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MY COUNTRY AND MY PEOPLE
By LIN YUTANG
Truth does not depart from human nature. If
what is regarded as truth departs from human
nature, it may not be regarded as truth.
CONFUCIUS '
INTRODUCTION
ONE of the most important movements in China to-day is the discovery of their own
country by young Chinese intellectuals. A generation ago the most progressive of their
fathers were beginning to feel a stirring discontent with their own country. They were
conscious, indeed the consciousness was forced upon them, that China as she had
been in the past was not able to meet the dangerous and aggressive modernity of the
West. I do not mean the political modernity so much as the march of economic, educational and military events. These Chinese fathers, fathers of the present
generation in China, were the real revolutionists. They forced out of existence the old
dynastic rule, they changed with incredible speed the system of education, with
indefatigable zeal they planned and set up a scheme of modern government. No
ancient government under an emperor ever accomplished with more imperial speed
such tremendous changes in so great a country.
In this atmosphere of change, the present intellectual youth of China has grown up.
Where the fathers imbibed the doctrine of Confucius and learned the classics and
revolted against them, these young people have been battered by many forces of the
new times. They have been taught something of science, something of Christianity,
something of atheism, something of free love, something of communism, something
of Western philosophy, something of modern militarism, something, in fact, of
everything. In the midst of the sturdy medievalism of the masses of their countrymen
the young intellectuals have been taught the most extreme of every culture.
Intellectually they have been forced to the same great omissions that China has made
physically. They have skipped, figuratively speaking, from the period of the
unimproved country road to the aeroplane era. The omission was too great. The mind
could not compensate for it. The spirit was lost in the conflict.
The first result, therefore, of the hiatus was undoubtedly to produce a class of young
Chinese, both men and women, but chiefly men, who frankly did not know how to
live in their own country or in the age in which their country still was. They were for
the most part educated abroad, where they forgot the realities of their own race. It was
easy enough for various revolutionary leaders to persuade these alienated minds that
China's so-called backwardness was due primarily to political and material
interference by foreign powers. The world was made the scapegoat for China's
medievalism. Instead of realizing that China was in her own way making her own
steps, slowly, it is true, and somewhat ponderously, toward modernity, it was easy hue
and cry to say that if it had not been for foreigners she would have been already on an
equality, in material terms, with other nations.
The result of this was a fresh revolution of a sort. China practically rid herself of her
two great grievances outside of Japan, extraterritoriality and the tariff. No great
visible change appeared as a consequence. It became apparent that what had been
weaknesses were still weaknesses, and that these were inherent in the ideology of the
people. It was found, for instance, that when a revolutionary leader became secure and
entrenched he became conservative and as corrupt, too often, as an old style official.
The same has been true in other histories. There were too many honest and intelligent
young minds in China not to observe and accept the truth, that the outside world had
very little to do with China's condition, and what she had to do with it could have
been prevented if China hadbeen earlier less sluggish and her leaders less blind and
selfish.
Then followed a period of despair and frenzy and increased idealistic worship of the
West. The evident prosperity of foreign countries was felt to be a direct fruit of
Western scientific development. It was a time when the inferiority complex was
rampant in China, and the young patriots were divided between mortification at what
their country was and desire to conceal it from foreigners. There was no truth to be
found in them, so far as their own country was concerned. They at once hated and
admired the foreigners.
What would have happened if the West had continued prosperous and at peace cannot
be said* It is enough that the West did not so continue. The Chinese have viewed with
interest and sometimes with satisfaction the world war, the depression, the breakdown
of prosperity, and the failure of scientific men to prevent these disasters. They have
begun to say to themselves that after all China is not so bad. Evidently there is hunger
everywhere, there are bandits everywhere, and one people is not better than another,
and if this is so, then perhaps China was right in olden times, and perhaps it is just as
well to go back and see what the old Chinese philosophy was. At least it taught people
to live with contentment and with enjoyment of small things if they had not the great
ones, and it regulated life and provided a certain amount of security and safety. The
recent interest in China on the part of the West, the wistfulness of certain Western
persons who envy the simplicity and security of China's pattern of life and admire her
arts and philosophy have also helped to inspire the young Chinese with confidence in
themselves.
The result to-day is simply a reiteration of the old Biblical adage that the fathers have
eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Young China, being wearied
of the revolutionary ardours of its father's, is going back to old China, It is almost
amusing to see the often self-conscious determination to be really Chinese, to eat
Chinese food, to live ir Chinese ways, to dress in Chinese clothes. It is as much of a
fad and a pose to be entirely Chinese these days among certair young westernized
Chinese as it was for their fathers to weai foreign clothes and eat with knives and
forks and want to gc to Harvard, These present young people have worn foreigr
clothes all their lives and eaten foreign food and they did gc to Harvard, and they
know English literature infinitely bette] than their own, and now they are sick of it all
and want to gc back to their grandfathers.
The trend is apparent everywhere, and not only in the externals of dress and customs.
