China and the West

Aufführung von Romeo and Juliet = Luomiou yu Zhuliye von William Shakespeare durch das Hong Kong Repertory Theatre unter der Regie von Glen Watford.
羅密歐與茱麗葉

Yang, Zhouhan. Guan yu ti gao wai guo wen xue shi bian xie zhi liang de ji ge wen ti [ID D26474].
Yang schreibt : "We often treat writers and literary schools as if they are sharply divided and share nothing in common, as if they belong to different classes. This is simply not true in reality. Take 'active' and 'passive' Romanticism as an exemple : the two have something in common both in class status and ideology and in cultural background. Wordsworth, for instance... it is true, dropped out of the struggle for fear of the Jacobin dictatorship, but Napoleon's war of invasion was also one of the causes for his disappointment. On the other hand, even the 'active' Romantic poets differed. Some literary histories describe Byron's motive force as pride and Shelley's as love. Perhaps that was what was meant by Marx's alleged remark, that Shelley would have become a revolutionary, Byron a reactionary. Byron is a complicated character. That is why literary histories have always given him both praise and censure. Starting from the Soviet literary histories, there has been a tendendy [in China] to cover up Byron's faults and publicize his merits. Generally speaking, Byron should be considered progressive, but we have not done enough research into his motive for joining the progressive trend."

International Conference about European Empiricism and Rationalism an der Wuhan-Universität.
The ideas concerning David Hume's anti-metaphysics and anti-induction were still strange to most of those attending. But now they have become hackneyed topics.

Mao, Dun. "Foreign drama in China". In : Wai guo xi ju ; no 1 (Oct. 1980).
Er schreibt über die Aufführung von Lady Windermere's fan von Oscar Wilde von 1924 :
"At 2:00 p.m. on May 4th, 1924, the Drama Association organized by Hong Shen and his friends put on a public performance of Wilde's Lady Windermere's fan. On May 10th when it was again performed, all five hundred tickets were sold out in no time. Two hundred more tickets hat do be added. It was performed in the auditorium of the China Vocational School. At 2:00 p.m. on May 18th, the last performance was scheduled to take place. Seats were limited to five hundred. There were so many people who could not get in that they sent representatives to request another performance. At 5:30 p.m. that same day, one more perforance was arranged to meet the demand."

Wang, Zuoliang. Lun Xiao Bona de xi ju yi shu. In : Wang, Zuoliang. Yingguo wen xue lun wen ji [ID D27920]. [On Shaw's dramatic art].
Wendi Chen : Wang distinguished Shaw from many other bourgeois writers who had not participated in actual working-class activities by stressing Shaw's active social participation. "The difference is to be found here", he wrote. "Other playwrights usually make their first literary attempts in theaters or in their studies, whereas Shaw experienced the evils of capitalist society first-hand during those years when he was unemployed, and he developed his argumentative skills while speaking in the streets and debating at various social meetings".

Du, Renzhi. Bodeyang Luosu [Bertrand Russell]. [ID D28415].
Du Renzhi's extensive review of Bertrand Russell's career in philosophy, his political activities, and his ideas about society fails to mention that Russell ever went to China in 1920-1921. Russell's book 'Bolshevism' is dismissed as 'reactionary', and although it is recognized that he also criticized the capitalist system, he is still considered a supporter of it, a philosopher who was never able to rise above his class background (except on the issue of individual freedom). Philosophically, Russell is termed a 'subjective idealist' (as opposed to 'materialist'), and on social questions he is called a 'capitalist class libertarian'.

