我最近关注王立新教授（北京大学历史系的年轻教授）的创造品。 为什么？ 第一，每个北大历史系教授的文章有介质，第二，那人是我的老同行 ， 我在北京的时候给我好多的厚意帮忙，第三 （贺岁重要从现在政治方面的来看），他的研究很有用为了了解中国政府和一分部的这时分子对美国，对谷歌事变的立场和态度。
现在北大的历史系网站有病，但我碰到这边照片。。。印象
在他的知道下，读者能明白什么？能学习西方来得“文化帝国主义“！
看看他的文章：“‘文化侵略’与’文化帝国主义’：美国传教士在华活动两种评价范式辨析”，《历史研究》2002年第3期。
如果能说：基本上，19世纪的西方人来中国的宗教者有个目标：第一，获得幽灵，准备末日，第二，成为医院和学校，第三，为在中国的外国人的宗教需要， 很小属于艺术家，科学家，哲学家 — 他们都后点儿来华呢！ 所以能说这个“帝国主义“ 的精神和欧洲，美国宗教的精神是混得，也浑看。。。现在的世界情况当人十分变了，但是西方人的最基础的想法对中国变还是不变？ 以一变应万变！但是这谷歌代表什么新的问题，条件，能源，看法。。。摩登人就是崇拜高科技，电脑，等的高级东西。。。这个精神是从梁启超等作家来的，包括五四新文化运动来的。。。我觉得现代的人类崇拜高科技或者崇拜圣经。。。和谷歌呢？
我发现现代的中国爱国主义精神，民族主义精神过于若干的问题是比较快起来，感动， 和网络关系当然对这个趋势更快。 （梦想：五四学生和秋瑾，丁玲等作者有手机和Twitter…那对他们的Schaffensvernunftigkeit （创作性）什么影响？ （啊，现在真浪费时间。。。生活真的怎么无聊呢？不一定！ 快去加拿大，家伙！ 找的找的找地多地西雅图市的新地方和人物，进一步到大提琴技术的边区，（用大声根一个大风的铜目标）唱德文浪漫歌曲，认识那个谁的狂妄和太有意思艺术家，讨论讨论滔滔轮轮根留学生，碰到无家可归的老美，老匪在唐人街的黑黑压压的交通口，睡觉在一个小船内，天天希望看到大白山，我们西北的长白山，善。。。
哇–从梦想回来，大哥！
行了行了行了； 我的目的已经到了：后来再份哲。。。
For English readers, basically above I’m reflecting in the most amateurish fashion possible on the possible continuities between what Chinese scholars call “cultural invasion” of China in the 19th century by Western missionaries and the current case of Google. While I could make a point about how the discourse on missionaries and their various harms (although negative portrayals of missionaries are constantly being overturned in China thanks to the examples of Minnie Vautrin, etc. during the War of Resistance) prepare the groundwork for more throughgoing and explosive critiques of Western “cultural imperialism” today, I don’t do that. Instead I just name-drop the Beijing University history department stand-out faculty member Wang Lixin, who I am fortunate to know, and link to the full text of his article on “cultural invasion.”
Things in our world are changing fast, particularly when one looks at the photo above and realizes that 2001 was, in terms of international relations, a lifetime ago, but that certain enduring and abiding ideas — not all of them completely positive in their realism — are going to be with us for some time. I’m looking forward to my next conversation with Wang Lixin to get his take on Google, China’s sovereignty, and what it means to be a scholar of historical American missionaries and Woodrow Wilson’s China policy in Beijing (or New Haven) in the early 21st century.
I’m also looking forward to my next conversation with this gentleman, Zhang Guangtian of Beijing. He is a theater director who put together an amazing play entitled “Yuanmingyuan” two years ago which I am still thinking about, a real pastiche of a thing about modernization in China and the notion of Yuanmingyuan as a touchstone of identity — but what identity? His work and Wang Lixin’s, although wholly different in form, deal with the same core issue.
This post came about due to a convergence of two factors:
1) An ongoing conversation with my (fiercely talented and often quite linguistically gifted, marginalia-spinning like Toby McGuire undergraduate proto-researchers unafraid of radioactive books) university students about Lu Xun and Rana Mitter’s works and
2) Because I dug up Wang Lixin’s article in the process of checking proofs on my forthcoming article “Japanese Devils and American Wolves: Chinese Communist Songs from the War of Liberation and the Korean War” in Popular Music and Society, which is published by Routledge in London. Since I use the phrase “evoking past traumas and prefiguring the animistic fury of the Cultural Revolution,” I suppose it might be worth a read eventually…
Speaking of music, if you need a lift, you can watch six hours of US health care negotiations on the White House website after which Obama saunters off to a gathering of elite musicians, writers and artists. If you are in North America, this ceremony will lift your faith in what is going on, because “what is going on” includes highlighting of the intellectual and artistic wattage of the United States. I’ve had a chance to meet three of the musicians who were on the White House stage, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t get little chills. Maybe there is really something to this notion of American “soft power” after all…
And, finally, please take the sketchy quality of the present post as an indication of this blog’s mini-hiatus for the weekend. It’s time rather for an offline Mahlerian aufschwung of some kind (minus the heart failure and the girlfriend writing love letters to Walter Gropius) which will no doubt involve cello music by composers Robert Schumann and Aaron Copland, and some work on Japanese imperialism by Louise Young (as ever), and, if all goes well, myself.
Adam Cathcart 