"china's specialty" has gradually become a "political word" in china, meaning something that is beyond the reach of the vast majority of chinese adults. We wonder what kind of style this mysterious term of “chinese identity” is in the eyes of foreigners. The young german ryker, who walked 4646 km from beijing to urumqi in 2007, published his best-selling book, walking china, which truly recorded his field experience. When he returned to germany, he thought further about his trip to china, describing in comparison what he saw as the “china specialty”, which led to the book china specialities。
“rayker, do you like us in china”, we used to ask questions, but it was very embarrassing to the germans, because the preconditions of patriotism had been set, and he had no idea what to say except to be polite. And in germany, there is often only “my germany”, not “we germany”, so no one would ask a similar question: “do you like us germany?” so many questions have been asked, and ryker has even invented "me" or "me" to communicate with chinese netizens。
So, ryker stressed in particular that “i am not the german, nor the other german”, like every chinese he met, “does not represent the whole of china nor the other chinese”, because ultimately, “you are you, and i am me”。
Even the chinese themselves do not know what “chinese identity” is, and it is difficult to get an old foreign system to talk about it. Ryker said that while they also had much to learn about foreign countries in school, the “foreign” generally referred to ancient egypt, ancient greece, ancient rome, europe, the united states, most of which had heard of confucius, my son, sun tzu, feng shui, and ming dynasty。
As for "who is li baek and when is the qin emperor" , he can only shrug his shoulders. While we chinese students may know more about the history of europe and the united states, when “we china” comes out, like their european centralism, we implicitly include the position of “china centralism.”。
In the book china, features, ryker made a number of “specialities” in a german perspective about china's current social discourse, such as china's cross-road, the korean cold phenomenon, chinese education, china's relations with japan and the abolition of the death penalty。
For example, “china crossroad”, which the germans see as “the result of a traffic problem”, and “china character” as “the root cause of a traffic problem”. For example, in the “handshire vs. Arks”, the “china character” of which reyk considers to be an “excited society”, germany is no longer in need of so-called “opportunist leaders” and “false” because of its responsibility, pluralism and rule of law, whose main task is “to find themselves”。
In the book, ryker talks about a “classic cultural difference event”: in world war ii, british and american troops pursued british women, who, in the general view, were similar in english and american culture, but turned out to be followed by british women who complained, as did american men who were chasing them. Interestingly, they complained about exactly the same thing: the other side was too “fool”
It is rooted in cultural differences, where kissing is considered to be quite intimate in the united kingdom, where it takes a few dates, and where the next step is basically equal to sex; in the united states, kissing is normal, and soon to be known, but it takes a few dates to get to bed。
As a result, american men are rushing to kiss, and english women feel that american men are too “fool”; and british women are ready for the next step once they are kissed, and then american men feel that british women are too “fool”。
So ryker believes that the “reading china” books that are now popular in europe, including kissinger's theory of china, understand cultural differences between east and west are in fact biased, or are too “complicated” or too “simple”. He even cited the example of a shanghai white collar that was not understood in the same way as his fellow pastoralists in the north-west, as each culture had its own internal differences。
So when we talk about a concept, we cannot simply look at it as a word, but more importantly at who and in what context it is applied. This is certainly the case for understanding the “china characteristics”, even more so for reyk's china features。
Responsible editor: zhang dei
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