The spiritual world of modern (young) Chinese II For part II, I thought we might wade into books. Here are the top 125 books on Douban. For your reference, Douban does not disclose the algorithm that determines the top 250 books or movies. it’s presumed that both the rating score and the number of people who rated a certain movie or film are weighed.
The fact that 1984 and Animal Farm are persistent best-sellers and not banned in China really invites some serious thoughts. It points to something the West -- Washington and Hollywood alike -- often fails to get right about us, that there is not this imagined dichotomy between a control-obsessed state vs its supposedly innocent and freedom-loving people, but a collective body of people -- the party, the intelligentsia, business groups, normal folks -- constantly pondering about options and choices in to make themselves, their families and their nation more prosperous ones, in a quintessentially Confucian tradition. In this context, books like 1984 simply serves as an allegory for what will happen when a Soviet-style governance runs wild. It's simply part of the global body of knowledge that Chinese nation can tap into for our own growth and development.
The fact that 1984 and Animal Farm are persistent best-sellers and not banned in China really invites some serious thoughts. It points to something the West -- Washington and Hollywood alike -- often fails to get right about us, that there is not this imagined dichotomy between a control-obsessed state vs its supposedly innocent and freedom-loving people, but a collective body of people -- the party, the intelligentsia, business groups, normal folks -- constantly pondering about options and choices in to make themselves, their families and their nation more prosperous ones, in a quintessentially Confucian tradition. In this context, books like 1984 simply serves as an allegory for what will happen when a Soviet-style governance runs wild. It's simply part of the global body of knowledge that Chinese nation can tap into for our own growth and development.
As a westerner, I’m disappointed in the exclusion of Confucius, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Hanfei, 左傳, 孫子兵法, 文心雕龍, 呂氏春秋…. what’s going on?