Chinese virtue

Chapter 43 Nepotism
It is a principle among the Anglo-Saxons that every man should think of himself as an individual and should think of others in the same way.It is similar to this situation. If the father is a banker, it does not mean that the son should work in the bank.No profession, business, or any other enterprise is hereditary, and the son of a conservative may be a liberal, and the son of a liberal may be a conservative.Judging by convention, human society will inevitably develop nepotism.But in the West it's a little bit different, and what we see as nepotism doesn't seem to include that.In our eyes, the individual is but a cell of society.

In China, the exact opposite happened.In the long lineage change, each generation is marked as a station, and the previous ancestors have gone through countless stations in this way.In-law relationships are complex and precise, but to the uninitiated they can be confusing.Every Chinese family sticks to the place their ancestors chose to take root and never changes. For those Westerners who like to wander and take risks, this fact is beyond their comprehension.These Westerners have set foot in half of the countries in the world, and their life force and fundamentals are wandering.However, there is also a possibility that their wandering is in search of the ultimate habitat.On the other hand, the life of the Chinese people is completely shrouded in the shackles of various old customs, or in a backward way of life, in various strict rules set by their ancestors.From ancient times to the present, Chinese society has been like a huge machine, and every individual is just a cog in this machine.The gears always turn with the wheels, not the wheels with the gears.For any one of these units, it is almost impossible to promote the rotation of the entire family alone, unless the entire social machine has been coordinated and all links can cooperate closely.The Chinese family is like a large pile of potatoes. If you want to see one of them clearly, you must sort out the order of the whole pile.Their ancestors were very clever, and they saw very clearly the traits of their children and grandchildren in this respect, and carried them forward to the extreme.

The ancestors established a complete system of principles, which bathed the Chinese people in its light.

The whole country is a huge whole in name, the emperor occupies a high position and rules the people according to the way of heaven. Every class from top to bottom, down to every family and every individual, is the unit that makes up this society. They depend on each other and are responsible for each other.There are a number of ways to see how much this law and behavior of being responsible to others works in reality.Compared with observing the trivial things in their daily lives, the weird self-expression articles often published in the "Beijing News" can clearly show this point.If readers can read all these articles in one year, the unexpected incidents mentioned above, such as the sudden flood of the Yellow River, the crime of killing relatives, etc., and the handling methods and guiding ideology of these incidents, etc., Comparing it with the thinking of Westerners, you can clearly portray the Chinese nepotism in your mind and have a three-dimensional and intuitive understanding of it.Chinese people's nepotism is manifested not only in the communication between ordinary people, or in the officialdom of hypocrisy, but can even be seen in all aspects of life.

The Chinese have an innate inner cohesion and a very strong desire to be united together. No other nation has such a strong expression in this aspect.Although guilds are not unique to China, we can see that there is no commercial guild in any country that has such a strong cohesive force like the Chinese guilds.And this cohesion is not a simple aggregation, but a very reasonable combination.When faced with this powerful combination of the Chinese, foreigners have no room to resist at all, just like facing atmospheric pressure, they are easily defeated.Some conflicts often occur between guilds in various places. When dealing with these conflicts, the methods and principles of Western countries are not applicable at all.And it was these contradictions that made the Singapore Straits Settlements and the colonial governments of Hong Kong face an embarrassing situation.

In order to obtain factual evidence of the principles mentioned above, it is not necessary to go to the remote areas of mainland China, because such evidence can be found casually in our office and in the servants of our house.Compradors, cooks, housekeepers, or coolies feel the slightest pressure, even if the pressure is inexplicable, and they will leave us.They will find reasons for this decision, and of the nine reasons found, about eight have nothing to do with the departure itself, and one may have something to do with it, but it is certainly not the real reason.From a practical point of view, it is impossible to find out the real reason for their departure, even if they themselves do not know.They knew that they must leave, so they left.In this amazing social machine, they themselves are a part of it.

They are constantly under the threat of change, the pressure of another gear, and the possibility of breaking away from the machine at any time.The Chinese have always been just a part of a machine, not a complete machine.If a gear turns the other gears, he becomes a very important gear, and the nepotism in it takes on a new look, and people remember him.It is said that in their joint stock company, they are always too busy with all kinds of complicated nepotism to have time for other things.We can find that the nepotism in the hearts of Chinese people is relative to the individual equality in the consciousness of Westerners.

For us to predict the future of China's reform, their essential characteristics will provide us with a very important reference.Nepotism will have a negative effect on their transformation as long as China remains in this same state for thousands of years.And if China experiences the kind of "awakening" that the late Zeng Guofan said, then we can always be sure that as long as she can wake up, she will become extremely sober.However, she has been asleep for centuries, and it is impossible to wake up in a day, even if it is ten years.But as soon as she wakes up, we can foresee that, just as Mr. Zeng Guofan hoped, she will definitely not focus on material aspects such as vehicles, boats, cannons, etc., but will focus on ideological and moral reforms, and try to get back her former self. The power that brought her back to her former glory.Only in this way will it be possible for her to become as powerful as before and place herself in the camp of the superpowers she is now.

(End of this chapter)