“The Way of Heaven” was shot very well, but what exactly is the “cultural attribute”?

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I like the drama “The Way of Heaven” very much. I have watched it twice, and I have also watched the original work “The Distant Savior” twice. But the “cultural attribute” that keeps appearing back and forth in the works often bothers me. What is this thing? Why is it so magical that it is said that “any kind of fate is, in the final analysis, a product of that cultural attribute”? They even think that the reason why China lags behind is because Chinese culture does not respect objective laws and is a weak culture.

Later, after listening to Wang Defeng’s lecture, I suddenly realized that cultural attributes are nothing more than another name for national character and national spirit. And reforming national character and transforming old culture is not a new task. The May 4th New Culture Movement had already proposed it a hundred years ago. So why bring up old stories again in the early 21st century?
Needless to say, the background of the May 4th Movement, “The Way of Heaven” and “The Distant Savior” were produced in 2005 and 2006 respectively. The story in the book began in 1995. It contains a lot of content that criticizes society, mainly corruption, fake and shoddy products In fact, it is not difficult to see that after the reform and opening up, China has various problems compared with “developed countries”, but the reasons cannot be found, so it is blamed on “culture”.

The concept of “cultural attribute” is very problematic. It solidifies some problems in Chinese culture into an inherent attribute, an absolute thing, to explain various problems in Chinese society. This kind of one-sided explanation admits that China’s backwardness is the cause of China itself, thereby denying Chinese culture, and further denying China’s past, present and future.

And in the words of Marx: Philosophers just interpret the world in different ways, the problem is to change the world. To explain the world is to admit the rationality of the world, to find the basis of rationality in the current reality, to say that existence is reasonable, that the poor are poor because they are weak, and the rich are rich because they are strong. This kind of explanation is acknowledgment, justification, and cover-up. In fact, society is constantly changing, and the current status quo can only find reasons from the past. The process of finding the reason is to explore the laws of social change, and only by mastering the laws can we see the direction of the world’s development and participate in the process of “changing the world”. Otherwise, working hard may be a hindrance .

Looking back at cultural attributes, I think the decline of Chinese culture is a long-term historical process. It started from the Song Dynasty. Although the Song Dynasty was rich, it was not strong. Probably it was the separatist regime at the end of the Tang Dynasty and the addition of the yellow robes of the ancestors, which made the emperor of the Song Dynasty afraid and unconfident. Later, the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Song Dynasty, and the Han people were reduced to the third class. In the Ming Dynasty, the prime minister was abolished to support the royal family, and the courtiers became the emperor’s servants. Later, the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, reused traitors and literati, and enslaved and fooled the Han people, which dealt a heavy blow to Chinese culture. The contradiction between Manchu and Han is the main contradiction most of the time. In modern times, the slogan of “expel the Manchus and Mongolia, restore China” is very loud. Then, from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it was another century of humiliation and history of blood and tears. How can Chinese culture not decline?
Isn’t it normal that such a historical background creates a ignorant and numb national character? But even if the culture has declined to that extent, a large number of people with lofty ideals still emerged, who went on to awaken the majority of the people, turned the tide, and made the Chinese nation stand up again. On the contrary, this shows the profound vitality of Chinese culture. At the most critical juncture, it broke through the silt of history and shone brightly, revealing the true background of civilization. The entire nation is unprecedentedly united and extremely confident, especially after the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. There are no impossible tasks, no invincible enemies.

It is a pity that with the advent of reform and opening up, the huge gap in material life between China and the West has caused some people to ignore the historical process and objective laws, and ignore the dirty history of Western civilization, just because China has not caught up with Western countries after 30 years of hard work. The 300 years of burning, killing and looting negates China’s past, present, and even future.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the socialist camp was defeated without a fight, and European and American ideologies swept the world. In order to embrace the good life of the West, many people accept it in its entirety, or even worship foreign countries, and then belittle China, elevating economic and technological backwardness to institutional backwardness, cultural backwardness, and even racial backwardness. The scary thing is that most of them are not motivated by profit, but have been “brainwashed” to think so.

