Lin Yu-Tang's Multi-Source And Multi-Cultural View

Lin Yu-tang, as a master in culture of the 20th century, was in a unique position in the history of Chinese literature, and also had widely affected the whole world. He made an important contribution to the communication of Chinese and Western cultures by producing a lot of works of Chinese characteristics in English. Meanwhile, he formed his unique cultural view basing on his absolute understanding of Chinese and western cultures. This view of culture, which had distinctive features of the age, nationality and ethnicity, and derived from the integration of Chinese and Western cultures, covered and contained almost everything, was in accord with the 21st spirituality and had a profound meaning of modernity.The formation of Lin Yu-tang's cultural view is undivided from his cultural background of the fusion of Chinese and Western cultures. We can clearly see those two elements of Chinese traditional culture and Western Christian culture in Lin's view of culture. Lin Yu-tang looked for the foothold of his own personality from the Chinese universal ideology, and then he created the basic ideological system basing on the freedom, independence and enrichment of humanity. This is the product of the same strain of independent literary personality.For the Confucian culture, Lin Yu-tang did not perceive Confucius as a saint, but as the wise. He advocated the philosophy of Confucius's "benevolence", Mencius's "awe-inspiring righteousness", and laid his foundation of life with Tsesse's theory of "the Golden Mean". Lin opposed the Neo-Confucianism for its restriction on thoughts and extreme rationality, instead he emphasized on Confucian humanity such as ethics, personal cultivation etc, and kept it as a core part of his own mind. Lin Yu-tang's attitudes towards life basically are of peace, tolerance and contentment, mainly because his belief in Taoism and Buddhism, both insist a pacifism and simplicity philosophy, which in turn give Lin's humorous essays a quality of spirituality and compassion.Lin Yu-tang is a Christian, but his faith in God experienced a three-stage change of "immergence, abandonment and return". During the immergence-stage of his Christian belief, Lin had been equipped with optimism and kindness by his Christian-background family. And also during this stage, he had learned about the western culture and developed a preliminary understanding of western opinion towards world and life. Later, when he recognized the conservative, stiff and nothingness side of Christianity, he abandoned Christ and converted to traditional Chinese culture-more humanistic and realistic. And then in his later years, when experienced depressed passion for traditional Chinese culture and awareness of life's tragic nature, Lin Yu-tang came back again to his father's arm-Christ's. After all these, Lin retrieved a in-depth recognition of Christian love and tolerance, and developed his unique understanding towards religion belief.Lin's multi-cultural view is the summarization of his life wisdom. It puts people first. It focuses on the topic on how to solve life contradictions and pursue the life happiness, and through this, it comes to the conclusion that only one refines his personality, upholds the moral character, purifies the taste of life and regards the world peacefully, tolerantly and comprehensively, can he keep free and hilarious. So, Lin emphasized the harmonious development of human beings and the Mother Nature. He also valued humor and advocated to being quiet and calm. He not only cared about self-cultivation and mental purification, but also thought highly of the improvement of material well-beings. This attitude of life paying close attention to humanity, pursuing happiness and harmony, accenting self-cultivation and improving self-consciousness is absolutely what we need in contemporary society.Lin Yu-tang's work embodies his culture concepts, such as sincerity, broad-minded etc, from which the multiple origins of his culture concepts have been displayed. Lin hated teaching major principles of life in his essays. His essays, with a leisure style, reflect a wisdom ego, which is a little self-centered. Lin adopted quiet an equal position to talk with his readers and cared a lot about the modernization of human being. The magnificent atmosphere of Lin's novel shows his life attitudes and values concepts. One of his notable works, Moment in Peking, was written base on Taoism and reflects the author's religion orientation. And Lin's autobiographical work is a even more direct expression of the author's mixed view of culture. The practical significance of Lin Yu-tang's unique culture concepts is to provide the "lost generation" with an example about pursuing happy life. Lin Yu-tang, a real wisdom Chinese man, with his constant emphasis on personal cultivation and morality, will always be an excellent example whenever we try to solve our problems of modernization, realize the meaning of life or regain a happy life.