious Attitude and China-West Encounter: At the famous Buddhist Shaolin Temple in Henan province, there is a tablet erected in 1209 named “The Tablet of the Unity of Three Religions”, which records the dramatically harmonious relations among Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism.  In the carved painting on the tablet, the faces of Buddha, Confucius and Laotzu are mixed together, and the most important thing they shared is the same big ears, which are blessed in traditional Chinese culture.

The left side and the right side could be recognized more clearly if we cut the portrait into two pieces:

The tablet inscription includes such statements: “Buddhism is centered on the enlightenment of human nature; Daoism focuses on the methods of longevity; Confucianism emphasizes the ethical way of living, and keeping the right order and the basic virtue as the appropriate way.”

From the inscribed description on the tablet we can tell that there seems to be an “inclusive” religious tradition in Chinese history, instead of an “exclusive” one, which is somehow different from the west.

Therefore, when the Nestorians came to Chang’an (now Xi’an) in Tang Dynasty (AD 635), the emperor Li Shimin sent his prime minister to formally welcome the missionaries from the suburb of the city and the emperor even talked with the missionaries personally about religions and related classics.  The following is the tablet in memory of the start of Christianity in China.

After that, a strange tradition had been gradually formed, that is to get the scholars or monks of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism together, in front of the Emperor, competing in the skill of dialectic argument.  It is said that their starting point were always different but finally they turned to focus on morality and come to the same conclusion of how to search for virtues or “goodness”.  As something recorded in the New Documents of Tang Dynasty (新唐书), that “the three religions looked contradictory and conflicting, but all of them resulted in moral cultivation, which made the Emperor very pleased.”

Consequently, a joke was composed and became popular.  It says there is a person who is especially good at the knowledge of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism, the three main religions or intellect traditions in China.  Someone asked him “who is Buddha?”  The answer is: “Buddha is a woman.”  Why?  Because there is a sentence in Buddhist scriptures that “敷坐而坐”.   敷 (a short while) is with the same pronunciation with “husband”.  In this case, if Buddha took his seat only when the husband had already taken a seat, he must be a woman (or his wife) according to the feudal custom in ancient China.

And when he was asked “who is Laotzu”, the answer is still “Laotzu is a woman”.  In the writings of Laotzu, it is read “the reason why I have some worries is that I can not escape from my body.  Whenever I can escape from my body and live spiritually, I am worried about nothing.”  “有身” (can not escape from my body) also means “being pregnant” in Chinese.  So if Laotzu could be pregnant, he must be a woman certainly.

Then the question came to Confucius.  His famous sayings include “吾待贾者也” (I am waiting for somebody who really appreciate my talent.)  Anyway, 贾can be read as “Jia”, with the similar pronunciation of “get married with a husband” （嫁）.  If so, the sentence could be read as “I am waiting for getting married with my husband” and Confucius himself is of course also a woman.

Of course it is just a joke of “Unity with diversity”.  But in the case of later dissemination of Christianity in China, you would be impressed or probably surprised by the Chinese Maria, combining Christian Maria and Jesus with the images of Chinese Empress in Qing dynasty and her son.

Please notice that the color of their gown is yellow, which is a symbol of royalty in the traditional China.

Lucky or not, the seeds of “interpreting Christian ideas with Confucian terms” were planted from its very beginning, so that the later western missionaries knew the significance of having Christianity rooted in the Chinese cultural context, which is understood as “accommodation”, “in-culturation” and “contextualization”.  It also comes to some mixture with different religious codes, signs and symbols, especially in the shape of the Cross and lotus, as shown in a tablet in Yuan dynasty.

The “inculturation” was positively responded and supported by the “adaptive” missionary strategy, or a temporary expedient in the face of the powerful Confucian tradition.  This is quite typically shown in the theological discussions during the 1920s and the 1930s.  For instance, expounding the similarities between Christianity and Chinese culture was a very common theological topic at the time. Chinese traditional culture was generally regarded as “fertile ethical soil” or “good earth” in terms of Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973), and Christianity as “the best seeds of ethics.”[1] Hence, in the process of accepting Christianity, the Chinese always tended to make use of their own ethical resources, or whatever, to interpret Christianity,[2] and this tendency continued to evolve even in nowadays, providing some theoretical grounds for the self-interpretation of Sino-Christian communities and their religious practice in daily life.  Briefly, the “inculturation” tradition in China has been even described as the procedure of explaining Christianity by means of Confucianism, and sometimes Buddhism.

