TheSpeech on the Meeting to Welcome Chinese Overseas Students in Tokyo Today I would like to share with you mytravels in several countries. Japan is different from China in two aspects.First, Japan’s civilization is introduced from China. Fifty years ago, Japanesereformists were so indulging in Wang Yang-ming’s(the Chinese great philosopher)philosophy of putting people’s knowledge into action. Thus these heroes all hadindependent spirit of admiring the warriors, which helped them to save 45 millionpeople from untold miseries. At the same time, Chinese still held their own accumulationto fawn over foreigners. Therefore, the Chinese civilization fell behind Japan.Second, Japanese culture of clothing, food and housing were all learned fromChina. However, due to following to the system of Manchuria, this culture wasactually left in Japan. Subsequently, a variety of Western culture came intoChina. Even China was civilized earlier than Japan, the Chinese had notbenefited from the culture too much.
I traveled across the Pacific Ocean toAmerica and saw the people and things were brand new there. It had not been knownby the world until Columbus found the continent 400 years ago. However itsdevelopment has been further beyond the other western countries. For example,last year’s St. Louis Expo, memorizing US bought St. Louis from France, was thegreatest one in the world. Although America used to be a prehistoric land, itis a huge country with more than 40 states, which China is not capable ofcomparing with. I also travelled to England, France and Germany seeing many previousgreat civilizations, such as Rome, Egypt, Greece and Athens were all in a stateof decay while some uncivilized groups are rising like the Teutonic nation. Thewestern culture has existed only for several hundred years while China has aculture of several thousand years. But the Chinese people can not transform theancient civilization into modern one. That is why people say China isconservative and weak. But i do not quite agree. Although many of our stuff arenot powerful, it is not hard for us to be strong and modern in the future if welearn from the west. I always saw something creative in the west and somethingrigid in the east. Is it so hard to turn the old into the modern if we Chinesecan invent our new things? Take London as an example, at first, people made useof horse-drawn vehicle before the trolley came into being. But they still donot take trolley 100 years later, instead they ride bicycles. Trolley is becomingvery popular now in Japan where no one was seen last year. China was just impededby sticking to old ways. The progress is sure to be made in the future if we doas we think and talk today. China is thought to be very naive which is not trueeither. Instead she is senile. China did not change because its people did notknow the profit change will bring to them. They thought their country has thebest culture and need nothing. But now, many with breadth of vision like you goout to see the development of other countries, and feel our civilization isoutdated. So a desire of reform raises; thinking and civilization will bedeveloped day by day. In view of this, it is not unpredictable that China willbe the greatest nation in the world. Now the patriots know that China has beenin misery, facing the danger of being carved up and talk about saving Chinaeveryday. If China can eliminate all the brutal systems of laws, China will be strongerthan USA. Why? Because neither America nor Britain, France, Germany and Italyhave good foundations as China. |