Travel, big trips and deep trips
Hu Yu
In April 2022, the Information Office of the State Council released a report entitled "Chinese Youth in the New Era", which mentioned that "the needs of contemporary Chinese youth going out to see the world have been better met, and gradually changed from 'only walking around the doorstep' to 'you can go anywhere', and your experience is more extensive." "[] This is indeed a great and excellent change, not only showing the growing environment of contemporary Chinese youth that is different from that of the youth of previous eras, but also seeing a China that is increasingly integrated into the world from the perspective of youth."
Travel has become a basic way of life and leisure for contemporary Chinese youth, and even international travel is becoming more and more commonplace. Unlike the international travel of their parents, which often use group tours, contemporary Chinese youth are more willing to travel in a free-travel manner, which is undoubtedly a positive progress due to their language ability, international vision and personality pursuit. However, it is interesting that when more and more young people go abroad to travel freely, the so-called "niche travel" has gradually become a "mass behavior", specifically, to see abroad, especially in Europe, it is often churches, squares, museums, and the things they do are often to taste food, take beautiful photos, and issue "ticket circles". Over time, everyone seems to feel that something is missing?
Perhaps it is because what you see is too repetitive, or because what can be done is too limited, or because the most beautiful scenery and beautiful architecture lack touchpoints that can move people's hearts if there is no story, or in a word, the trip that only "wanders" lacks "dialogue" with different travel objects and different histories and cultures, and always feels that some "taste" can be retained for a long time. It is often said that travel is mobile reading. By extension, a rewarding trip must have a "sense of reading". A trip that just takes pictures is just a picture book reading. Quality reading-oriented travel requires both sensory mapping and emotional stimulation, as well as rational intervention, human communication and thought touch.
In the 18th century, There was a travel mode in Britain dedicated to study tours, known in history as the "grand tour". When the children of wealthy aristocrats and gentry graduated from Oxford or Cambridge University, they usually had to travel around Europe, first, to experience the charm of the birthplace of Western classical culture and Renaissance culture, to learn language, art, architecture, geography, and second, to communicate with the high society of Europe, to learn elegant words and deeds, noble behavior. This custom has continued for more than a hundred years. []
From the perspective of the purpose and destination of the "great trip", on the one hand, learning etiquette, taste and other manners, which focuses on the French tour represented by Paris; on the other hand, learning the ideological spirit of artistic aesthetics and humanism, which focuses on the Italian tour represented by Rome, Florence and Bologna. Judging from the implementation of the "big trip", the biggest feature is that these young people tend to stay in the place of travel for a long time, have in-depth contacts with locals, and understand and learn about their culture. Judging from the effect of the "great trip", it has affected the growth of British young people, especially the upper-class youth, for more than a hundred years, and then affected the temperament of the entire British society, and more significantly, study tours as an educational method are still widely used in contemporary Western education.
According to the president, in the course of his less than two years of postgraduate training, students have three one-week study trips to visit the world, the purpose of which is to let students grasp the connotation and characteristics of different cuisines from taste, nutrition, composition, culture and other aspects through personal experience. Over the years, students have traveled to more than fifty countries, and the academic support and logistics required for the trip are arranged by the school, and the instructor will accompany the students throughout the trip. I have introduced this training mode of this school to many young people in China, which has aroused immediate envy and hopes that there are not a few participants.
The benefits of reading-based international travel to participants are subtle and cumulative. Through direct contact with different people and humanities, you can intuitively understand the cultural diversity of the world, see the "other existence" that is different from yourself, "see" more, and deepen the natural "knowledge", and in this process, you will gradually think about the origin, composition and future of human beings, and think about the spirit and preciousness of humanism.
Humanism is a historical and cultural concept with rich connotations. During the Renaissance, humanism embodied the rebellion against theocracy and called for the liberation of human nature, and the artists represented by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian all displayed the beauty of the human body with their own talents; during the Industrial Revolution, humanism embodied the rebellion against technocracy, machineism, and instrumentalism, calling for the importance of virtue, and many educators and Ivy League schools reflected on university education and established general education, all pursuing the shaping of "people" rather than the manufacture of "things". Although the connotations of these humanisms are different, they all emphasize learning from ancient classics, and their essence is humanism, emphasizing the concept of using people as an end rather than a means.
