Preface丨Through Others’ Eyes: Chinese Civilization

Through Others’ Eyes: Chinese Civilization

Welcome everyone to this new course on Chinese civilization and culture! This lecture series aims to provide you with insights on China through the lens of the West. 

How is China portrayed through  the eyes of a Western scholar? How different will these portrayals be when we compare them to the original image we remember in a Chinese textbook?

Before digging deeper into these questions, let us first take a look at a few seminal questions concerning the comparison between Chinese and Western cultures:

“Why hadn’t early modern Chinese developed its own democracy and science? Is there something inherently wrong within the Chinese civilization, or has China developed along a different path?” 

Several questions to consider: 

“While classical Chinese poetry and lyrics are known for evoking lingering emotion, ancient Greece and Rome had their own magnificent tradition of epic tragedy. Can these different literary traditions be compared? If they can, how do we determine which tradition has a higher artistic level? How do these literary traditions reflect the distinct features of Chinese and Western civilizations?”

And, a last question to think about:  

“Compared to democracy or aristocracy, is the imperial examination system implemented after the Tang and Song dynasties a better way to cultivate and select talent?”

……

Perhaps every educated Chinese may have asked or have been asked similar questions. Since attending middle school, we have been taught in our textbooks that the civilization of our motherland has a long history and a brilliant culture. We have also learned about the suffering and shame this land endured in early modern history. No matter which stage of history or aspect of culture we are discussing, behind these commonly known standard narratives of China, we can always vaguely identify a potential question: Where does China stand in the history of world civilization and global cultures?

Indeed, the perceived “backwardness” of China in history was seen through a contrast with others. The weakness of our nation, embodied by the unequal treaties signed in history, is in fact a result of the saber rattling of Western powers. Yet, how about the sense of pride, the sense that our civilization has made great achievements over thousands of years? Isn’t this recognition of the superiority of Chinese civilization also a result of “comparison” – the comparison between us and other civilizations? To take a step further, we can say that almost every discourse on the history and culture of an Eastern civilization has an impulse and an anxiety to “compare.” Perhaps we see this most with “Our” story never just being about “us.”

And as a Chinese citizen, we may ask: what brings “us” together as a community? What does “us” entail? How does this very concept of “us” change in time and how does it develop? What is happening in the world beyond “us”? How about the opposite of “us,” or to put it another way, the notion of “others”? It is important to recognize that “our” story is never just about “us.”

This is the intention of Himalaya to launch this series of courses: to examine the cultural characteristics of China as an ancient Eastern civilization from the perspective of a Western scholar. In this series, we have invited ten eminent sinologists from top universities in Europe and the United States to each share the one aspect of Chinese culture that fascinates them. Ranging from philosophy, history and sociology to literature and medicine, your teachers of this course set out to reflect upon the core issues of each discipline. And, by framing their discussion in a comparative standpoint, they will focus on the cognitive blind spots that we may have ignored due to our proximity, and explore a new way to understand Chinese culture.

The course is divided into three sections that you can listen to at your own pace. In the first section, “The Axial Age,” Professor Michael Puett and Professor Shigehisa Kuriyama, both historians at Harvard University, will discuss the characteristics of ancient Chinese and Greek civilizations from the perspectives of cosmology and medical history. They will also examine the collision between Chinese and Western civilizations in the 19th century.

In the second section, “The Imperial Age,” Professor Peter Bol, the former Vice Provost for  Advances in Learning at Harvard University and a renowned expert on the history of Chinese thought, will take us back to the two thousand years of imperial history in China, and highlight those core concepts that would make China “China.” Professor Bol will also discuss with his colleague, the world’s leading researcher on the history of European Renaissance thought, Professor James Hankins from the History Department at Harvard University, on the meritocratic traditions deeply embedded in Chinese history. They will also compare the similarities and differences between late imperial China and Europe since the Renaissance era with regards to elite education, legal system, human relations and public mentality.

In addition, Professor Robert Hymes of Columbia University will  unravel the complexity of the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism; while Professor Xin Wen of Princeton University will take us to the Silk Road and reflect upon some of the core ethical issues embedded in the cultural exchanges between China and the West. Professor Ronald Egan of Stanford University will  introduce the methodologies adopted in Western feminist studies and bring us the story of Li Qingzhao (3,1,4) from a unique and refreshing perspective: Why would this well-known female lyricist remain  to be an unrealistic ideal? Why would people in later generations spare no effort to ignore or even cover up the fact that she remarried and went to jail in her later years? How are these related to the performative style of the song lyrics in the Song dynasty? And how do these phenomena correspond with the cultural changes in China from the 11th century until today?

In the third section, “Our Age” we are honored to have the late Professor Erza Vogel, a well-known expert on China studies at Harvard University, to give us a series of lectures on the founding of the People’s Republic of China and its development after 1949, as well as the historical processes and challenges it encountered as China rose and became  a “superpower.” Professor Vogel had completed the drafts of five episodes and had recorded three of them on December 11, 2020. He planned to record the remaining parts after he recovered from surgery on December 14; yet unexpectedly, he passed away a week after due to post-operative complications. The audio he recorded and manuscripts written specifically for this series represent his  “last lectures.”

Together with Professor Vogel, two outstanding scholars, Professor Wiebke Denecke of MIT and Professor Zhiyi Yang of the University of Frankfurt, will  analyze the role and impact of China in East Asia from a historical and geographical perspective in response to Vogel’s call for mutual trust and understanding across different civilizations. Professor Yang will  examine how classicism in the Chinese tradition has been revitalized and restructured in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world: what does classical Chinese culture entail today? How would the pursuit of an authentic Chinese culture be deconstructed with the introduction of the theories of cultural memory? How do we understand the surge in popularity of the “Chinese style”?

On the other hand, Professor, Denecke, who has lived and been educated in Europe, the United States, China, Japan, and South Korea, will  compare the civilizations of East Asia with that of Western Europe. By explaining the cultural impact of China and Japan while comparing that with the influences of ancient Greece  and Rome, she will  illustrate how cultural impact is rarely unidirectional, and showcase how parent cultures and subcultures may have mutually influenced each other. She will  also examine thoroughly how the art of comparison functions as a way of observation, in particular how subtle competitions are often implied by comparative studies.

This course will offer you a rich and concise view  to the frequently asked questions about China and the comparison between China and the West, like those we raised at the beginning. But perhaps what you will find most rewarding is not the answers given by the professors, but how they approach these questions and think through their analysis systematically. Rather than getting a simple and clear answer, it is often more important to consider how and why a question is asked and whether these questions are reasonable in and of themselves. These hundred episodes will not only provide you with interesting knowledge beyond what you would find in a traditional textbook, but more importantly, the ability to connect these observations into a system of meaning. In other words, what you will learn here is not merely knowledge, but deep insight from decades of studying and experiencing  Chinese Civilization through the lens of the West.

We would like to welcome you and your fellow listeners to join our journey and discover the meaning of China in the history of world civilization with the best Western Sinologists.