So we need some fresh and bright faces to get rid of China, which is hard to define. At least, we can have the ambition to describe the people living in this land, and we can ask who the people in China are.
As Gu Hongming said in his masterpiece "The Spirit of China People", so far no one has been able to outline the inner nature of China people. Therefore, no one can answer what China people are in one sentence. But we can answer what China people are not. To define what a man is, you can answer that all normal people who are not women are men (thus excluding hermaphrodites and eunuchs). It is a ready-made and convenient way to locate China from the perspective of modern westerners.
Victoria's Secret
One morning, I sat in front of my computer and watched Victoria's Secret Underwear Show, which is a global (to be exact, mainstream western society) fashion show with many bare legs and towering breasts. The grotesque clothes of tall and beautiful women remind me of the legendary figures in China's ancient wonderful book Shan Hai Jing. Their heads are covered with colorful feathers, their bodies are exposed and their backs have wings. If they are not careful, they can fly to the sky. When I was a child, I was in a daze at the blonde bikini girls printed on the calendar, but I once compared them to the Golden Lion King, who was just curious and didn't like them. And countless movies, TV series, advertisements and more and more actions of China people, today, the Golden Lion King imported from the West has gained legitimacy, and it has become the fashion of the times to look at the thighs with big breasts and fat hips.
History is not so simple. 1872 Ming enpu, an American missionary who came to China, once had a book, The Quality of China People, which was listed by Lu Xun as a must-read for China people to understand China. In this book, Ming expresses his impression that all the clothes in the East are bloated and have no freedom of personality. When people in China see two buttons firmly nailed to the tail of foreigners' clothes, they feel that there is nothing to buckle, which is really neither practical nor beautiful. At that time, China people looked down on westerners' suits and tuxedos, while westerners looked down on China people's dresses and jackets, and they thought each other was uncivilized. China and the West can also compete with each other psychologically, and there is no difference between advanced and backward, western style and rural style.
Today, under the trend of women's liberation and individual freedom, the market tide of popular aesthetics spares no effort to create breast cancer and foot disease, bringing China women into the new shackles of corsets and high heels, and at the same time, gradually turning the gentle and implicit female beauty into the fashion beauty of direct exposure. The growing tide of slimming is shaking the fragile nerves of almost all China women who pursue fashion. A brother of mine from Peking University Medical College told me that from time to time, girls died because of excessive slimming. Once a girl was sent to the morgue for autopsy, and a scalpel cut her abdomen, and a stream of water gushed out like a fountain. Breast enhancement, slimming and high heels, the three sharp tools of fashion, have the same effect on women's body and mind as traditional feet and corsets. However, one is the nature of social customs, and the other is the rape of imported goods. The former has become a symbol of backwardness, while the latter has become a benchmark of fashion, which, together with feminist discourse, has conquered the psychology of ordinary China people towards women's freedom. China's liberators, who were infected by modern western civilization, denounced Foot as a symbol of China's backwardness, and at the same time, it made western aesthetics hurt women. It can be said that only foreigners are allowed breast augmentation, and China people are not allowed to bind their feet.
Thus, at the moment when cultural self-confidence is lost, normality becomes metamorphosis, and metamorphosis becomes normality. My admiration for China's ancient ladies was labeled as unusual and abnormal, so I dare not say it easily. Turn on the TV and go online, but you must cheer with the public for big breasts, fat hips and thin waist.
Nowadays, the once very popular Hanfu movement, just like watching The Last mohicans or Dancing with Wolves, is nothing more than curiosity about the exhibits in museums and archaeological sites and sympathy for the victims. This form of resurrection marks the demise of the traditional essence itself. In fact, the perfect image of ancient women in China is completely different from that in the West. The Hebrew lover in Song of Solomon expresses his love for his wife in this way: How beautiful you are, my love, as beautiful as Telcha, as beautiful as Jerusalem, and as terrible as an army with unfurled flags! In China, even Helen of China cares about the city and then the country. Her charm comes from gentleness and subtlety, rather than exposing straightforward horror. Unfortunately, this gentle and perfect facial features has now become an elegy of mourning, just like the poem that Eve wrote to her husband Adam in Milton's Paradise Lost:
Westerners misled women in China and sold their heads to people in China. Because of the strength of the western wave, it has become a truth that China people take for granted. In fact, it is no wonder that foreigners, China people are the most easily misunderstood species, including westerners and their own people.
Compared with the pessimism of China people, American missionary Ming Enpu hit the nail on the head: In fact, China people can't abandon tradition. He used a story to explain why there was no real revolution in China. Someone built a stone wall, six feet thick and four feet high. People asked him why he made such strange things, and he said it was because the wall would be higher after being blown down! Under no circumstances will the government of China be overthrown. It is a cube. Once overthrown, it's just a new face, with the same appearance and connotation as before. Among the hundreds of surnames of China people, the name Victoria cannot be found, and the real China people will not be shown by this program.
Who is more civilized: the undisputed China people.
Today, we are used to thinking that people in China are selfish, immoral and uncivilized. Not to mention whether a farmer in rural China needs to find a spittoon on the roadside to spit everywhere, English gentlemen and American nouveau riche who are accustomed to Manchester and New York lifestyles certainly cannot understand that it is uncomfortable for these farmers or their descendants to be taken to the city. Early foreigners despised the uncivilized lifestyle of farmers in China, just as many city dwellers despise migrant workers today. The premise of the question is, who let them leave the countryside and destroyed their original way of life? The humiliation suffered by China people in the process of catching up with western civilization is similar to that suffered by migrant workers in the process of turning agriculture into Africa.