The turn of the 15th and 16th centuries was the era when Europe became the center of the world, with Díaz discovering the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus discovering the Americas, vasco da Gama discovering India, Cabral discovering Brazil, Magellan completing his globetrotting, and Copernicus discovering the centrality of the sun, which changed the spatial and temporal scale of the world and the pattern of the world. If these people have changed man's understanding of the material world, and there is a European who has changed the spiritual world of mankind, although his name is not so prominent in later generations, and his ideas are even more out of place in the era of scientism and strengthism, his name, Erasmus, is worth remembering.
German painter Holbai Jr.'s oil painting "Erasmus Statue"
Born in Rotterdam in 1469, Erasmus was a poet, linguist, theologian, and educator who was hailed as the greatest humanist in Europe at the time. The Austrian writer Zweig wrote a biography specifically of him, arguing that "he was the first European with a cosmopolitan consciousness, he never agreed that this country was superior to another, and since he had made his mind develop the habit of judging each country according to what it considered to be the noblest and most perfect intellectual elite,each country's own pillar—as the only criterion by which each country was evaluated, he felt that all nations were worthy of love." At that time, "the best idealists in all european countries were eager for humanism." "Its core belief is that enlightenment of reason promotes world peace and progress. In Erasmus's view, the real power of the world is "to defuse conflicts through mutual understanding in good faith, to clarify merits and demerits, to settle disputes and disputes, to reconcile the divided parties, and to enable the isolated to have broader interpersonal relations." This spirit of his is also known as the "Spirit of Erasmus". []
Erasmus was born in the Netherlands, studied in France, traveled to European countries, visited many times in the United Kingdom and Italy, lived in Basel, Switzerland for many years and died here, in the extensive and in-depth travel, Erasmus with the most pioneering mind to absorb the nourishment of different cultures, make friends with all kinds of elite people, form a rich and thick knowledge system and ideological spirit. Erasmus was undoubtedly fortunate to receive widespread praise in his middle age, and became friends with Thomas Mohr, the great British humanist scholar, statesman, and author of Utopia, martin Luther, the founder of the Reformation in Germany and Europe and the founder of Christian Protestantism, who wrote to him in tribute, and the cardinal repeatedly invited Erasmus to a banquet without success but to visit himself. In Zweig's view, Basel became a treasure trove of ideas for the world thanks to erasmus residence. "To visit Erasmus is to express the most remarkable reverence for such a symbolic figure who represented a great and invisible spiritual force at that time, just as one visited Voltaire in the eighteenth century and Goethe in the nineteenth century." [] This great spiritual influence was passed on hundreds of years later, and the author visited the Erasmus House when he traveled to Basel and the Goethe House when he traveled to Jena, both as a sign of reverence and as an expression of inheritance.
Machiavelli's Treatise on Kings
Erasmus, On the Education of the Christian Monarch
At the beginning of the 16th century, the political landscape in Europe was turbulent, and major political forces frequently waged wars for hegemony. In 1513, Machiavelli wrote The Treatise on Kings, advocating power, the core idea of which was to have power and to resort to all means of deception, lies, cruelty, etc.; in 1515, Erasmus wrote "On the Education of the Christian Monarch", advocating peace, the core idea of which was to train wise kings and most importantly to carry out humanistic education. From the perspective of theoretical substance, the utilitarianism of the former is in stark contrast to the idealism of the latter, and from the perspective of human history over the past 500 years, the popularity of the former is also in stark contrast to the edge of the latter. However, in Erasmus's time, perhaps influenced by a large number of humanists at that time, many bishops and nobles no longer collected weapons but instead collected books, paintings and manuscripts. In fact, when human beings no longer compete to develop weapons to kill each other, but devote themselves to creating cultural and artistic works, the whole world truly becomes a paradise on earth and enters a new human civilization based on humanism.
