Read aloud: Hou Jian
"A Family Letter (Excerpt)"
On the evening of June 26, 1961
Dear child, the letter of June 18 was received this morning. Although it took a lot of hours, the letter was well written. Writing more times will make it easier and less effortful. The happiest thing is that your national character and characteristics have been kept so intact that you have not forgotten: "Eat and drink, and you will not change your enjoyment." Only in this way will we not be overwhelmed by the material civilization of the West. I know that the gap between the East and the West can only be experienced by a very small number of people who are brilliant in understanding and feel keen and profound. This is the bitterness of modern people: they cannot close themselves off, and the East and the West are in charge of their own lives and their own ideas, and they cannot avoid the conflicts and contradictions between the two philosophies of the two spirits, two cultures, and two philosophies. Of course, in addition to conflicts and contradictions, the two cultures are also attracted to each other, and there is a special charm between them that fascinates people. The wisdom, wisdom and detachment of the East can be integrated with the vitality, enthusiasm and fearless spirit of the West, and mankind may see the emergence of another new culture. The spirit of Westerners who are diligent and diligent, white-headed and poor, only know to learn, regardless of success or failure, still exists, which is worth learning. Neither you nor I are great powerists, and we deeply hate great power doctrine, but you and I have no exclusive meaning in our national consciousness, national pride, and patriotic enthusiasm. On the contrary, this is the feeling and feeling that a person with roots and roots should have. Every time I see you have such a performance, I am so happy that my heart beats and I feel that you are worthy of being the son of the Chinese nation! Mom is also proud of it, especially happy and especially satisfied with you.
After dinner, I read the letter again (the third time). You yourself say it's a mess, but it's not. What you have is a sense of truth, real and true observation, analysis, judgment, even if it is messy and chaotic, it will not go anywhere. Chinese did not regress; your father was the most critical of the words, and I said that if you don't regress, you can believe that you really don't regress.
And your enthusiasm and sense of justice unconsciously overflowed between the lines, teaching me to see comfort, excitement... Some passages seem to be echoes of what I've said to you for more than a decade... You have not failed the gardener!
Indeed, few Westerners can accept, let alone practice, China's excellent traditional philosophy of life. For example, "riches are like floating clouds to me" is a very lofty and enviable ideal for you and me, but like those characters in Balzac's writing, they just regard wealth as the most important or even the only goal in life. Their upward climbing, the brute force and fanaticism of seeking success, I personally find it difficult to understand. Maybe the temperament is different, not most Chinese are all so turbulent. We can't idealize ourselves too much.
I anticipated your excitement after reading On Greek Sculpture. Gone are those times, just as a person's innocent and lovely stage from childhood to adolescence. Just like our pre-Qin era, the two Jin and six dynasties. Recently, I often read "The New Language of the World", and I feel that the style of literature at that time is both a bit of ancient Greece and a bit like Renaissance Italy; but the lofty, idyllic, and elegant meaning is still different from any period in the history of Western culture. Man is really a strange animal, so civilized when he is civilized, so timeless when he talks about xuan, and when he is barbaric, he is no different from wild beasts, and even more cruel. Curiously, these two extremes are manifested in the same group of people of the same era. How many careerists in the two Jin Dynasties and Six Dynasties, who wanted to seize the world and called the lonely and widowed, sat down and talked about the philosophers who were deeply familiar with Lao Zhuang and Buddhist philosophy!
That's why I keep sending you copies of my country's art, on the one hand, to satisfy your longing for your homeland and remember the hunger and thirst of our ancient culture, and on the other hand, I also want to influence Mila with concrete things. Knowing and loving a foreign country culturally and artistically is the only way to truly know and love a foreign country, and I think it is also the most reliable chain to strengthen the spiritual fit between the two of you.
Your two-point conclusion, unhappy marriage and too much and too early success, is the artist's worst enemy, and it's all too pertinent. I used to worry about your marriage, and most of that was also the point. Now That Mila is not an ambitious girl, at least it will not pull you on the road of fame and fortune, so that you can always maintain the dignity of art and maintain your serious and simple outlook on life, which is already your great fortune. And your mind that is indifferent to fame and fortune, and the same self-critical spirit as me, are a guarantee for your art. I hope that in ten or twenty years, when I am not alive, you will always be able to stick to these two points. Idyllic mind, especially rare in the Western world, I hope you can set an example!
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Reader Profile: Hou Jian, working at the Rong Media Center in Shangdang District, Changzhi City.