3. Similarities in the Concepts of the Universe: The Greek philosopher Pythagoras (BC 569～? )，is famous for his theory: “The origin of the universe is One. One generates the Two, and Two is the uncertain material subject to the One. One is the cause. All numbers come out of the perfect One and the uncertain Two, and the Number generates the point. The point generates the Line, and the Line generates the Square where Cubage is generated. Cubage generates all visible forms and senses, which generate four elements: water, fire, earth and air. The four elements transform into each other in different ways and thus create the living, spiritual and global world.”

In Chapter 42 of Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) by Laotzu (BC 600-470), who lived almost at the same time with Pythagoras, even earlier, there is a similar saying, “DAO generates the One. The One generates the Two. The Two generates the Three. The Three generates all things.” In Yi Jing (The Book of Change) which is believed to be edited in BC1099-1050 and revised by Confucius himself, another similar saying is like the following: “The Change has Tai Chi (the very origin or beginning of all things). Tai Chi generates Two Elements. Two Elements generate Four Phenomena. Four Phenomena generate Eight Diagrams.”

The above roughly maps the landscape of the productive origin of the universe.  The basic logic of 太极 is Both/And but not Either/Or, with the white part and the black part sharing each other, just like the mixed faces of Buddha, Confucius and Laotzu.  The two basic elements out of the One are positive and negative, which is similar to the Greek Logos and Sophia.  Each of the two elements also contains the positive part and the negative part, and it is the same on the lower levels.  Being mixed with the self-nature and opposite-nature, the four phenomena (Square or four directions) and the eight diagrams (Cubage or visible forms of the universe) are generated.  On the bottom of the landscape, you may find the four elements described by Pythagoras, water, fire, earth and air.  The most interesting thing is the Chinese belief that the air (or heaven) on the left is opposite to the right earth, the lower part of the earth is lake （泽）and the higher part is mountain （山）, and lightning （雷）is accompanied with wind （风）.

In Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073)’s On Tai Chi Tu, it is said, “the very Being is Non-being” or “Being begins in Non-being” （无极而太极）, which coincides with Laotzu’s “All things in the world comes from the YOU (Being), and YOU (Being) comes out of WU (Non-being).” We may notice that the starting point of the “One” described by Pythagoras is continued in a deeper sense in Chinese philosophy as “None”.  I think that is the typical Chinese answer to the paradox of “Being and Non-being” raised by the Ancient Greek sophist Gorgias, and it becomes a possible resource of the dialectic thinking of Leibniz, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida and many others.  Another possible comparison might be with “kenosis” in the Bible (Philippians 2:7 and Isaiah 53:12).  Probably we can say that the kenosis of human beings is “poor in spirit”, and the kenosis of something above us is “the emptying God”.

4. China-West Exchanges in Music: Music always takes the most crucial role in arts and spirituality.  So it is said “All arts come out of music and are centered in music”, as a British poet Christopher Smart described “For M is music and therefore M is God”.

Generally, Chinese music is characterized by its five-tone scale, while western music adopts “the twelve-tone equal temperament”. Anyway, The Complete Book on Music Scale and Theory On Scale and Temperament by Zhu Zaiyu (1536-1611) in Ming Dynasty have been regarded as the earliest statements on “twelve-tone equal temperament”, even before Bach composed his “48 Well-Tempered Clavier” in 1722, when the “twelve-tone equal temperament” was believed to have been already introduced to the West, though the earliest translation we could see might be not early enough, by a French Jesuit missionary named Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-1793, 钱德明).

On the other hand, Chinese musician learned a lot from the West.  For instance, the popular Chinese song “Farewell”, composed by Li Shutong (1880-1942), actually took a western folk song as its melody:

What Li Shutong contributes is only the Chinese words of the song: Outside the long corridor, beside the ancient road, green grass stretches to the end of the sky.

That may remind us of the first Chinese folk song introduced to the West “Jasmine Flower”, which was included in the book of Travels In China by a British person John Barrow in 1804, and then the Italian composer Puccini adopted the song in his opera Turandot in 1924.

Now everybody knows the melody, especially after the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2008.  But I am afraid that many Chinese people get to know the song from Puccini, instead from any native composers.

The transformation of Chinese traditional musical instruments and orchestra has also shown the interaction of cultures between the East and West. You may not clearly tell if it is a traditional Chinese orchestra or a symphonic one:

By the following picture took at the Golden Hall of Viena, we may recognize more Chinese characters.

