Bai Yang's widow decided to stop publishing "The Ugly Chinese", Professor Tai: I am deeply afraid that the book will become a pretext for rejecting Chinese culture and even the nation

Source: Global Times

Zhang Xianghua, the widow of the late Taiwanese well-known writer Mr. Bai Yang, decided to stop publishing the book "The Ugly Chinese" forever, triggering interpretation on the island.

The People's Literature Publishing House's edition of The Ugly Chinese cover

Zhang Xianghua, who is himself a writer and poet laureate, said a few days ago that after the contract with Taiwan's Yuanliu Publishing House and the Mainland's People's Literature Publishing House expires in 2024, it will no longer publish the book "Ugly Chinese", and "even hopes that the publishing houses on both sides of the strait will no longer publish this book from now on." As the inheritor of The Spirit of Bai Yang, she said, "Bai Yang repeatedly explained before his death that when the mainland civilization has progressed, it is necessary to abolish the distribution of this book."

Zhang Xianghua revealed that Bai Yang's works have been authorized to be distributed by Yuanliu Publishing House in Taiwan, and yuanliu recently received a contract to authorize the selection of the excerpt of "Ugly Chinese" into the middle school textbooks on the island. "When Bai Yang gave a speech in 1984, it was mainly aimed at adults, which was not suitable for first-year junior high school students who had not yet established national self-confidence," she said. She stressed that a major reason for not agreeing to the authorization is that it is impossible to agree with the current Taiwan education and the new curriculum syllabus of "de-Sinicization" or even "anti-China", "In the case of knowing very little about Chinese culture, even if you read Bai Yang's article, how can you understand the spirit of Bai Yang?" Zhang Xianghua particularly criticized the deletion of texts and texts from the island's language and history textbooks and the replacement of "Chinese history" with the viewpoint of "East Asian history", which is basically the teaching strategy of the rulers to "de-sinicize", without the values and identity premise of Chinese culture, and the inclusion of "Ugly Chinese" is "debatable", and is worried about "using its title to insult China". Therefore, although the authorized invitations for textbooks have continued to be received since 2016, Zhang Xianghua has refused all of them.

The Ugly Chinese was published in Taiwan in 1985 and was named the island's bestseller of the year. The book is a collection of dozens of essays by Bai Yang, the main content of which is to criticize the inferiority of the Chinese of the last century. With the attitude of "hating iron is not steel", the author calls the shortcomings of various traditional cultures "sauce tank culture", which causes a strong cultural shock in the Chinese world. Over the years, however, some "Taiwan independence" elements have distorted the ideas in the book and manipulated them into "de-Sinicization." In 2018, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Bai Yang's death, the "Academic Seminar on Mr. Bai Yang's Creation and Life" was held. Zhang Xianghua recalled when he first met Bai Yang, saying, "I know how much he cherishes to be a Chinese." Shigeo Arai, an emeritus professor at Japan's National Mie University, said at the time that Bai Yang was different from the ugly side of the country written by American and Japanese authors, which was used as a reference for diplomatic action, but Bai Yang talked about a sense of crisis in Chinese culture; although once unpopular because of its critical nature, he was actually determined to pursue the dignity of Chinese.

Lin Baochun, a professor at Taiwan Retired University, wrote in Taiwan's Zhongshi Electronic News that Bai Yang went to Taiwan in 1949 and spent nearly a year of his life in Taiwan, and the ups and downs of his life were also closely related to Taiwan's political and social environment. The title of the book, "The Ugly Chinese," more precisely, refers to the Taiwanese he sees and describes in his eyes. From its publication in 1985 to the death of Mr. Bai Yang in 2008, the 23 years were a critical period in which Taiwan, which had originally adhered to traditional Chinese culture, was "gradually moving from adhering to tradition, to denigrating tradition, and finally despising tradition" under the control of ideology. Mr. Bai Yang, who cares about Chinese culture, cannot help but have a regretful heart, and is deeply afraid that the book "Ugly Chinese" will become an excuse to exclude Chinese culture and even the nation, "Sealing and publishing is actually enough to show that he attaches importance to traditional Chinese culture." (Tao Xinran)