The 24th Winter Olympic Games are in full swing in Beijing during the cold winter, and if the most popular player is selected, it is not the New Science Olympic Champion Gu Ailing.
The 18-year-old girl, who is originally from the United States and became a Chinese citizen in June 2019, is changing the history of winter snow sports in China and becoming a topic of conversation in both China and the United States.
Gu Ailing's athletic talent is beyond doubt, and the Olympic champion is the best proof.
She also has Both China and the United States blood, grew up in the United States, but finally chose to take China as the motherland, for China to participate in the Olympic Games, the symbolic significance of her behavior in the historical development process of China and the United States, I am afraid that many years later people will truly appreciate.
Over the years, it seems that only China's high-level athletes have joined foreign nationality, the earliest Olympic champion Luan Jujie of fencing has joined Canadian nationality, and the Olympic champion Chen Yueling who has raced to join the United States nationality, and a large number of table tennis players have joined the nationality of other countries in Europe, the United States and Asia to represent other countries.
It seems that it is better for domestic athletes to go out, which has become a fixed thinking of many people, and overseas athletes joining Chinese nationality was unimaginable a few years ago.
In recent years, football has begun, and many sports have been represented by players from other countries who have joined the Chinese nationality.
Women's heptathlon player Zheng Ninali from Canada, women's figure skaters Zhu Yi and Lin Shan from the United States, artistic gymnast Guo Meilin from Ukraine, Lin Xiaojun, short track speed skater from South Korea, and Zheng Enlai, ice hockey player from Canada...
More and more overseas athletes, even athletes from developed countries, choose to join Chinese nationality and represent China. This is a manifestation of China's national strength and a powerful proof of China's rising.
More intuitive proof than foreign athletes joining Chinese nationality is that in 2019, the average GDP of Chinese exceeded 10,000 US dollars, China achieved comprehensive poverty eradication in 2021, 30 years ago China's GDP was 6.3% of the United States, and last year China's GDP reached 74.3% of the United States, and the Chinese nation is on the road to great rejuvenation.
All of this seems to have happened in the blink of an eye, and it even feels a little unrealistic.
One hundred and eighty years ago, China was defeated in the Opium War, and since then it has gradually degenerated into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, allowing others to slaughter;
More than seventy years ago, the whole country was devastated and full of the ruins of war;
Thirty-one years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, and many people predicted that China could fall at any time;
In the last two decades, the theory of China's collapse has been raised almost every year.
In less than two hundred years, after so many tribulations, China seems to be moving towards rejuvenation overnight.
In addition to the changes in the world environment in the past few decades, China has provided opportunities, and China has seized all the opportunities that can be seized, and the strong genes of Chinese civilization itself are the decisive factor.
As the British scholar Martin Jacques commented on the rejuvenation of China: the fundamental reason why China has been able to achieve the development achievements of Western countries for hundreds of years in such a short period of time lies in China's strong civilizational self-confidence.
In his article "The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of the World Order," the American political scientist Huntington mentioned that "China is a civilization disguised as a country." What he did not mention is that this civilization has lasted for five thousand years, is the only civilization in the world that has not been interrupted, and has also achieved the self-confidence of Chinese civilization, which stems from the accumulation of history, the culture of tolerance, the spirit of innovation, and the feelings of the world.
01 The self-confidence of Chinese civilization
The self-confidence of Chinese civilization is gradually inherited, developed and accumulated in the process of historical development and in the flow of the long river of time
In the history of China, the ancestors of xia and shang zhou, after nearly two thousand years of development, initially laid the foundation for the civilization system of Chinese culture with agricultural cultivation, ritual education, and ancestor worship as the core. To this day, these have been integrated into the blood of all Chinese sons and daughters.
No matter what kind of large villa you live in, making a small piece of vegetable land in the yard to work on your own is a subconscious choice for many Chinese;
No matter what kind of person you face, you are polite, and when you encounter things, you should respond to things without being rude, even if you tear your face, you will be polite before you are a soldier;
At the end of the world, most people in the Chinese nation still worry about the fallen leaves and return to the roots, even if they have gone a long time, after several generations, they must also find their roots and worship their ancestors, only Chinese call their country "motherland".
It was not only the country of one's own parents, but also the place where the ancestors of the past, which lasted for thousands of years, were grown for generations.
All this makes the Chinese nation from the bones, with the hard-working nature of bearing hardships and standing hard work, the good upbringing of being kind to others, and the blood and kinship that does not forget the fundamentals, and can unite as one and forge ahead in a pioneering spirit.