The "big trip" is undoubtedly an effective way to cultivate people, but it is worth noting that the "big trip" of that year was actually a Western cultural journey, and it was the training of Westerners to become Westerners in the cultural sense. If Westerners lose their cultural identity, Westerners will cease to be Westerners. Westerners become Westerners not because they are born Westerners, but because they are a kind of cultural contamination and training, which includes the training of exquisite cultural life such as 'big travel', in addition to daily life. [] This reflection is highly insightful and reveals the historical limitations of the Great Tour. Of course, the form of learning through travel is obviously valuable, so how to break through?
2018 Global Competency Overseas Practice Course faculty and students visited UAE University
Therefore, in my university teaching practice, the exploratory form of "Global Competence Overseas Practice Course" was set up, trying to lead students into non-Western countries or non-British and American Western countries that are less concerned in ordinary days, to see the "diversified global" rather than the "Westernized world", and to see different human cultural forms. The theme of each trip is mostly humanistic content, and after determining the destination, the students themselves contact the local visitors and institutions, in other words, such a trip is a real folk tour and a humanistic trip. Walk all the way, talk all the way, learn in the mobile classroom, feel in independent thinking. Gradually, over the years, this course has formed its own style, and has also become a general honor course at Tsinghua University, becoming one of the popular courses for students. Perhaps this way of traveling can be called "deep tour", deep in the wide range of travel objects, all human cultural places are worth visiting, students joke that according to different language families, with human cultural dictionaries to find destinations. Deep in the activity of learning methods, in the travel, we must observe and experience the most typical cultural content, but also meet the largest number of local people, meet different people, listen to different words, in other words, both "see things" and "see people". I remember that during a visit to embassies and consulates abroad, diplomats commented that such a travel course was very "smart", which impressed me and felt extremely appropriate.
Over the years, such a "deep trip" has brought the author special experience, understanding and memory, made many kind and sincere friends, such as the Justice of Manaus in Brazil, the ambassador of Nepal to China, etc., many scenes are still like yesterday after many years, because many experiences are "once in a lifetime", there is the "hanging order" of Lumbini, the birthplace of Shakyamuni, the "touch" of the star of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, the "strange detective" of the Plato Academy in Athens, and the pink dolphin "swimming together" in the Amazon rainforest. There is a "chance encounter" at the Audrey Hepburn cemetery on the shore of Lake Lémon, which is too numerous to mention, and has become a valuable memory, which also makes the author more aware of the brilliance of human civilization and the richness of world culture.
In the 21st century, when human technological capabilities and material levels become more and more advanced, we will find that various global challenges and inter-state conflicts still make human beings very unhappy, and more importantly, the differentiation of values makes the "globalized" world more and more "hemispheric" world and a "fragmented" world. Today's world needs both intelligence and human culture, intelligence without humanistic core is only machine intelligence, capital intelligence and not human intelligence, today's world needs a new humanism with true rationality, peace and tolerance as the core, this humanism opposes both theocracy and hegemony, takes humanity as the center, takes equality as the principle, takes cooperation as the method, takes freedom as the pursuit, this humanism is a new culture and spirit that nourishes human development, and promotes the construction of a world cultural community, a community of human destiny, The Community of Life on Earth.
This article is being written on the occasion of Tsinghua University's 111th anniversary. The university is the garden of knowledge, the cradle of talents, the inheritance and creation of human civilization, and the link and platform of world cooperation, and it is expected that universities around the world will unite to build a new civilization, cultivate new talents, and make more contributions to the future of mankind.
April 24, 2022 at Tsinghua Garden
The author is a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, and this article is a self-prologue for the author's collection of cultural essays, "People and Humanities in this World" (Dolphin Publishing House, China International Communication Group, 2022 edition).
[] Information Office of the State Council, "Chinese Youth in a New Era," People's Daily, April 22, 2022.
[] Xiao Sha, "The Great Journey' in 18th Century Britain," Guangming Daily, August 16, 2017.
[] Stephen Zweig, Erasmus rotterdam: Glory and Sorrow, translated by Shu Changshan, Life Reading New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore, 2018 edition, pp. 4-5.
[] Stephen Zweig, Erasmus rotterdam: Glory and Sorrow, translated by Shu Changshan, Life Reading New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore, 2018 edition, p. 122.
[] Chen Shengqian: "What is the use of archaeology?" Reading, No. 4, 2022