Editor's note:

Now China is supposed to develop, expand and project its culture. But what exactly is "culture"? And is this development an unalloyed good? Does China's tradition exist in official written history or also in folk beliefs and people's daily life practices? Is this the right time for China to spread its culture overseas?

Renowned historian Ge Jianxiong and sociologist Zhang Letian addressed these questions in a lecture at Fudan University last Thursday. Shanghai Daily opinion writer Ni Tao translated and condensed their speeches and addressed a key question to the two experts.



Professor Zhang Letian's opinion:

Tradition includes more than Confucian classics and historical archives. It also refers to the accumulated reflections and interpretations of people's daily life practices.

Looking back at the past 30 years, many will marvel at the profound changes. When we amble along Nanjing Road and in Lujiazui financial area, when we take high-speed trains, it's easy to conclude that China's road to modernity is one that is moving away from tradition.

Is the conclusion right?

On the surface, we appear to have ushered in modernity, even post-modernity. But if we examine our parents' and relatives' behavior patterns over the past three decades, we'll see tradition is always around.

Guanxi's power

China's economic miracle started with township and village enterprises. Their successes were almost invariably achieved through leveraging guanxi and seeking and returning favors. Certainly willpower and hard work mattered as well as some unsavory business rules. But guanxi's subtle role shouldn't be underestimated.

Guanxi doesn't benefit just managers. When migrant workers arrive in cities, the first thing they do is to find fellow townspeople already in town. This is what China is traditionally about, advancing one's place in society through guanxi.

Thirty years ago, when the Party liberated the economy, openness meant freedom of migration and adventure. But openness in itself doesn't guarantee Chinese growth. Farmers had neither capital nor professional skills.

Despite the constraints, rural China's economy took off. How? Many people's rags-to-riches shift points to the networking power unleashed by tradition.

And we also feel the pull of tradition in our upbringing. However hard some might try to rebel, many accept the view that only a good education promises a bright future.

Without popular obeisance to tradition, our colleges wouldn't have graduated so many talented people in a short period.

I've done field research in the countryside. Years of contact with peasants suggests their daily labor is a repository of inherited wisdom.

Once my students saw peasants dumping mud dredged from lower-lying rice paddies on a higher-lying mulberry orchard. Puzzled, they asked, isn't leveling the fields better for irrigation?

Peasants told them the silt dumped in the orchard would replace the soil washed down by rain, thereby keeping the balance of the eco-system. This is what books would call harmony. The peasants, for their part, used simple words to describe the nature's law and underline the wisdom of tradition.

Our tradition, however, doesn't stay unchanged. As crystallized reflection of life practices, it adapts and mutates. Thus, I believe tradition can rejuvenate itself.

During the land reform era, Chinese rural households were divided into four classes. Land owners and rich peasants were tortured in struggle sessions and relatives shunned them in public. But amid this atmosphere of class struggle, I invited land owner relatives to my wedding ceremony in 1976. And they were invited to attend funerals as well.

Traditional communal bonds and lineage transcended the politics of hatred. Such tolerance in times of ideological extremism can only come from traditional emphasis on harmony in interpersonal relationships.

Today I often see Fudan students intermingling with their foreign peers, something unthinkable in the past. The tradition of harmony is being carried on in new forms.

My hope is that our youth will be confident in Chinese culture and will make it shine brighter by borrowing from and living the tradition.

This is a daunting task. Globalization, the information explosion and a fast-changing world all threaten the very existence of a traditional China.

But as long as it is firmly planted in the soil of heritage, I have the faith that the young Chinese sapling will grow into a towering tree.



Professor Zhang Letian is director of the Research Center for Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Fudan University.



Professor Ge Jianxiong's opinion:

It's hard to sum up Chinese culture and heritage in a word or two. But they clearly don't exist just in written history. Our ancestors, like us, didn't present history, warts and all. Cherry picking in documenting history is universal. To know China, certain social groups and regional sub-cultures better, we need to rely more on observation of society than official archives.

Sure, we cannot return to the past and see what Chinese culture looked like 2,000 years ago. But many of its relics have lingered. Confucius once noted that archaic rituals can be rediscovered in the wilderness. By wilderness he meant closed, inaccessible places, where living specimens of ancient culture were kept in good order. This means we have to occasionally look beyond Confucian classics and state versions of history.

My teacher Tan Qixiang argued once that Confucius and Mencius's thoughts didn't govern Chinese minds. At least since the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties onwards, patricians, like plebeians, believed in karma, though they professed to be Confucius' acolytes.

Scholar-officials improved their propriety by canonizing Confucian teachings, but it was the good karma, bad karma theory that guided their behavior and sustained the social value system.

Awe and fear of divine force had held China together, by plausibly explaining worldly injustice, catastrophes and misery with karma.

Such folk beliefs indicate that there is both a royal and rural China, an orthodox and unofficial China. Some traditions are excluded from written history, but they are alive and well in daily life.

During the process of passing on tradition, the government has a big role to play. Take Confucianism. It was made the state orthodoxy during the reign of Han Dynasty (202 BC-220) Emperor Liu Che. But Confucianism's respected status is not a result of mass inculcation only.

The Han Court's push, combined with people's embrace, popularized the sage's thoughts. Southwestern China used to be populated by autonomous aboriginals.

Qing Dynasty rulers ended their autonomy and sent teachers down there, nurturing students who went on to take state exams for selecting officials. Confucianism gradually took hold.

Since the adoption of reform and opening up policy, we seemed to think wealth can be parlayed into cultural sophistication. During America's Gilded Age, a few robber barons couldn't initially buy respect with money. They later won recognition by funding charities and art. China's economic reform is a huge success, but its cultural development is not.

Catalyst

One reason is that government and society haven't provided the catalyst for a blossoming culture. Should they be more vigorous?

Chinese culture never sought to spread itself beyond borders. We never had a cultural emissary. Monk Jian Zhen in the Tang Dynasty traveled to Japan to spread Buddhism on invitation, not through his own initiative.

Emperor Qian Long (r.1735-1795), when receiving British commerce envoy George Macartney in 1793, told him that intricate Chinese rituals were not intended for barbarians. We are no longer so arrogant, but may have gone to the opposite extreme.

Today spreading Chinese culture overseas is always on our lips. But meanwhile we lack the confidence to welcome other cultures at home. Before hastily exporting Chinese culture, we'll have to gauge foreigners' receptiveness to it. A hard sell won't work.

Chinese culture holds its own appeal. Otherwise, no foreigners would come here to learn kung fu and Kunqu Opera. We have to be proud of our strength, and think of promoting it first at home, then abroad.

Chinese culture will thrive and enjoy a larger foreign audience after more young Chinese learn to appreciate it. Cross-cultural pollination unfolds naturally.



Professor Ge Jianxiong is director of the Fudan University Library and head of the Research Center of Historical Geography at Fudan.