Some Basic Features of Chinese Culture

Abstract

Let us devote our attention in this article to a consideration of some of the basic features of Old Chinese culture, which gradually evolved in China from the third millennium B.C. Present-day culture, even though it links up to a considerable extent with old traditions, is developing within the framework of the fundamental views and principles of socialism, and its problems are closely related to the cultural problems with which all the countries of the socialist camp are confronted. It is thus no longer a purely Chinese manifestation. Old Chinese culture, on the other hand, despite its absorption of many foreign elements, as, for instance, Indian and Antique, transformed and assimilated them to its basic principles, so that it presents a more homogeneous structure than that of any other world culture. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why today we speak of Chinese culture as a classical culture, a closer acquaintance with which may have for humanity as great a significance as had the re-discovery of Antique culture in the Renaissance. In the chaos of widely varying trends and views in which the European community has found itself caught up since the middle of the 19th century, when its cultural life ceased to have any distinctive style or order, such a monumental culture, cast in a single mould, has a singular attraction, for in it all details are subordinated to general principles and harmonised to merge into a unified whole, so that instead of breaking up a cultural unity they assist and strengthen it.

New Orient Bimonthly 1 (1960), No 1, pp. 1–3.