Timothy Huson - Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 13

Chinese Literature and Culture

ISSN 2332-4287 (print); ISSN 2334-1122 (online) www.clcjournal.com

Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 13

Editor-in-Chief: Chu Dongwei, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Volume editor: Timothy Huson, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies Copyright 2018 Chinese Literature and Culture through Chu Dongwei.

All rights reserved. No part of this book, which is meanwhile a Chinese Literatureand Culture volume, may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of Chinese Literature andCulture represented by Chu Dongwei except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISSN 2332-4287 (print)

ISSN 2334-1122 (online)

Chinese Literature and Culture

Editor-in-Chief

Chu Dongwei

Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

New Leaves

IntLingo, Inc., Westbury, New York

Zilin Limited, Guangzhou

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Craig Gal up

Zhou Shengjie

CONTRIBUTORS

Yu Hua

Chen Jiyi

Yan Xi Zao

Klaus Vieweg

Kevin Nan Gan

Pang Huanyi

Lu Wei

Zhuang Jiamin

Li Huiyin

Tom Hoy

Timothy Huson

COVOR ART

(Secret Aroma of Pinky Cheeks)

Chen Zhixiong

Table of Contents

Introduction to Volume Thirteen Culture and Nature, Individual and Community .............................................. 7

A Note on the Translations ................................................... 14

A Note from Assistant Editor Zhou Shengjie ....................... 16

Chinese Stories in Translation .............................................. 18

In Company with a Depression Sufferer, by Chen Jiyi, (translators: Zhou Shengjie, Liu Zhiting, Timothy Huson) .................................................................... 19

Death, Illusion, and Reality in Chen Jiyi's In Company With a Depression Sufferer, by Timothy Huson . 58

A Long Journey from Home at Eighteen, by Yu Hua (translators: Zhou Shengjie, Zhang Yu, Timothy Huson) .................................................................... 81

Life's Lessons in Yu Hua's A Long Journey From Home at Eighteen, by Pang Huanyi ................................ 95

Buried in Peace, by Yan Xi Zao (translators: Tan Chunli and Timothy Huson) .............................. 104

..................................................................... 120

The Circle: a Review of Yan Xi Zao's Buried in Peace, by Lu Wei ............................................. 132

Auto-Biographical Essays ................................................... 136

Self-analysis, by Zhuang Jiamin ..................................137

My Childhood, by Li Huiyin ........................................156

Poetry ...................................................................................164

Know Now, by Tom Hoy .............................................165

Essays on Chinese Culture ..................................................167

The Expressivity of Chinese Instrumental Music, by Kevin Nan Gan .....................................................168

The Taint of Determinateness The East and Buddhism from the Perspective of Hegel, by Klaus Vieweg ......................................................183

Inner Enlightenment, Literature, and Literary Translation, by Timothy Huson .........................211

Contributors (in alphabetical order) .............................244

Editorial Board .............................................................246

Subscription and Purchase Information .......................248

Introduction to Volume Thirteen Culture and Nature, Individual and Community

In today's West, culture is often opposed to nature, individual to community. This stands in contrast to Chinese thought where, under normal conditions, these pairs are not in opposition, but rather are complementary to each other. The standard Western academic view of Chinese culture as based on the community, versus the West as based on the individual, already betrays the problem: the very distinction is Western, not Chinese. The Chinese individual is loftier than that of the Western academic's selfish rationalism going back to Hobbes, to escape the self-centered war of all against all only in virtue of reason. Chinese thought is the opposite, the war of all against all is against one's nature, and when individuals are properly brought up and find enlightenment within, they will understand their own nature to be substantially in harmony with the community, and with nature. Culture itself is in harmony with nature, not opposed to it. The true individual in harmony with community lives in a culture in harmony with nature. There is no need for an abstract reasoning process to overrule a selfish desire, since the education process eliminates or brings up that desire. In the Chinese context, 7

Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 13, Nov., 2018

reason is in a unity with properly educated desire. The selfish individual is simply a poorly educated individual. If abstract reason is needed to rescue him, perhaps the problem is at a deeper level. If this individual is indeed the norm in the West, and the cult of abstract reason is the required cure, maybe we should be discussing what is wrong with moral education in the West.

The word culture is itself misleading, used as it is now to refer to artifacts that humans create in distinction from what comes to be naturally. The term itself, in this usage, is of nineteenth century coinage. A term meaning culture is absent from both classical Greek thought and classical Chinese thought. They possessed what we call cultural artifacts, but never saw a need for a term to capture them as a class. Instead, the predominant focus for classical Greece and China was the human inner spirit, a moral sense, internal enlightenment that activates the inner sense of fairness and human decency.

Since it is this inner moral core of human decency that inspires the external cultural works of art, the Western idea of culture would be misleading. The essence of culture is moral education. The genus that captures things like paintings, novels, architecture, and music is not culture, but moral education, inner enlightenment.

In the context of culture as inner enlightenment through education, tradition and continuity with the past become central. Human virtue is not an abstract logical formula, but an acquisition prepared for by thousands of years of human thought, the layering of ideals of human goodness into human institutions. Nature is not the antithesis of culture, but its inspiration, the prototype of humanity that is sublated, in the sense we find in Klaus Vieweg's essay, in the process of cultural development, the construction of institutions to educate, to bring about inner enlightenment. Culture changes nature, corrects it, but does not oppose it. In his