For most Chinese, the Analects are the starting point for us to contact and learn about traditional Chinese culture. However, it is not an easy task to truly understand and read the Analects thoroughly, and to integrate the wisdom in them into our daily lives and thinking. A new book recently published, "Happy to Forget Worries - Xue Renming's Reading of the Analects", may help readers better understand this classic.
Written by Xue Renming, a well-known cultural scholar in Taiwan, the book is concise and easy to understand, and writes the brightness and joy of the Analects, allowing readers to "live out that there is nothing in their hearts, and live until they are happy to forget their worries." Even readers who do not have a traditional cultural foundation can read it as much as they read a novel.
Xue Renming communicates with readers
On the evening of September 4, the author Xue Renming brought this new book to Shanghai Qibao Old Street to meet with readers and talk about the people and things in the Analects in a homely way. Although the typhoon was about to strike, the crowd was crowded and warm, with bursts of applause and laughter from time to time. Many of the readers were dressed in traditional costumes, and Xue Renming affectionately called them "classmates" — many of them were indeed Xue Renming's students. Prior to this event, Xue Renming had been lecturing in Shanghai for three consecutive days, from the Analects to the Chronicle of History, and then to Chinese opera, presenting a feast of traditional Chinese culture to the audience in Shanghai.
However, these three days are only a microcosm of Xue Renming's many years of lectures. As a walker, Xue Renming has been teaching traditional Chinese culture courses on both sides of the strait for ten consecutive years, and because of the vast area of the lecture, the itinerary is within reach, one foot at a time, measuring the thickness and warmth of the Chinese land, countless listeners, uneven age distribution, and stories occur every day. This time, in addition to sharing what he saw and heard in class, Xue Renming also told the story of his ten years as a teacher in an open way, telling about the people and things in reality that impressed him.
"Happy to Forget Worries- Xue Renming Reading the Analects" book cover
Young people are gradually losing their feelings for traditional culture
Xue Renming said that in 2010, he quit his job as a middle school teacher and began lecturing at Taipei Academy in 2013, when many of the people who came to class were university professors. For Xue Renming, who has been teaching middle school students in the past, this is a big change. At the same time, unlike the situation in which he lectures on the mainland today, the university professors who come to Taipei Academy for classes are also very old. According to Xue Renming, when he gave classes to his classmates in Taipei in 2013, their average age was about 55 years old. When he took classes on the mainland in 2014, the average age in the class was about 35 years old. There is a 20-year gap between the two.
The bigger difference is in academic qualifications. Xue Renming recalled that the average academic qualification of Taipei students is particularly high, more than one-third of them are doctors, of which half of them graduate from National Taiwan University, which is a well-deserved "learning club"; When he lectured in Beijing in 2014, there were some graduates, some undergraduates, and some with high school or even primary school education. Xue Renming laughed and said that he prefers to give lessons to scum than to Xueba, because the scum has made more obvious progress after listening to the class, and he has a greater sense of accomplishment.
By 2017, the average age of students in his classes at Taipei Academy had gone from 55 to 59. "It means they didn't abandon me, but basically no new people came." Xue Renming said with a smile, and then talked about his complicated feelings, "In the face of such a group of Taipei people who accompanied them to their old age, I didn't know where to start, I didn't know whether they didn't give up on me, or I didn't give up on them." ”
These aging Taipei students have been coming to his class for several years, listening intently, taking notes, and discussing problems with him after class. In Xue Renming's view, this group of "post-40s" students at Taipei Academy is, to some extent, also a microcosm of Taiwan's development of Chinese history and culture over the years. "After 1949, under a special historical environment on both sides of the strait, there were several generations who had such feelings for Chinese culture, so when they reached the age when they were already retired, they would still come to listen to you seriously talk about the "History of History" and listen to you seriously listen to you thinking about the Analects." He said that in the past ten or twenty years in Taiwan, the audience of all traditional culture classes has been this generation, but they are also getting older and will become less and less in the future.
In contrast, young people in Taiwan have gradually lost their feelings for traditional culture. "Young people under the age of 40 in Taiwan, in short, have no feelings," Xue Renming sighed, "to be honest, I still want him to hate, if I hate it, I still have a chance; When he doesn't object or like it, I think it's no longer funny. ”
"So I've been in Taipei for a few years, and I actually feel very bored when I go to school, but I still have to go because I cherish them very much." But it is reasonable to say that it should be the student watching the teacher grow old, and where there is a teacher watching the student grow old, this is too strange. Xue Renming said, "And now Taiwan's traditional culture is generally in their seventies." Just like when I first published an article about Confucius in Taiwan, I gave a few public lectures outside, and several readers said that they were shocked to see me, saying that they thought that the person who wrote these articles should be an old man in his seventies, but seeing that I was only in my 40s, the gap was too big. ”
"Taiwan is really talking about these teachers of the motherland's culture, and now most of them are my teachers, their age, and no one who is a generation younger than them is talking about it anymore, and I am a monster." Regarding the current situation of Taiwanese culture, Xue Renming quipped helplessly.
Xue Renming is on sale
The mainland has reached an era of looking back at traditional culture
Unlike the situation in Taiwan, xue Renming felt that the mainland audience was a different state of mind after the course began on the mainland. "I talk about Confucius and opera on the mainland, and wow, the eyes of those who listen to the lectures at the bottom will shine, as if they have found their own life." Therefore, Xue Renming has devoted most of his energy to lectures on the mainland over the years.
From September 2016, Xue Renming began to open classes in Shanghai, and from the second half of 2017 to 2018, the classes suddenly became very hot. "Originally, my classes in Shanghai were on weekdays from Monday to Friday, but later the female classmates in my weekday classes also strongly demanded that I have a class on the weekend, so that their husbands, and these aunts and uncles of their families, can also come to class." So since January 2019, Xue Renming's Shanghai classroom has become a weekday, 5 days, a weekend, and 2 days, until now.
For the popularity of the Shanghai classroom, Xue Renming was also confused at first. I don't understand how such a set of "rustic" things I am talking about can be so popular in Shanghai, a ten-mile ocean field. Later, he gradually found that the content he taught in the classroom really helped the students and had a good guiding effect on solving family conflicts and career difficulties. "This thing of our ancestors really works." He sighed.
Xue Renming believes that in the current Chinese mainland society, people often feel confused in the face of the impact of various new things. The essence of traditional culture will make people see the land under their feet and the location of their lives again, so it will be effective to apply it to life. This is where the power of traditional culture lies.
And this is also related to the overall cultural trend of the Chinese mainland over the years. Xue Renming believes that contrary to Taiwan, which has been deviating from traditional Chinese culture, Chinese mainland has rapidly turned in the direction of Chinese tradition since the Eighteenth National Congress. "In the past ten years, the ability and strength of our own tradition to look back is unprecedented in a hundred years." He said.
Shanghai also has its special status and mission. Xue Renming believes that Shanghai, as the most important foreign city in China after 1842, when the most important task of the Chinese nation is to learn from the West and look out, the city will desperately go, and even the head will not return. "But after the Eighteenth National Congress, when the most important task of the Chinese nation is no longer to learn from the West and look outward, but when we begin to have the ability to look at the West, we must not only learn from others, but also take the initiative to learn from our own culture." Shanghai, as the most important gateway to China, has the ability to adjust its attitude in the shortest possible time. The reason is that because in the process of changing the fate of the Chinese nation, the city of Shanghai naturally has such a perspective, and it will naturally have such an adjustment. It desperately looks out when it looks out, and when it should look back, it looks back better than other Cities in China. This is the urban character of Shanghai. ”