If you haven’t traveled in China, your opinions about that country are probably wrong. I’ve traveled there often, and I’m married to a woman who was born and lived in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
That’s why I found it interesting to read “The Non-Existence Of A Chinese World View” at Two Fish’s Blog, where Lin YuTang was quoted.
While writing “My Splendid Concubine” about Robert Hart in China, I read “My Country and My People“. Hart is mentioned on page eleven of the 1938 edition. Pearl S. Buck (who wrote the introduction) felt that someone who knows the Chinese should write a book about the people and culture. She urged Lin YuTang to be that author. Even though YuTang’s book was published before the Communist Revolution, this book is still relevant in all things Chinese.
Lin YuTang
YuTang’s style is a mixture of history, philosophy, psychology, sociology with wit and wisdom.
I smiled when he pointed out contradictions about the Chinese way of thinking and helped me discover what motivates many Chinese to act the way they do — even the Chinese in a government often blamed for what they do because they are Communists when in fact, they act that way because they are Chinese.
To learn more of China, discover Tom Carter’s “China: Portrait of a People”
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
[...] Lin Yutang says, “It is difficult to deny the “Old China Hand” the right to write books and [...]