Wonderful book excerpts
The sixteen-character motto of "each beautiful, beautiful and beautiful, beautiful and united, the world is one" was first expressed by Fei Xiaotong at his 80th birthday party in 1990. In November of that year, Chie Nakane and Qiao Ken held an academic conference in Japan on "East Asian Social Studies", inviting many anthropologists to celebrate Fei. Before going to Japan, Fei Xiaotong was invited to write a speech entitled "The Study of Man in China: Absent Dialogues." In this essay, he uses a dialogue to present his academic views on his classmate Edmund Leach in London. The content of this dialogue has been mentioned in the previous chapter, and we will not repeat it here, but it should be pointed out that this article triggered Fei Xiaotong's follow-up thinking on the relationship between civilizations.
In this article, Fei Xiaotong mentions his disagreement with Leach on academic views, and about this disagreement, he makes a passage that leads to the view that "each is beautiful, the beauty of beauty". He mentioned, "The difference of opinion between me and Edmund is perfectly understandable to a man of anthropology. There is no question of who is right and who is wrong, but a question of belonging to different traditions and situations. We can tolerate each other not only but also appreciate each other. We may as well be beautiful in our own way, and we can also be beautiful in beauty. This is the consensus that anthropologists should have. ”
Fei Continued: "Unfortunately, anthropology is still a treasure of a few people in the modern world, far from the common sense of ordinary people. However, people with different attitudes and values in this variety of cultures have lived in a small world where you can't do without me and I can't do without you due to the rapid development of science and technology. They have entered into common life with a variety of ways of life, from ideological to behavioral, and how to coexist peacefully has indeed become a major issue that must be paid attention to. Contradictions caused by cultural barriers threaten people's common survival. The significance of my absent dialogue with Edmund from this perspective may not be limited to the common interests of a small number of anthropologists of different nationalities, but can be linked to the question of how humanity in the world will enter the 21st century in the future. He finally asked a question, "Although I am over eighty years old, my concern for the future of mankind does not seem to be unfounded." Does it take on anthropologists to make some contribution to building the spirit of cultural tolerance"?
After saying these words, Fei Xiaotong gladly wrote sixteen words with a brush: "Each is beautiful, the beauty of beauty, the beauty of beauty and commonality, and the world is the same". Later, when he elaborated on his mood for writing these sixteen big words, he said, "As an anthropologist, I hope that this discipline will consciously explore the issues of cultural self-knowledge, mutual understanding, and mutual tolerance, establish the concept of multicultural symbiosis in the world, and promote the arrival of the world's unity."