Far more importantly is it to b< seen in art and literature. The subject of modern
Chines* novels of a few years ago, for instance, dealt chiefly with moden love
situations, with semi- foreign liaisons, with rebellion against home and parents, and
the whole tone was somewha sickly and certainly totally unrooted in the country.
There is still more than enough of this in both art and literature, but health is
beginning to creep in, the health of life from plain people living plain and sturdy lives
upon their earth. The young intellectuals are beginning to discover their own masses.
They are beginning to find that life in the countryside, in small towns and villages, is the real and native life of China, fortunately still fairly untouched with the mixed
modernism which has made their own lives unhealthy. They are beginning to feel
themselves happy that there is this great solid foundation in their nation, and to turn to
it eagerly for fresh inspiration. It is new to them, it is delightful, it is humorous, it is
worth having, and above all, it is purely Chinese.
They have been helped to this new viewpoint, too. They would not, I think, have
achieved it so well alone, and it is the West which has helped them. We of the West
have helped them not only negatively, by exhibiting a certain sort of breakdown in our
own civilization, but we have helped them positively, by our own trend toward
elemental life. The Western interest in all proletarian movements has set young China
to thinking about her own proletariat, and to discovering the extraordinary quality of
her country people, maintaining their life pure and incredibly undisturbed by the
world's confusion. It is natural that such tranquillity should greatly appeal to
intellectuals in their own confusion and sense of being lost in the twisted times.
Communism, too, has helped them. Communism has brought about class
consciousness, it has made the common man articulate and demanding, and since
modern education in China has been available to the children of common people, they
have already been given a sort of voice, at least, wherewith to speak for themselves,
however inadequately. In the art and literature of the young Leftists in China there is a
rapidly spreading perception of the value of the common man and woman of their
country. The expression is still crude and too much influenced by foreign art, but the
notion is there. One sometimes sees these days a peasant woman upon a canvas
instead of a bird upon a bamboo twig, and the straining figure of a man pushing a
wheelbarrow instead of goldfish flashing in a lotus pool.
Yet if we of the West were to wait for the interpretation of China until these newly
released ones could find adequate and articulate voice, it would be to wait long 條
onger, perhaps, than our generation. Happily there are a few others, a few spirits large
enough not to be lost in the confusion of the times, humorous enough to see life as it
is, with the fine old humour of generations of sophistication and learning, keen
enough to understand their own civilization as well as others, and wise enough to
choose what is native to them and therefore truly their own. For a long time I have
hoped that one of these few would write for us all a book about his own China, a real
book, permeated with the essential spirit of the people. Time after time I have opened
a book, eagerly and with hope, and time after time I have closed it again in
disappointment, because it was untrue, because it was bombastic, because it was too
fervent in defence of that which was too great to need defence. It was written to
impress the foreigner, and therefore it was unworthy of China.
A book about China, worthy to be about China, can be none of these things. It must be
frank and unashamed, because the real Chinese have always been a proud people,
proud enough to be frank and unashamed of themselves and their ways. It must be wise and penetrative in its understanding, for the Chinese have been above all peoples
wise and penetrative in their understanding of the human heart. It must be humorous,
because humour is an essential part of Chinese nature^ Jeep, mellow, kindly humour,
founded upon the tragic knowledge and acceptance of life. It must be expressed in
flowing, exact, beautiful words, because the Chinese have always valued the beauty
of the exact and the exquisite* None but a Chinese could write such a book, and I had
begun to think that as yet even no Chinese could wr ite it, because it seemed
impossible to find a modern English-writing Chinese who was not so detached from
his own people as to be alien to them, and yet detached enough to comprehend their
meaning, the meaning of their age and the meaning of their youth.
But suddenly, as all great books appear, this book appears, fulfilling every demand
made upon it. It is truthful and not ashamed of the truth: it is written proudly and
humorously and with beauty, seriously and with gaiety, appreciative and
understanding of both old and new. It is, I think, the truest, the most profound, the
most complete, the most important book yet written about China. And, best of all, it is
written by a Chinese, a modern, whose roots are firmly in the past, but whose rich
flowering is in the present.
PEARL S, BUCK,
PREFACE
IN this book I have tried only to communicate my opinions, which I have arrived at
after some long and painful thought and reading and introspection. I have not tried to
enter into arguments or prove my different theses, but I will stand justified or
condemned by this book, as Confucius once said of his Spring and Autumn Annals.
China is too big a country, and her national life has too many facets, for her not to be
open to the most diverse and contradictory interpretations. And I shall always be able
to assist with very convenient material anyone who wishes to hold opposite theses.
But truth is truth and will overcome clever human opinions. It is given to man only at
rare moments to perceive the truth, and it is these moments of perception that will
survive, and not individual opinions. Therefore, the most formidable marshalling of
evidence can often lead one to conclusions which are mere learned nonsense. For the
presentation of such perceptions, one needs a simpler, which is really a subtler, style.
For truth can never be proved; it can only be hinted at.
It is also inevitable that I should offend many writers about China, especially my own
countrymen and great patriots. These great patriots 桰 have nothing to do with them,
for their god is not my god, and their patriotism is not my patriotism. Perhaps I too
