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Research On The Ideal World Styles Of Chinese

Posted on:2010-08-17Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:H LiFull Text:PDF
GTID:2166360275493779Subject:Ancient Chinese literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The research on the ideal world of Chinese mainly focuses on the rediscovery and adaption of the ancient Chinese thoughts. The ideas of DaTong and the Peach-Blossom Source attracted most of the attention of the scholars. While the sinologists had few works on this subject and only mention it when doing the research on Chinese religion. The difference reflects the difference between the Chinese and western thoughts. However, the book named China and the search for happiness written by German sinologist Wolfgang Bauer is an exception. He narrated and analyzed the principles and concepts which are about the ideal world as well as happiness in Chinese history. This book is not only the summary and analysis of the ideal world which the Chinese have been seeking for, but also a history of Chinese thoughts which has a special point of view.According to the book, the styles of the Chinese ideal world could be arranged into two types, one is to build a perfect political system, and one is the happy heaven or Peach-Blossom Source. For the first type, a lot of ancient Chinese thinkers gave their own ideas, e.g., the DaTong and XiaoKang society, the society with rule of virtue from Confucius, the ideas of Mencius, and the ideas of universal love of Mozi, the law-ruled society of Legalists, etc. For the second type, people longed for immortal and a totally new happy world, for example, the Peach-Blossom Source written by Tao Yuan-ming has been hunted by Chinese for thousands of years, and the heavens full with happiness were seen in different religions, such as the wonderlands and the oversea mountains of Taoism, the Western World of Ultimate Bliss of Buddhism and so on. This two different styles stand for the two different definitions of Chinese happiness, one is the affirmation to "this life", one is the desire for the afterlife. When the time came to the modern age of China, the western thoughts rushed into China, the ideal world of Chinese began to have the shadow of foreign thoughts. Under the harsh circumstance both internal and external, Chinese people began to doubt the traditional thoughts on one aspect, while at the same time accepted a lot of foreign thoughts on another aspect, different kinds of saving plans were put forward, trying to build an ideal society. These plans included Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Da Tong Shu of Kang You-wei, the three Principles of the people and the Marxism, etc. The Chinese ideal world has the characters of closed, social and literary. The first one was shown on the refusal and assimilation to the foreign thoughts, the foreign religions never took the place of Chinese traditional Confucianism and were assimilated by Chinese culture. The second point was shown by the attention which the Chinese paid to the happiness of this life, as well as the rebelling of Chinese folk organizations. Compare to the heavens and the Western World of Ultimate Bliss, the Chinese paid more attention to the happiness of this life. The Chinese folk religion always connected to different kinds of secret organizations, many revolts had the background of religion, and the final goals of them are to rebuild an ideal society. The third point was shown in Chinese literatures, there were a lot of topics which related with ideal world could be seen in literary works, such as Peach-Blossom Source, dream, travel, death and so on; as well as some frequently-seen genres, including immortals, idyllic poems, notes novels, etc, in which the narration and recording of ideal world could be seen. The imaginary heavens were specified as time went by, even the thoughts of Confucianism were seen.
Keywords/Search Tags:the styles of ideal world, ideal world of this life, happy world of afterlife, the view of happiness, Wolfgang Bauer, China and the search for happiness
PDF Full Text Request
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