John Dewey and Tao Xingzhi.
Contemporary Chinese scholars hold three different views regarding the relationship between Tao Xingzhi and John Dewey's educational ideas. Some believe that Tao's educational theory is a direct product of Dewey's pragmatic philosophy and that Tao only made certain nonessential changes to adapt Dewey's theories to the Chinese conditions. A second school of thought maintains that there are essential differences between Tao and Dewey : Dewey's ideas belong to the old democratic pragmatism in capitalist societies while Tao's ideas belong to the new democratic culture in socialist countries ; Dewey's education serves the young students in schools while Tao's education serves people of all ages, especially those from poor, ordinary, and rural families. Dewey's purpose of education is to produce a labor force that serves bourgeois interests whereas Tao's purpose of education is to enlighten the oppressed and exploited masses of working people so that they become masters of their own fate and serve the interests of the common people ; and Dewey's educational methods try to make school imitate society and education imitate life whereas Tao's educational methods help students live the real life in the real, larger society.
Many Chinese scholars argue that Tao's educational ideas originate from Dewey but they are better developed and more suitable for Chinese educational practice. They maintain that Tao creatively and critically adapted Dewey's educational ideas to Chinese education and successfully used education as an instrument in the Chinese people's anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist struggle, which has far more significant meaning than Dewey's promotion of education as an instrument in an individual student's adaptation to the immediate environment. Their interpretation of Dewey's views on the relationship among the individual, the school, and the society is narrow and misconceptualized, but the important thing is that they have affirmed the positive and powerful influence of Dewey on Tao's ideas.

Henry James and China general
1989
Norman Michael Bock :
The American : James created a seemingly legendary figure, who incorporates an almost bewildering array of the most attenuated qualities of American selfhood. Chinese readers should not view Newman as a 'realistic' protagonist, but as an aggregate of all the most extreme tendencies of character assumed in a 'national type'. In Newman, we find a man who lacks antecedents, who displays industry and self reliance, who appreciates the future profit to be reaped from present sacrifice, who knows how to persevere, and who is driven to succeed solely for the sweet sake of success. Surreal Newman may seem to Americans, he may seem authentic to Chinese readers possessing little basis for comparison.
Daisy Miller : Winterbourne becomes extremely annoyed that Daisy is intimate with him, yet not devoted to him. This brings to mind his colleague's observation that 'American women [are] at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness '. Chinese can appreciate in this passage the apparent tendency of Americans to believe that the world owes them much, but they owe the world little in exchange. Although Daisy at times appears shallow to Winterbourne, the mere maintenance of appearances does not satisfy this woman, who illustrates for Chinese readers what James regarded as a characteristic American desire to penetrate the surfaces of 'decorum'. Chinese readers will delight in the Euro-American debate over 'innocence'. When Winterbourne tells his aunt he is not innocent, she responds in typical Old World fashion, 'You are too guilty, then ?' For this man, who retains American sensibilities that even he does not appreciate, innocence connotes 'naivete' ; for his Europeanized aunt, it suggest the opposite of 'sinfulness'. In their understanding of the term 'innocence', Chinese will side squarely with the Americans. Daisy's demise at the end of the story suggests much about James's ambivalence as to the American proclivities toward spontaneity, experience, fresh exuberance, and freedom from social encumbrances. Intriguing these traits remain to him, they seem too impulsive and uninhibited to afford survival amidst a world of harsh physical and social realities. At this point in Daisy Miller, Chinese readers will recognize the many thematic parallels to The American. Some elemental urge in Daisy Miller, this all-too-obvious flowering of American youth, drives her to set aside safety and comfort for new experiences that lead to a fuller sense of being.
2002
Dai Xianmei : Henry James remained largely unknown to Chinese readers even after 1949. Henry James studies in China formally began in 1980. With China's policy of reform and opening to foreign countries, James began to find his readers in China and he even became a hot topic of debate among some Chinese doctoral students. Chinese scholars read the foreign literary works for ideological instruction rather than for their aesthetic mould. Under such circumstances, Henry James, with his pursuit of an aesthetic and philosophical appreciation of the cream of life, seemed far away from Chinese needs. Quite a lot of Chinese intellectuals were unavoidably and understandably involved in political activities and political thinking about their country's future.
Zhao Luorui, Hou Wirui and Yang Xiaoping believed that Henry James gave preference to American innocence and morality between the conflicts of the two cultures. Almost all of the early Chinese James critics sensed the difficulty of his language and found themselves willing to accept H.G. Wells's view that James's magnificently artistic form is at the cost of life and content.
From political rejection to an artistic appreciation of Henry James, we can sense the change of the Chinese mind or China's attitude towards western culture. The conscious appreciation of James and some other western writers of his kind, sufficiently indicates the fact that Chinese people are becoming more and more open-minded in a new century with the development of economy, science and technology, more and more confident in combining her own ancient glorious civilization with all the other cultures to create a more lively Chinese culture, just like Henry James's enthusiastic pursuit of an ideal cultural combination of the cream of both American and European cultures.
2013
Wang, Liya : The past decades have seen enormous efforts in China to study Henry James's corpus , which reflects a persistent enthusiasm on this literary figure among scholars in the field of foreign literature studies. This paper looks back at studies on Henry James in different historical periods, in China and attempts to uncover the interaction between the reception of foreign classics and China's historical background. From a heavy reliance on the 'traveling theories' in the 1980s to a selective use of Western paradigms later on critics of Henry James in China consistently show a general interest in his major novels and his novel theory. This paper is an historical review of studies on Henry James, works in China from the middle of twentieth century up to the present. Both the phase features of these studies and the factors which influence the formation of these features, in particular cultural background, are addressed in this research. Firstly, form 1934 to 1945, Henry James's works had been introduced into the literacy criticism in China by translators, but the research at that time was constrained by the historical conditions. Secondly, from 1949 to the 1970s, there was very little study done regarding Henry James. It was not until 1980's that scholars has begun to discuss Henry James's works from various perspectives. Henry James was originally regarded as a bourgeois writer who idealized the ruling class and neglected the working class. Influenced by the reflection on the political thinking in literature studies during the Cultural Revolution and the nation-wide revival of humanism in culture, Henry James was interpreted as a humanistic writer who had fully explored human consciousness. However, the aestheticism both in his novel theory and his late works was largely absent during that period. Finally, from the 1990s onward, Henry James has been interpreted according to various critical traditions, such as the formalist tradition and the deconstructive tradition .

