In the Han Dynasty, Gan Yingqianli was sent to the West to find Daqin in vain, and the initial communication between China and the West was over. But the role of this historical locomotive cannot be extinguished. Decades later, when the envoys of Daqin went all the way from the far west to the east, they were greeted by the declining Eastern Han Dynasty. Historical witnesses took notes. The first handshake between China and the West took place in 166.
The slight contact between the palms produces a fierce spark. Followed by a deeper integration of the two civilizations. "The more national it is, the more cosmopolitan it is." Western Europe is a great nation, and so is China. The two civilizations developed in the continuous integration of this nation.
1, thought, religion:
China people's thoughts were originally extremely active. It is normal for a scholar to worship Confucius and Mencius and a Taoist to kneel to Li Er. We should be glad that China didn't form the so-called feudal "theology" too early, so that a hundred schools of thought could contend in the Warring States Period. This is the first big discussion on social life in China's history, and he has liberated China people's thoughts to an unprecedented height. Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, France, and soldiers ... have different positions, but they have never slandered and rejected each other. All factions expressed their opinions, and at one time a hundred flowers blossomed and achieved fruitful results.
then what As China entered the long feudal era, when the brilliant Qin Shihuang realized that this ideological "chaos" situation was about to threaten his rule, he urgently needed to support one of them to consolidate his dynasty. He chose Han Fei, and then Reese. Then he burned books to bury Confucianism. It is a historical regret that the elite of an era was burned.
Later, a young son of heaven named Liu Che was moved by a scholar named Dong Zhongshu. China's feudal "theology" was finally formed from the moment he issued the decree of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone". Since then, an invisible rope has bound the hands and feet of China people to explore, and the space for thinking has become narrower and narrower.
Compared with China, western religions are single. They seem to have no idols except God and Jesus, so their thoughts are more concentrated and fixed. It's like a dark and silent sky. Although there are occasional superstars like Aristotle and Socrates, it is hard to compare with the overall prosperity of China philosophers. Christianity was loose at first. The first article in the Bible, called Genesis, firmly acknowledged the greatness of this creation. However, in the middle and late Middle Ages, western feudal theology gradually went to the extreme of reaction, which seriously imprisoned people's thoughts. At this time, a Polish scholar stepped forward and sounded the death knell of the old times with his "Heliocentrism" view. Kepler calculated the elliptical trajectory of the planet in the prison of the church, Bruno stood in the blazing fire and told the infinity of the universe ... Several generations of Yingjie wave after wave, mercilessly tore the ignorant teachings to pieces, and new ideas were born on the ruins of the church, and the future became bright again.
In China, when western enlightenment thinkers spread human rights everywhere with their works, China could not form a universal atmosphere that was enough to innovate. Wang Yangming turned Confucianism, which had long been stale, into a theory of mind. At that time, China was lifeless under the guidance of such thoughts. The scholar-bureaucrat always called Confucius and Mencius, and Gong Zizhen, a talented person in armor, lamented helplessly that "ten thousand horses are together", which should appear in medieval Europe! But this actually exists in the land of Kyushu, China.
Undeniably, in the vast history, China has been ahead of the West for most of the time. It was not the Industrial Revolution that allowed the West to fly over China. In fact, earlier, when the poet wrote his divine comedy under the oil lamp, the west had already caught up. In ancient China, however, the pace of advanced civilization disappeared in endless court battles and intensified literary inquisition.
2. Military and foreign affairs:
When civilized China people have gradually realized the cruelty of human martyrdom and replaced it with clay figurines, why are there so many people witnessing the bloodshed in the Colosseum in ancient Rome? Why are the uprising soldiers in Badek still crucified alive on both sides of the road leading to the capital? In my subjective world, Chinese civilization has its unique gentleness.
Another thousand years have passed.
The alarm bells of western churches are constantly ringing, and western Europeans are constantly shouting "Yellow Disaster is coming". When they organized the Crusades, they were only greeted by bitter defeat. Just because they met Xiaoqi, the son of Genghis Khan from the Mongolian grassland in northern China. Just because they are used to make cold weapons, such as ironmaking, steel jujitsu, or gunpowder from a ware gun, they all come from China. Of course, China people have reason to use them more perfectly.
China's traditional culture is based on Confucianism, which determines the introversion of this civilization, and only the remote ethnic minorities in China will create such immortal wonders. Covering the whole of Siberia, from Rome to the east coast of China, it has a vast meta-territory.
See you later, Kyle? Polo came, and his trip stimulated westerners to look for Jin Meng in the East. Westerners use the compass handed down from China to expand their navigation crazily, but in China, the compass is used by alchemists to look at geomantic omen and choose a land of eternal happiness for the deceased.
With the rise of the west, China became backward, Matteo Ricci came, and a wind of "Western learning spreading to the east" was blown up. Later, Magalny came. Emperor Qianlong politely refused him, and China lost his final awakening without bloodshed.
Fanatical westerners are full of expansion and plunder in their minds. China people always pursue self-sufficiency. This is a historical contradiction and gradually becomes irreconcilable.