Qin Shi Huang unified China, established counties and counties, and established a unified centralized state for the first time; the book was the same text, the car was on the same track, and the weights and measures were unified, although the second died, it laid a solid institutional foundation and social ties for the development of China for more than two thousand years.
In the two Han dynasties, inheriting the Qin system, expelling the Xiongnu, sealing the wolf Juxu, and making the voice of the Han people the title of the main ethnic group in China for two thousand years; in addition, the deposing of hundreds of families and the exclusive respect of Confucianism established an ideological foundation for the cultural inheritance of later generations.
In the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, for hundreds of years, Xianbei, Xiongnu, Xiongnu, Qiang, Qiang, Rouran... Many ethnic groups chased after the Central Plains; Liu Yu, Huan Wen, Zu Di, Xie An, Liu Yuan, Helian Bobo, Jian Jian, Ran Min... The times have created countless heroes; metaphysics, Buddhism, Confucianism and various ideas have been circulated. Chinese civilization has also developed and grown, absorbed and integrated in the fierce collision of many nationalities and various ideas.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the world was reunified, the territory was as far as Central Asia, the ten thousand states came to the dynasty, and Chang'an became the center of the world; the imperial examination system was established, and the Shengdou Xiaomin may also be "the dynasty is Tian Shelang, and the Tianzi Hall is the first in the world to make an exploration of how to achieve social fairness."
Since then, the people of the Land of China have also reached a new height of identification with their own civilization, because this is a place of opportunity for all people.
In the thousand years after the Tang Dynasty, Chinese civilization continued to make great progress in humanities, science and technology, economy and other aspects, the continuous development of Song Ci, Yuan Qu, Ming and Qing novels, the invention and application of gunpowder, compass, printing, and the prosperity of the Maritime Silk Road, so that China has always been at the forefront of the world. The vastness and thickness of Chinese civilization also turned the foreign Mongols and Jurchens into part of the Chinese nation.
It wasn't until one hundred and eighty years ago that the door of China was opened again by foreign races, this time facing another civilization that was completely different and comparable to Chinese civilization.
Chinese civilization has temporarily eclipsed, but this is by no means inferior to our civilization, but only a temporary dormancy, waiting for a bigger outbreak.
02 Chinese civilization and other civilizations
The great difference between Chinese civilization and other civilizations is that it is inclusive and good at learning.
Since its inception, Chinese civilization has been inclusive and integrated with various cultures.
The representatives of Chinese civilization that we see now include the jade pig dragon of the Hongshan culture in Liaoning, the rice in the Hemudu culture in Zhejiang, the copper mask in the Sanxingdui culture in Sichuan, the fish-patterned pottery pots in the Banpo culture in Shaanxi, and the oracle bones of the Central Plains Yin Ruins and the Houmu Peng Dafangding.
In the southeast, southwest, and northwest, different regions, and different forms of culture are all important parts of Chinese civilization, and eventually converge into Chinese civilization.
Chinese civilization is also constantly learning from the outside world, and King Wuling of Zhao's Hu costume riding is militaryly learning from the Hu people how to fight;
The Introduction of Buddhism in India began in the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was to learn from foreign cultures ideologically;
The flying sky on the Dunhuang murals and the Lushena stone Buddha in the Yungang Grottoes are artistic learning and absorption;
Until modern times, we have learned a lot of Japanese Chinese vocabulary from Japan, which has become our daily language (such as police station, police station, physics, chemistry, politics, economy, telephone, comrade, spirit, socialism, capitalism... Even what this article calls "civilization").
After entering Chinese civilization, foreign nationalities can often be quickly integrated.
Jin Riju, as a prince of the Xiongnu surrender, became the minister of Emperor Wu of Han; the sons of the Sui and Tang dynasties also had Hu ancestry;
The Yuan Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty were dynasties established by ethnic minorities, and they were quickly attracted to Chinese culture, assimilated, and have now become an important part of the big family of the Chinese nation;
Many ethnic minorities use Han Chinese surnames, which are now indistinguishable.
03 Chinese civilization is a civilization that constantly forges ahead and innovates and develops.
Some people say that Chinese culture imprisons people's thinking, is rigid, and does not want to forge ahead, so in modern times it is far behind Europe and the United States, and backwardness will be beaten.
There are two conceptual errors here, first of all, backwardness is not a reason to be beaten, just as saying that good people are good and good is the reason for bad people to do evil, that is the excuse that bad people make for their own evil.
Being backward and having a lot of wealth, and being coveted by strong bad guys, this is the reason why we were once ill-fated, but fortunately, we gradually caught up and were no longer so easily bullied by others.