Fukena ping lun ji. Li Wenjun bian xuan [ID D30399].
In the preface William Faulkner was assessed by Li Wenjun as "one of the most important novelists of modern America ; an undeniably major writer of the school of Southern literature ; the writer most discussed and most carefully examined in the United States ; one of the most distinguished modernist writers since James Joyce".

Two Fulbright programs at Beijing University to train English teachers from colleges and universities in China. The Fulbright scholars taught survey courses on American history, culture, and literature, and special courses on individual American writers, including Faulkner.

Wai guo xian dai pai zuo pin xuan [ID D16726]. (Vol. 2, 1981).
In the introduction Li Wenjun speaks highly of the Yoknapatawpha saga as "reflection of Southern society in the past 200 years", compares the philosophical depth and emotional appeal of Faulkner's novels to that of the Bible, the Greek tragedies, and Shakespeare's tragedies, enumerates Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness, multiple narration, inverted order, detention, and symbolism, and makes a detailed analysis of the theme and technique of The sound and the fury.

Harold R. Isaacs reist in China.

Archer, Jeffrey. The Chinese statue [ID D32377].
Sir Alexander Heathcote had an appreciation of Ming dynasty art although he wasn't fortunate enough to have any of it in his private collection. When he was made the British Ambassador to China at the time of Empress Dowager Tsu Hsi by Prime Minister Gladstone he, quite by chance, came across a tiny statute of the Emperor Kung. It was in the possession of an aging and impoverished craftsman in a small village fifty miles from Peking, and had been treasured for generations. When Sir Alexander carelessly spoke his thoughts aloud that he would like to own such a thing, it immediately placed the poor craftsman under an obligation to give it as a gift. Feeling terribly guilty for his undiplomatic blunder, Sir Alexander felt equally obliged to reciprocate with a wonderful gift for the Chinaman. Generous to the last, the craftsman pointed out that the statue of the Emperor Kung had no base but he selected an ornate one from a box of bases used for his own artwork and applied it so that Sir Alexander could stand the statue on display for all his friends to admire. Several generations later, the statue finds its way into the auction room of Sotheby's in London.

Julian Schuman arbeitet für die English-language China daily.

Göran Malmqvist ist Präsident der European Association of Chinese Studies.

Knud Lundbaek ist als Sinologe tätig.

Maria Rita Masci erhält das Laurea in Lettere con indirizzo Estremo Oriente der Università La Spienza, Rom.

Mario Sabattini ist Associate Professor di Lingua e Letteratura Cinese dell'Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia.

Ellen B. Widmer ist Instructor in Chinese der Harvard University.

The Australian Ballet Company arrived in Beijing for a 12-day tour.