From: s9874194@phobos.ucc.umass.edu (YANG, Changqing)
Subject: Re: Chinese culture
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 01:16:00 GMT

In article <1992Sep15.060740.27035@serval.net.wsu.edu>, hlu@yoda.eecs.wsu.edu (H.J. Lu) writes...
>In article <14SEP199222351358@deimos.ucc.umass.edu> s9874194@deimos.ucc.umass.edu (s9874194, YANG, Changqing) writes:
>>In article <95895@bu.edu>, lix@murray.bu.edu (Xiaowen Li) writes...
>>>In article <1992Sep13.223119.5922@tamsun.tamu.edu> x0y3510@tamuts.tamu.edu (Xuejun Yang) writes:
>>>>(deleted)
>>>>get real, be realistic and objective. Don't apply rich people's 
>>>>way of thinking on poor people, that's so-called Chinese reality but
>>>>I doubt if poor is equal to bad culture.      
>>> 
>>>Not equal, but being poor itself suggests something wrong in Chinese
>>>culture. We, especially young people, are responsible to learn from
>>>western cultures, and find out exactly what is wrong in Chinese one.
>>> 
>>>It is not easy, but in 80,000 CSS, there must be someones.
>>>-- 
>>
>>China's being poor today is not necessarily the result of Chinese
>>culture. Look at the history of past two hundred years we should
>>know that. One of the reason for China's being poor is those
>>people with so-called superio culture. 
>>c.q.
> 
>That is a very interesting idea. That is one of reason why
>China is China today. Those Western countries did bring China
>lots of tragedies. They did also bring us Western culture,
>which is very different from Chinese. Without it, we may still
>have pig tails, emperor, TAIJIAN, ...... Hey, I may enjoy it if I
>happen to be very lucky. But could China be richer than today? ....
>I don't know. I doubt it. Take a look at Tibet or some remote areas
>of China. There may be no outside influences there. And they also
>had no what you have been enjoying and were brought in by those
>Western countries. I wish they hadn't done those bad things and China
>had been more open at that time.
> 
>I didn't see any signicant advance in science and technolody in
>ancient China since you know what. Beside that four inventions, what
>else China has done? It is a shame our ancestros didn't keep up and
>had been reluctant to change. They always thought they were the best,
>like some of us still think today. That is one of reasons why those
>Western countries could treat our country like that 200 years ago.
>It's time for us to realize that and learn from other cultures, at the
>same time, keep the best of our culture, but not the garbage. I am
>afraid most of our ancient culture are not well suited for the 21th
>centry
> 
>Even with the influence of Western culture, we still have
>`emperor' and FUMUGUAN.
> 
>H.J.

Agree in general! As you pointed out, the culture is "one of the
reason", but I do not believe it is the most significant reason
and not the only reason.

There are a lot of garbages in our culture. Just look at some 
of the people's behaviour today on the net, we can easily under-
stand it. But was China fairly strong and competitive during
the early Qing Dynasty? The corrupt late Qing Dynasty and the
foreign invation caused more damage than the culture to our
nation.

Again, no doubt we got to revitalize our culture in order to make
our nation strong again!

c.q.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china