Going back to Ding Yuanying, the protagonist of “The Way of Heaven”, the biggest problem is that his parents and the country trained him, he went abroad to study and work, and got a residence permit in Germany. He found that there were many social problems in the country, and he participated in and out of them. The Chinese culture he participated in was a weak culture. He hoped that the heroine would come to set up a “strong cultural communication company”. There are fathers and mothers in the family, and some money is given for the elderly, and they do not go home during the Chinese New Year, so they can be a self-made man outside, so as not to be upset.

From this perspective, “The Way of Heaven” is more like the confession or defense of those people who did not return to study abroad after the reform, and made money at home and spent it abroad.

In addition, the term cultural attribute itself is misleading, because the connotation of culture is rich and diverse, not single.
There are not only giving up one’s life for righteousness, seeking to benefit the country’s life and death, but also “I hope the years will be quiet and the world will be stable”;
There is a man who would rather be a broken jade than a whole tile, and a man who can bend and stretch, a man who is strong in nature, a gentleman who strives for self-improvement, and “a good bird chooses a tree to live in”;
There is not only the ideal of great harmony in the world, but also the “good words of life” that sweep the snow in front of each other;

Even if “cultural attribute” is a mainstream cultural characteristic, it is not static. Society has different cultural orientations in each era, which is fundamentally determined by the social reality at that time. Just like Wang Yangming put forward ” When I read “Xin Xue”, I have already foreseen its decline, and I can only leave it to future generations to carry forward. Over the past hundred years, China’s cultural orientation has undergone several changes. It introduced constitutional monarchy, democratic republic, Marxist culture, and Soviet culture from the West, and then criticized Soviet culture, trying to form its own revolutionary culture. After failing, it was forced to learn from European and American liberalism. The consumerist culture of the market economy, today, also proposes to establish the cultural self-confidence of the Chinese nation, all of which are inseparable from the historical process of Chinese revolution and development. Only when China stands up can Chinese culture stand firm. Only when China becomes strong can Chinese culture remain confident. At the same time of cultural renaissance, it is also to return to the original and start a new one, trace the history of civilization, wash away the accumulated dirt, find out the background color of culture, and bloom the real light. The tasks of the times fall on the shoulders of young people, and the young people who grow up in the process of China’s prosperity are the future of China.

1. Cultural attributes——how the national character and disadvantaged culture are formed. historical factors

   1. When the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Song Dynasty, the Han people were reduced to the third class——Slavery
   2. In the Ming Dynasty, scholars were reduced to the emperor’s domestic slaves—— Slavery
   3. In the Qing Dynasty, the Manchus enslaved and ruled the Han people with ignorance—servility. Infiltration and Transformation of Han Culture by Manchu Qing Dynasty
   4. From the Late Qing Dynasty to the Founding of the People’s Republic of China: A History of Blood and Tears of Hundred Years of Humiliation——
   5. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China until 2000, people learned from the Soviet Union first, then from Europe and the United States, and from culture, technology to system, all people learned from the West. How could it be possible not to look up to the West? ? ?

2. The attribute of culture is not single, absolute, but plural

   1. There are those who sacrifice their lives for righteousness, those who benefit the life and death of the country, and those who have traitorous literature.
   2. There is the ideal of Datong, where the world is one for the public, but there is also the selfishness of sweeping the door.
   3. There are treacherous villains who steal the words of Yao and Shun, and recite the teachings of Confucius and Mencius, and there are also honest gentlemen who have a bright heart and say nothing
   4. The sky is healthy, and the gentleman strives for self-improvement; the terrain is Kun, and the gentleman carries things with virtue.

3. Retired in Germany

   1. Who trained Ding Yuanying? The support of parents, the education of the country, and then going abroad
   2. How did you get your first pot of gold? Pull foreign venture capital to make money in the Chinese stock market, and share the profits. This is indeed making money based on ability, and there were quite a few people who got rich because of it back then. The problem is that he helps foreigners harvest China financially (isn’t China’s foreign exchange hard-earned money?). Can you really feel at ease if you take this money to die in Germany?
4. The first volume of “Das Kapital” records the dirty history of the development of Western civilization, so you must read more history. In the process of China’s industrialization, there are various problems in the society, and we can learn from them.

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