Secondly, Chinese culture is definitely not self-contained, but courageous to innovate. Since ancient China, there have been many wonderful ideas, inventions and creations, and the dynasties have continued endlessly.
Needless to say, Needham summed up hundreds of Chinese world-leading inventions as another proof that Chinese civilization has never lacked the spirit of innovation from the root.
We are thousands of years ahead of the world, and the past two hundred years have indeed lagged behind, but that is not because of the lack of innovative spirit, but because we have not entered the era of science and technology faster, mainly because we lack the soil for the development of modern science and technology like Europe, so we are lagging behind.
What soil is suitable for the development of modern technology?
We can use the well-known contemporary scientific and technological development as an example, that is, many scientific and technological innovations are first applied to the military, and then promoted to the civilian market and commerce, computers, nuclear energy utilization, research and development of new materials and technology, and so on.
After the opening of the age of great navigation in Europe, because there were many small countries, they were constantly fighting with each other, and there was a natural huge demand for military technology.
The gunpowder imported from China has separated the war from cold weapons and developed to another level, which is the foundation for them to compete with each other and urgently develop science. Therefore, the modernization of the West is not so much the basis of thinking on the development of science and technology, but rather the fruit of the exhaustion of military force.
Physics, chemistry, and mathematics have basically developed rapidly for the development of weapons and the application of warfare. Mining, metallurgy, shipbuilding, etc. are also competitions in war capabilities, and they also need the support of new technologies.
Because China lacks competition from a strong enemy and has no desire to colonize and open up to the outside world, it naturally has no motivation to develop guns and other capabilities to promote war, so it lags behind, and then it is bombarded by gunboats.
Since the 1980s, China got rid of more than a hundred years of turmoil and began reform and opening up, striving to catch up with the world trend, the gene of innovation has been awakened again, and it only takes a few decades to complete the path of the West for hundreds of years.
Now China has ranked among the best in the world in terms of innovation index in all aspects, and China has become the first in the world in terms of the number of registered patents and the number of papers published in internationally renowned journals.
In the future, we will continue to expand our leading edge in innovation, because this is the tradition of our civilization, as long as we take the right path, then the creativity of the Chinese nation will be endless.
04 The most unique part of Chinese civilization is the feelings of the world.
Chinese civilization is rejuvenating, and this rejuvenation will no longer be just its own strength, it will surely lead the world, because we have had the feelings of the world since ancient times.
From the "Book of Rites" more than 2,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Chinese nation defined the pursuit of life goals as "self-cultivation, family unity, governance, and peace in the world", starting from their own cultivation until they can stabilize the world.
More than two thousand years of ideological indoctrination has made the people of Pingtou have the same concept, they all hope that the world will be peaceful, even if they just change themselves, they have also contributed to it, which has become a consciousness carved into the genes of the Chinese nation and integrated into the blood.
This new crown epidemic fully reflects this point, when it is necessary to sacrifice the ego, whether it is the doctors and nurses on the front line, or the isolated people of a family, a community, or the entire city where they live, they all consciously and voluntarily sacrifice their own personal interests and contribute to the peace of the country.
Fan Zhongyan's "worries and worries before the world, and happiness after the world" are popular among the population, and all Chinese people should not know, and taking the world as their own responsibility is the consensus of the Chinese.
Zhang Zai's four sentences of Hengqu elevate it to the realm of "establishing a heart for heaven and earth, establishing a destiny for the people, continuing to learn from the saints, and opening up peace for all the worlds".
This is Chinese's requirement for himself, and it is also the goal of unswerving struggle.
The world in the past was China, and now the world is the world, the scope has expanded, but the goal pursued remains the same, to let everyone live and work in peace and contentment.
Contemporary Chinese care for the world is best reflected in the proposal of the "community of human destiny", we have solved our own poverty problem, and then we must do our part for the common development of mankind.
In the human society that has been dominated by the West for hundreds of years and pursues the law of the jungle or social Darwinism, China is the first to put all countries in the same perspective, everyone breathes and shares, fate is linked, it is a community, and no one is superior to others.
This is not a reference that only exists in China now, but it is only to expand the original Concept of China's own "Tianxia" to the global village and radiate to all corners of the world, which is the expression of the self-confidence of Chinese civilization, responsible for itself, and also responsible for the development of mankind.
Because of its own civilization genes and relying on its self-confidence in its own cultural traditions, China has embarked on its own development path.
China started from poverty and white, and after truly connecting with the world, it took only a few decades to rise to become the world's second largest economy, and its current contribution to world economic growth has exceeded 30%, far ahead of other countries.
China's profound civilization tradition, unique in the development of the contemporary world, will surely lead China back to its original position in the world's thousands of years of history.