[Note: The following is an account that was recorded in the mid-2000’s, but the subject matter explores the perception of Chinese history from the perspective of Zhu Zhongming, a forty-six-year-old accountant, and because it is about history, I’ve decided to include it after some thought. I liken it to a modern historian writing about something in history, although this is from the perspective of a (local) layman.]
Zhu said that Chinese interest in Europe was motivated in part by a need to understand their own history: “When Europe was ruling the world, China was strong as well. So why did we fall behind? We’ve been thinking about that ever since,” he said. Indeed, the question of why a mighty civilization slumped in the fifteenth-century runs like a central nerve through China’s analysis of its past and its prospects for the future. Zhu offered an explanation: “Once we were invaded, we didn’t respond quickly enough.” It was a narrative of victimhood and decline that I’d often heard in China. (Historians also tend to blame the stifling effects of bureaucracy and authoritarianism, among other factors.)
But Zhu did not trace all China’s troubles to foreign invaders. “We cast aside our three core ideas – Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism – and that was a mistake. We were taught Marxist revolutionary ideas from 1949 to 1978.” He paused and watched his wife and daughter snapping photographs at the boat’s railing, an orange sun sinking behind the buildings. “We spent thirty years on what we now know was a disaster,” he said.
Source:
Osnos, Evan. “Acquired Taste” Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China. London: Vintage, 2014. 107-8. Print.
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