Nanjing, Liujiagang. Six hundred years ago, Zheng He's fleet anchored here. Unlike western navigators, he doesn't need gold or jewelry. He just wants the peace of the Ming Dynasty and the broadcasting of Tianwei. Without the stimulation of interest, his fleet was over. However, the maritime industry in the west is becoming more and more prosperous. Diaz knew about the Cape of Good Hope, Dharma came to India, and Magellan traveled all over the world. Westerners are very expansive. More than 400 years after Zheng He, the China dynasty has been weak. Still in Nanjing, in Jinghai Temple, the names of those who lost their rights were signed on the treaty of humiliating the country: Niu Jian, the old citizen and Ilib.
China people are ambitious after all, and the strong guns of westerners will not make us yield. Brave people are looking for a new way out. A scholar-bureaucrat whose ancestral home was Shaoyang, Hunan, took the lead in shouting "adjust the hatred of foreigners to attack them, and learn from foreigners to control them." Slogan, this is the theme of that era. China finally put down his arrogance and learned from his former students.
I don't need to understand why a great man like Napoleon chose to surrender after Waterloo. He should die for his French mother. Westerners value life, while China people value honesty more. The head can be broken, the blood can flow, and the soul of the nation cannot be lost. People who live for a breath are dead, and their backbones must be straight!
"Surrender for a life to make a comeback. If you don't feel ashamed, it's in your UK. I only have one death, and death is heavier than Mount Tai. The land of China is at my feet. As long as I am here, I will never allow the bandits' warships to wreak havoc here. Needless to say, if the navy lost, it would only hit the ship empty. "1895, the desperate governor of Beiyang navy, Ding, answered the surrender of his foreign officials.
As the famous saying goes, "The more national it is, the more cosmopolitan it is". It is impossible for a country or a nation to exist in isolation in this world. Progress needs learning, development needs communication, and we appreciate differences, but only by eclecticism can these differences show their other beauty.
3, way of thinking:
The biggest difference between Chinese and western cultures lies in the different ways of thinking. This difference has become more and more obvious since the formation of the western Hegelian philosophy system, and different ways of thinking have led to different ways of behavior.
If we use the law of "unity of opposites" in modern philosophy to summarize the cultural differences between China and the West, China people value "inside" and westerners value "outside". Because of this, the humanities in China are developed, and the western natural sciences are in the lead. But strangely, the concept of harmony between man and nature is obviously better than the concept of opposition between man and nature, which is more in line with the laws of nature. China culture, a shining and reasonable concept close to the essence of things, failed to promote the development of natural science in China, which deserves our special attention and study.
China people like to observe and analyze things from the dynamic, while westerners are used to observing and analyzing things from the static. China people are good at grasping the whole, paying attention to balance, and are used to seeing individuals from the whole; Westerners like to break the whole into parts, pay attention to analysis, and are used to seeing the whole from the individual. This also promoted the development of western natural science. On the other hand, China culture advocates fighting wisdom, so chess is very developed; Western culture advocates courage, so sports stand out. People in China have always neglected sports, believing that it can't solve the fundamental problem. They like to sit still and practice qi, dredge meridians and balance their mentality, so as to achieve the purpose of getting rid of illness and prolonging life. Politically, China people attach importance to collectivism and put the group before the individual, which makes it easy for China people to tolerate and endure humiliation, which is also conducive to unity and cooperation, but it is easy to breed egalitarianism and public ideas. Westerners love competition and adventure, individual struggle and pay attention to utility, which is the reason why the West entered commercial civilization earlier and faster, and it is easy to produce capitalism and utopia (utopian socialism). China people have responsibilities to family and society, while westerners have needs for family and society.
In a word, China people's way of thinking is three-dimensional. When they look forward, they often look back. When they see victory, they will look back at failure and try to find some lessons from it. The so-called "failure is the mother of success" is the expression of this way of thinking. Look at westerners, they have always been brave, not only ignoring the back, but also paying little attention to the obstacles ahead, so the way of thinking of westerners is linear and superficial. The difference in this way of thinking is by no means a regional difference or a racial difference, but lies in the different religious beliefs in the soul of China people and westerners, or because of their different religious beliefs, which leads to different cultures, thus determining the different ways of thinking.
More than two thousand years ago, Sakyamuni said to his disciples, "The Dharma is on your side", and Laozi, a native of China, also said, "The Tao is not far from people". The culture of the Tang Dynasty in China was dominant at that time, but the Tang people also accommodated foreign Buddhist culture. It can be said that today, the mainstream culture in China is still a mixture of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. I don't know whether Buddhism found a meeting point in China or the Tang people in China found a meeting point to cater to Buddhism, but why didn't the western culture in the middle of the Ming Dynasty in China find a meeting point in China? It is really worth studying. Reflecting on western culture is based on the ethical principles of Christianity or the power of God. This belief balances the behavior of westerners and makes them live in peace.
It should be noted that the greatest and most distinctive advantages of a nation sometimes happen to be its greatest and most difficult shortcomings (in fact, people are not like this), "opposites are the same." For example, China people attach great importance to "forgiveness", but they can also "bear the burden of humiliation" and advocate "unification", which is the main reason for the continuation of the big family of the Chinese nation. Because of this, it tolerated and followed the feudal monarchical centralization system, and made "scientific socialism" (still utopian socialism in essence) take root in China. Some people say that the traditional culture of China is the culture used by the ruling class. In my opinion, the latter need not be said, while the former seems to be more objective if "catering" is changed to "tolerance". Look at westerners. They are aggressive and impulsive, and want to conquer the world, but the world has not been conquered, and the territory of Europe has been divided, and the number of primary school students is rare so far.