I think that because of some shortcomings, the scholar Yu Dan mengman is described as a cultural clown, which is too extreme and not objective.
As the saying goes: No one is perfect. Everyone has shortcomings, and even sages like Confucius cannot avoid them.
Yu Dan
Mozi once criticized Confucius's falsity in the book "Mozi Non-Confucianism". When Confucius traveled around the world and was trapped between Chen Cai due to lack of travel expenses, he saw that he had to eat everything he could eat, good or bad. But as soon as he returned to the territory of the Lu Kingdom, the Duke of Lu Ai immediately feasted on him. At this time, he only ate the best dishes, ordinary dishes did not look at all, and deliberately posed as a gentleman in front of Lu Aigong. So even the sages have shortcomings.
Both Yu Dan and Mengman were highly accomplished cultural scholars. Yu Dan graduated from Beijing Normal University and is now a professor at Beijing Normal University and vice chairman of the Beijing Television Artists Association. In 2006 and 2007, in the CCTV Baijia Tribune program, it was warmly welcomed by the audience because of the "Analects of the Analects" and "Zhuangzi Experience" programs taught by Dan. Her books "Yu Dan Analects Experience" and "Yu Dan Zhuangzi Experience" are very popular in China, and have been published and distributed in more than 20 languages in Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, Vietnam and other countries, which has increased the influence of traditional Chinese culture in the world.
Yu Dan
Mengman holds a Ph.D. in History from Peking University and is a professor at the School of History and Culture, Minzu University of China. Since 2007, he has been featured on CCTV's 100 Forum Programs five times, featuring Wu Zetian, Princess Taiping, Chang Hate Song, Da Sui Fengyun, Tang Xuanzong and Yang Guifei, and received a large number of praise from the audience. He has also published more than a dozen historical books and was elected vice president of the All-China Women's Federation in 2018.
It is these two accomplished cultural scholars and writers who have been criticized as cultural clowns because of a few small things, which is too extreme.
Yu Dan was attacked because yu Dan was later invited to a cultural event in England, because he was disgusted with the treatment, asked for three room changes, and threw a tantrum at his assistant. Another time was when he attended the Kunqu Lecture at Peking University in 2012, and Yu Dan, who has studied Kunqu opera very well, thanked the Kunqu actors on behalf of the audience. However, four or five spectators thought he was a kunqu layman and coaxed offstage, and Yu Dan had to walk offstage.
The reason why Mengman was criticized was that as a cultural guest on CCTV's Chinese Poetry Conference program, she had some deviations in interpreting ancient poems such as "Mercy Farmer" and "Happy Rain on Spring Nights". The peasants under the scorching sun described in "The day of hoeing the grass is noon, and the sweat drops are under the soil" are described as the farmers sowing seeds in the spring.
Some relevant experts believe that Yu Dan's interpretation of the Analects and Mengman's interpretation of ancient poetry have many deviations or are relatively superficial, which is simply that different experts have different understandings of the same text.
Monman
Some people also believe that Yu Dan speaks of benevolence, righteousness, and wisdom in her mouth, but has such a performance abroad, indicating that she is hypocritical. But in fact, Yu Dan's behavior in life in terms of benevolence, righteousness, and wisdom does have a lot, but she still has some shortcomings. And this is just that no one is perfect, so it is too extreme to say that a scholar is a cultural clown. For Monman, it is also said that she is a cultural clown and is not objective because some experts think that her interpretation of the poem is somewhat biased or superficial.
Evaluating a person is valuable in a comprehensive analysis of observations. If conclusions are drawn on a few things, it is often sloppy.