""Stealing Teachers" from Western Learning, South Korea Skillfully Acquires Chinese Heritage: From Aristotle to the Dragon Boat Festival: A Cross-Border Dialogue on the Authenticity of History
On the big stage of global cultural exchange, the word "cultural reference" is like a mirror, reflecting the contention and controversy of various countries over the heritage of civilization. South Korea's "borrowing strength" in some areas cannot help but remind people of the "fiction fever" in Western history. For example, the Aristotelian controversy on authenticity provoked by scholar Jin Canrong, questioning the huge gap between the scale of the literature and the conditions of its time, and the Greek side has not yet responded loudly, making this great debate about historical authenticity even more lively.
There is also no lack of bold assumptions in academic circles that the sages of the West who shine with a halo of wisdom may only be the product of the "star-making movement" of the later Renaissance with the help of Eastern papermaking. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid, the originator of geometry, are as bewildered as Archimedes burned a Roman ship with a mirror. The legend, which seems to be a scientific miracle, seems so far-fetched in the face of modern physical laws that it can't help but make people re-examine the many mythical feats of antiquity.
And when we turn our attention to East Asia, the battle over the ownership of cultural heritage between Korea and China is fascinating. In 2005, South Korea successfully declared the "Gangneung Dragon Boat Festival" as an intangible cultural heritage, which caused a thousand waves in China, after all, the Dragon Boat Festival originated in China and is closely related to historical and cultural figures such as Qu Yuan. In addition, the process of applying for the World Heritage List of Oriental Medicine and the Oriental Medicine Treasure has also triggered in-depth thinking about whether it is truly independent of the Chinese medicine system. In addition, the Korean court music ceremony was selected as an intangible cultural heritage, and its ritual structure is imbued with the influence of ancient Chinese Confucianism, and the Neo-Confucian Academy is listed as a world cultural heritage, but ignores the fact that the academy system originated in the land of China.
These cases of cross-border disputes over the heritage of civilizations seem to be a declaration to the world that whether they are imitating the methods of Western "masters of fiction" or "cleverly borrowing" Chinese culture in Asia, they should be based on the premise of respecting historical facts, and insist on rigorous research and fair treatment of cultural roots. Only in this way can we clear through the fog and see the real historical context behind each cultural heritage. After all, whether it is the wise men of the East and the West or the traditional customs that cross national borders, they are all shining pearls in the long river of human civilization, which deserve to be cherished and inherited together.