China and the West

Correspondence between Ezra Pound and Song Faxiang.
Homer Pound encountered Song Faxiang in Philadelphia and then directed him to Ezra Pound in London. Song was so impressed with the father and son's passion for Chinese culture that he offered to find jobs in China for both of them. Ezra Pound responded : "China is interesting, VERY".
Letters from Song Faxiang to Ezra Pound.
8 Febr. 1914
"I have already sent two inquiries for a position for you in China and have seen a few men and see if I can make them give you a good position. They ask me to get your academic records, etc. So if you will be kind enough to send to me, it will be a great advantage. I think I can get a fairly good position for you. We will see what can be done."
1 April 1914
"Now in regard to your coming out to Peking, I have been trying very hard to get a suitable position for you but so far I have not been able. I have found a position about $200.00 = £20 per month as a translator. If you feel like it, please let me know. It might be all right for you for the beginning, but I am rather afraid that you do not like it. I am looking for a good position for you."
3 July 1914
"Accept my congratulations for you happy union and newly married life. I wish you great success. I am sorry that you have changed your plan that you are coming to Peking to join me. I hope sometime in the near future you can come to pay me a visit."
Qian Zhaoming : Pound's encounter with Song coincided with his initial attraction to Confucianism. Song as Pound's first Chinese contact turned out to be a caustic critic of Confucius and Mencius. Interacting with him proves to have informed Pound of the anti-Confucian polemics in early Republican China. Song's attack on Confucianism appears in Song's article The causes and remedy of the poverty of China.
[Song, Faxiang]. F.T.S. The causes and remedy of the poverty of China [ID D29080].
Note by Ezra Pound. "The following MSS, was left with me by a Chinese official. I might have treated it in various ways. He suggested that I should rewrite it. I might excerpt the passages whereof I disapprove but I prefer to let it alone. At a time when China has replaced Greece in the intellectual life of so many occidentals, it is interesting to see in what the occidental ideas are percolating into the orient. We have here the notes of a practical and technical Chinaman. There are also some corrections, I do not know by whom, but I leave them as they are. "
Song turned out to be a caustic critic of Confucius. He compared China negatively with America, admiring American economists' adherence to the principle of production and consumption and denouncing the Confucian admonition against material 'desires' and 'appetites'. The Chinese had been taught to be 'satisfied' in poverty', he contended, 'hence the present poverty'. Pound did not agree with Song. Song's anti-Confucian article led Pound back to a scrutiny of Pauthier's Confucian Four Books. After reading William Loftus Hare's Chinese egoism, he got a chance to respond implicitly to Song. Without any knowledge of the degree to which Confucianism had been corrupted, Pound wondered how China could remedy its problems – What Song described as 'the corruption of the internal administration, the weakness of our army, the deplorable condition of our finance, and the misery of the people' – by abandoning its Confucian tradition. To Pound nothing seemed wrong with Confucian teachings. Song and his fellow Chinese modernists just had to distinguish Confucianism from the political system of old China. When the Chinese modernists were breaking from Confucianism in their search for a modern nation, Pound was moving in a contrary direction, reclaiming the humanist values of the Confucian tradition. He looked to China for an alternative to modernity. Song and his contemporaries in their attempt to replace Confucianism with a Western model.