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America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat-Part14_TingFang Wu(1842-1922)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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which less civilized peoples would not have thought of?

I believe that every disinterested reader will be able to supply



confirmatory illustrations for himself, but I will enforce the point

by giving a few Chinese ideals of a truly civilized man:



"He guards his body as if holding jade"; i.e., he will not contaminate himself

with mental or moral filth.



"He does not gratify his appetite, nor in his dwelling place

does he seek ease"; i.e., he uses the physical without being submerged by it.



"Without weapons he will not attack a tiger, nor will he dare to cross a river

without a boat"; in other words he will never ruin himself and his family



by purelyspeculative practices.

He will "send charcoal in a snowstorm, but he will not add flowers



to embroidery", meaning that he renders timelyassistance when necessary,

but does not curry favor by presents to those who do not need them.



Our most honored heroes are said to have made their virtue "brilliant"

and one of them engraved on his bath-tub the axiom --



"If you can renovate yourself one day, do so from day to day.

Let there be daily renovation." Our ideal for the ruler is that



the regulation of the state must commence with his regulation of himself.

It is too often forgotten that civilization, like religion,



originally came from the East. Long before Europe and America

were civilized, yea while they were still in a state of barbarism,



there were nations in the East, including China, superior to them

in manners, in education, and in government; possessed of a literature



equal to any, and of arts and sciences totally unknown in the West.

Self-preservation and self-interest make all men restless,



and so Eastern peoples gradually moved to the West taking their knowledge

with them; Western people who came into close contact with them



learned their civilization. This fusion of East and West

was the beginning of Western civilization.



A Chinese proverb compares a pupil who excels his teacher to the color green,

which originates with blue but is superior to it. This may aptly be applied



to Westerners, for they originallylearnedliterature, science, and other arts

from the East; but they have proven apt pupils and have excelled



their old masters. I wish I could find an apothegm concerning

a former master who went back to school and surpassed his clever pupil.



The non-existence of such a maxim probably indicates that no such case

has as yet occurred, but that by no means proves that it never will.



Coming now to particulars I would say that one of the distinguishing features

in the American people which I much admire is their



earnestness and perseverance. When they decide to take up anything,

whether it be an invention or the investigation of a difficult problem,



they display indomitableperseverance and patience. Mr. Edison, for example,

sleeps, it is said, in his factory and is inaccessible for days



when he has a problem to solve, frequently even forgetting food and sleep.

I can only compare him to our sage Confucius, who,



hearing a charming piece of music which he wanted to study,

became so engrossed in it that for many days he forgot to eat,



while for three months he did not know the taste of meat.

The dauntless courage of the aviators, not only in America,



but in Europe also, is a wonderful thing. "The toll of the air",

in the shape of fatal accidents from aviation, mounts into the hundreds,



and yet men are undeterred in the pursuit of their investigations.

With such intrepidity, perseverance, and genius, it is merely



a question of time, and I hope it will not be long, when the art of flying,

either by aeroplanes or airships, will be perfectly safe.



When that time arrives I mean to make an air trip to America,

and I anticipate pleasures from the novel experience such as I do not get



from travelling by land or sea.

The remarkablegenius for organization observable anywhere in America



arouses the visitor's enthusiasticadmiration. One visits a mercantile office




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