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1、My People and My CountryTitle: My people and my countryAuthor: Lin YutangPress: Foreign Language Teaching and Research PressAbout the authorLin Yutang, whose original name was Lin Hele, he was born on October 10, 1895, Fujian province, China and died on March 26, 1976, Hong Kong. Lin Yutang, the son
2、 of a Chinese Presbyterian minister, was educated for the ministry but renounced Christianity in his early 20s and became a professor of English. He traveled to America and Europe for advanced study. Then he returned to China, he taught, edited several English-language journals, and contributed essa
3、ys to Chineseliterary magazines.His nonfictional books include My Country and My People (1935); A Leaf in the Storm (1941); Between Tears and Laughter (1943), and The Pleasures of a Nonconformist (1962). Among his novels are Chinatown Family (1948) and The Flight of the Innocents (1965). He translat
4、ed and edited The Chinese Theory of Art(1968).In his prolific literary career, Chinese author Lin Yutang wrote expertly about an unusual variety of subjects, creating fiction, plays, and translations as well as studies of history, religion, and philosophy. Working in English as well as in Chinese, h
5、e became the most popular of all Chinese writers to early 20th-century Americanreaders.AnalysisMy Country and My people contains two partsthe Bases and the Life. The first part “the Bases” focus on the bases of Chinese culture, including the origin and development of Chinese people, the Chinese char
6、acter, the Chinese mind and the ideals of life, covering the mental and moral constitution of Chinese people and the ideals of life which influence the fundamental patterns of life. The second part concentrates on the study of Chinese life itself, such as its sexual, social, political, literary and
7、artistic aspects. In short, this part covers Chinese women, society, government literature and art. In the authors opinion, very few people understood the real Chinathe western scholars were so arrogant and viewed China by the western standard. Consequently, those scholars draw a wrong conclusion th
8、at China is a barbaric country and the Chinese people are barbaric people; the Chinese scholars, however, were the same arrogant and proud, and reluctantly to admit the weakness of Chinese culture. The attitudes of these Chinese and western scholars were so pride and prejudice. Except the subjective
9、 factors, there were other huge difficulties confronting the scholars in surveying China and Chinese cultureChina is so big, with a population of over 400 millions and a vast land over 10 million square kilometer and more than fifty peoples; Chinese culture is so complicated, derived from a five tho
10、usand years of uninterrupted history and have no uniform religion that dominant the culture. If a person really want to have a understanding of China or Chinese people, he must travel lots of places around the country to witness the Chinese peoples life, the farmers, the citizens, the drudge, and th
11、e vendors, etc, watching them, listening to them, feeling what they are feeling, thinking what they are thinking; one must also spend time in their studies, reading the Chinese classic books and studying the folk literature. Its difficult for a foreign scholar to do all this, overcoming the language
12、 barriers, the lack of Chinese common sense and the huge cultural gap between China and the west. Comparatively speaking, it is much easier for a Chinese scholar, who is born and raised in China, receiving traditional Chinese education and is conversant with both the Chinese classics and folk litera
13、ture.Chinese family system, complete absence of established classes, the opportunity open for all to rise in the social scale through the imperial examination system, the pursuit of simplicity, that together serve as cultural forces making for social stability. Firstly is the Chinese character.The p
14、rocess of trying to rise higher teaches people some memorable lessons of life and human nature, and if he escapes all that experience and remains a round-eyed, innocent, hot-headed young man at thirty, still enthusiastic for progress and reform, he is either an inspired idiot or a confounded genius.
15、 However, the Chinese people take to indifference as Englishmen take to umbrellas, because the political weather always looks a little ominous for the individual who ventures a little too far out alone, in other words, indifference has a distinct survival-value in China. At the same time, one can be
16、 public-spirited when there is a guarantee for personal rights, and ones only look-out is the libel law. When these rights are not protected, however, our instinct of self-preservation tells us that indifference is our best constitutional guarantee for personal liberty.Secondly are the ideals of life. Taoism, in theory and practice, means a certain roguish nonchalance, a confounded and devastating skepticism, a mocking laughter at the futility of all human interference an