The next picture was taken at the New Year Concert of my School of Liberal Arts, Renmin University of China.  It is normally performed by a student symphonic orchestra but not a traditional Chinese music band.

5. Mis-understanding or Creative Understanding in Translation: Ever since the first translation of the Tao Te Ching by James Legge (1814-1897), a priest of London Missionary Society, there have been more than eighty English versions of the “Eastern Sacred Book” (in terms of Max Muller). The interpretations or “mis-interpretations” in the translation also illustrate the mutual understanding between different cultures. The most interesting result of that might be Ezra Pound’s Imagist Poetry.

Roger Fry once says that “the first thing… that strikes one is the immense part played in Chinese art by linear rhythm.… [This] rhythm is almost always of a flowing, continuous character…[with] the linear rhythm as the main method of expression…. A painting was always conceived as the visible record of a rhythm gesture.”[3]

As to practice, Western artists influenced by the writings of these early Western Sinologists are not only painters, but also poets, among whom Ezra Pound is well known. In fact, Pound had direct contact with some of these early Sinologists, and made an immediate response to their efforts. Iin his years in London, Pound was introduced to Chinese and Japanese painting by a Sinologist Laurence Binyon. Pound himself even wrote a review of the Sinologist’s The Flight of the Dragon, earlier than his compiled publication of Cathay, an anthology of Chinese poetry based on Fenollosa’ notebook in 1915 and his essay on “Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” (edited by Pound) in 1919. The former gave rise to a little vogue of imitating the Chinese among European and American poets in the late 1910s and early 1920s. While the latter became a theoretical basis for a mode of presentation in poetic writing later known as the “ideogrammic method.”

According to Fenollosa, the Chinese script, as a more flexible, descriptive and straightforward writing, has the unique advantage of combining both visual and temporal elements.  Having read and edited Fenollosa’ essay, Pound wrote in 1916:

You should have a chance to see Fenollosa’ big essay on verbs, mostly on verbs…. He inveighs against “IS,” wants transitive verbs. “Become” is as weak as “IS.” …“All nouns come from verbs.” To primitive men, a thing IS what it does. That is Fenollosa but I think the theory is a good one for poets to go by.”[4]

Then his poem “The Seven Lakes Canto” came from his appreciation of some Chinese paintings.  It reads in a very Chinese style, with very few verbs:

               For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:

               Rain; empty river; a voyage,

               Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight

（献给七湖，不知谁写的诗：

雨；空阔的河；远行，

冻结的云里有火，暮色中的雨）

Language has made us different from each other, but it is also language that has made it possible for us to communicate with each other.  And in some sense, mis-reading is understandable and creative.

6. Brief Conclusion: The updated Chinese tradition could be merely traced and grasped in the cultural interaction or inter-cultural dialogue.  I think following quotations from three famous English writers are much better than whatever I can rephrase, because what they implied, in my reading or mis-reading, is nothing but an alarm of the dangerous “politics of identity”, which is what we should avoid especially in the talking of our own culture.

Samuel Coleridge：He, who begins by loving Christianity (of course you may replace Christianity with Confucianism or whatever) better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church (or our own community) better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.  （Aids to Reflection, 1825）

John Henry Newman：University … is a place of teaching universal knowledge, ... its object is … intellectual, not moral.  … If its object were … religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature and science.（The Idea of A University, 9th edition, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1889, p. ix- xi.）

William Shakespeare：What’s in a name?

that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

（Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene II）

For me, I would like to say that university should be always a place for the unity with diversity.  Different cultures or traditions make us different, but only in an inter-cultural context and only through a cultural interaction can we enrich our experience to understand others and even understand ourselves better.

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[1] Xie Fuya, “The New Christian Trend of Thought and the Basic Thinking of the Chinese Nation”, Ibid., 461.

[2] For relevant discussions in my own work, see Yang Huilin, “‘Ethicized’ Chinese-Language Christianity and the Meaning of Christianity,” Contemporary Chinese Thought (New York: M.E.Sharpe), vol. 35, no. 4, Fall 2004.

[3] Roger Fry, “The Significance of Chinese Art,” in Chinese Art, London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1935, pp.2-3.

[4] Ezra Pound, The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941, ed. D.D. Paige, New York: Haskell, 1974, p.82.