The Chinese People's Sentiment of Family and Country

Once, when I was having a meal at my beloved teacher home, in casual conversation my teacher told me that the most admirable spirit of Chinese scholars is the family-and-country sentiment they carry.

From ancient times to the present, among Chinese scholars whether going into politics, going into business, or practicing medicine as I do, and even among those who have left home to cultivate the Way, there are countless people with this sentiment. Especially among Chinese male intellectuals, if in a lifetime they achieve nothing among the three enterprises of establishing virtue, establishing words, and establishing merit, deep down they feel painfully that their life has been wasted.

Having a family-and-country sentiment does not mean serving a political regime. Rather, scholars have a kind of aspiration like the one Zhang Zai of the Northern Song described: establish the heart for heaven and earth, establish the destiny for the people, continue the lost learning of the former sages, and open peace for all generations.

In peacetime, when everyone is sunk in a life of song and dance, this may not be visible. But whenever the nation faces peril, many Chinese will step forward and not hesitate to sacrifice themselves to protect their home and country and save the people. Whether scholars pursuing official careers or Buddhist monks and Daoist priests hiding in the mountains to cultivate themselves, there is no lack of great men who grieve before the world grieves and rejoice only after the world rejoices.

Of the four great ancient civilizations of the world, only Chinese civilization has been carried down to the present; the other three ancient civilizations have all been broken. I personally believe that the fundamental reason Chinese civilization has survived so robustly lies precisely in this family-and-country sentiment flowing in the blood of Chinese intellectuals.

My teacher blood also flows with this family-and-country sentiment. Although he is only an ordinary educator, he has lived his whole life in idealism, taking getting the country finest talents and educating them as his joy, and has always striven to be a teacher of people who transmits the Way and resolves doubts, rather than a mere teacher of texts.

Under my teacher influence, I too have acquired, to some degree, a bit of this family-and-country sentiment. In addition, my father had high expectations of me, and when he named me he implied lofty aspirations. So when I was young and headstrong, I too had the grand ambition of bringing peace to the world.

Only now, in middle age, do I know that my ambitions are larger than my talent and that I lack the ability to bring peace to the world. Fortunately, the ancients also said, if not a good minister, then a good physician; otherwise I would have no way down from the stage.

I used to think that when Confucius said at forty one is free from doubts, he meant that after forty the mind matures and one is no longer easily confused. Now that I have reached forty and tasted the flavors of life, I gradually understand that perhaps Confucius meant that at forty one is no longer easily tempted by one own foolish notions to impulsively want to be a dazzlingly big shot, nor easily tempted by external things into the impulse to prove oneself right or wrong; and so one gradually gains the ability and steadfastness to turn a deaf ear.

So now I have taken to the middle way, encouraging myself with the noble person honors virtue and guides himself through learning, broadens the whole and exhausts the fine, reaches the highest and walks the middle. My wild heart has gradually quieted, and I can sit with concentration at a desk, chew through books, and do some scholarship.

But in this life it is not easy to do scholarship completely undisturbed. Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, and tea; an adolescent child; a wife in menopause; and aging parents combine into a household in utter disorder. While enjoying a comfortable life, one must also pay a certain degree of toil.

Toiling and toiling, I gradually feel I have become a hopelessly vulgar ordinary person, as if that scrap of family-and-country sentiment has vanished entirely. Looking around, most of my peers are in the same state.

Some sharp critics may take this as the philistine side of the Chinese; many opinion leaders think that today Chinese youth are all exquisite egoists lacking altruism.

I do not quite agree. Human nature is a product of environment. In peacetime, all beings strive either for food and clothing or for a higher standard of living, and self-interest is entirely understandable. We should be glad that most people around us are vulgar, because the moment when everyone is full of family-and-country sentiment is precisely the moment when our nation is in crisis. Though it is said that which flourishes, the people suffer; which perishes, the people suffer, relatively speaking, when a nation is destroyed and its people annihilated, the people suffer far more than in economically prosperous peacetime.

As for the family-and-country sentiment flowing in the blood of the Chinese, I have not the slightest doubt. As a child I thought I had great ambition and family-and-country sentiment, and fancied myself one of the rare few. As an adult I have come to think less and less so; people raised in our culture share many similarities. Deep down, many people around us harbor ambition, and their blood too flows with family-and-country sentiment.

If war broke out, I myself might lay down my pen and take up arms. I reckon Old Zhang, who sells pork at the wet market, Second Wang, who runs the small grocery next door, and Third Li, who is passionately starting a business, would all don armor and fight on the battlefield. Does not the Book of Odes already say: How shall it be said there are no robes? I share your long coat. The king raises his army; I sharpen my spears and halberds. I share your foe!

But I would rather see everyone living well-fed lives than see them performing heroic deeds amid the flames of war. The reason the martyrs shed their blood was precisely so that their descendants would not have to shed blood and could live in peace.

Those who cannot stand the vulgar life of song and dance are mostly too nitpicking, always thinking people ought to live in idealism. In fact, only a small number of idealists are needed; if there were a great many idealists in the population, the world would be in chaos.

Because those idealists easily become impassioned, and the ideal in each idealist heart is not the same. The ideal states that idealists A, B, C, and D wish to build are also very different, and they would likely wave their pens and wag their tongues to incite their followers to wage war over the respective paradises each has depicted.

A person does not need to fight thugs every day to prove he is brave; one or two experiences of fighting thugs are enough to prove he is brave. Nor does a person need to show family-and-country sentiment at every moment to prove he has it; he only needs to step forward at the critical moment and be a person with family-and-country sentiment, which is enough to prove he is one.

In daily life, let us lay aside the high talk of family and country, and amid the noise of women, children, the elderly, and the young, smile foolishly and keep striving for our lives and our work!

As Mr. Wang Xiaobo said, if everyone manages himself well and does not become a burden on family or society, that is the greatest responsibility one can show to society. The economist Marshall also long ago showed that only when a person has surplus strength can he make altruistic contributions to society.

So we ordinary folk should first do a good job of the basic cultivating ourselves alone. As for those who have attained the way and wish to nurture the whole world, that would of course be best of all. It is just that not everyone has the ability and luck to become such a person. I venture to think that respecting the countless humble people who also carry family-and-country sentiment but have no opportunity to express it, rather than despising and mocking them, is also one of the basic qualities a person should possess.