《中国人的精神》chapter3

长理第一深情

I. The Unique Chinese Language

The book points out that the Chinese language is a unique language with a high degree of simplicity and suggestiveness. Unlike Western languages that rely on complex grammatical structures and morphological changes to convey meaning, the Chinese language places more emphasis on context and the tacit understanding among users. Take ancient Chinese poetry as an example. Just a few words can outline a profound artistic conception. In the lines "A solitary smoke column rises straight in the vast desert, and the setting sun appears round above the endless river", with only ten characters, the vastness of the desert, the straightness of the solitary smoke, the meandering of the long river, and the roundness of the setting sun vividly emerge before our eyes. The words have an end, but the meaning is limitless. This is because of the methods of creating Chinese characters such as pictography and associative compounding, which endow Chinese characters with rich cultural connotations. Often, a single Chinese character is an image, and when combined, they form a powerful function of expressing meaning, allowing Chinese people to "share a strange spiritual sympathy" during communication.

II. The Chinese Way of Thinking

The author believes that the Chinese way of thinking is a kind of concrete thinking, which is different from the abstract thinking in the West. Chinese people are accustomed to understanding the world starting from specific things and phenomena and grasping the essence of things through methods such as analogy and symbolization. In traditional Chinese philosophical works, for example, in The Analects of Confucius, Confucius rarely expounds abstract moral concepts directly. Instead, he uses examples from daily life. For instance, "Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you." Starting from one's own feelings, he simplifies and concretizes complex moral principles, making them easy for ordinary people to understand and practice. This way of thinking is reflected in many fields of Chinese art and architecture. For example, in the Suzhou Gardens, with specific elements such as rockeries, flowing water, pavilions, terraces, and towers, a natural artistic conception of "though made by man, it seems to be created by nature" is created, embodying the Chinese people's concrete cognition of nature and the universe.

III. The Underlying Cultural Characteristics

Behind the Chinese language and way of thinking lies the profound cultural characteristics of China. Chinese culture emphasizes the unity of man and nature, and this idea runs through the language and way of thinking. In the language, many words are closely related to natural phenomena, such as "yin and yang" and "the five elements", reflecting the Chinese people's respect for and integration with the laws of nature. From the perspective of thinking, concrete thinking also reflects the love for and attention to nature and life, and people do not talk about theories in isolation from reality. At the same time, the introversion of Chinese culture also coincides with the suggestiveness of the language and the implicitness of thinking. Unlike Western culture, which is straightforward and explicit, Chinese culture values euphemism and implicitness and pursues an internal spiritual realm.