Fundamentals of Chinese Culture

Chinese culture, to readers of English, is somewhat veiled in mystery. Fundamentals of Chinese Culture, a classic of great insight and profundity by noted Chinese thinker, educator and social reformist Liang Shuming, takes readers on an intellectual journey into the five-thousand-year-old culture of China, the world’s oldest continuous civilization. With a set of "Chinese-style" cultural theories, the book well serves as a platform for Westerners' better understanding of the distinctive worldview of the Chinese people, who value family life and social stability, and for further mutual understanding and greater mutual consolidation among humanities scholars in different contexts, dismantling common misconceptions about China and bridging the gap between Chinese culture and Western culture. As a translation of Liang Shuming’s original text, this book pulls back the curtain to reveal to Westerners a highly complex and nuanced picture of a fascinating people.

New Confucian Liang Shuming’s Transformation of John Dewey’s Philosophy in Chinese Rural Education

During the May Fourth period, the clash of ideas of democracy and science with Confucian tradition had a great impact on the Chinese intellectual community, consisting of modern intellectuals and traditional scholars. In response to the prevailing anti-traditionalism during the May Fourth period, Liang made great efforts to retain and reform Confucianism. This paper highlights the effects of Confucian tradition and John Dewey’s pragmatism on Chinese rural education during the Republican period by studying Liang Shuming’s educational thought and practice. By exploring a philosophical ‘dialogue’ between Liang Shuming and John Dewey, this paper demonstrates how the intersection of traditional and modern aspects shaped Chinese rural educational reform during the 1930s.

Ali Baba, Genghis Khan, and Jimmy, who are they!? The transnational and trans-regional production of modernity in 1980s’ Chinese disco

This article aims to examine the significance of modernity in Chinese disco back to the 1980s. The open-door policy allowed disco to quickly become a remarkable symbol of modernity related to the United States, where the popular culture and modern lifestyle appealed to millions of Chinese people. The Disco Fever 1985–1989 demonstrated their enthusiasm to reintegrate into the global society by consuming the “same” popular music and culture. Being drawn into the debates between tradition and fashion, communism and capitalism, and arts and commerce, the modernity of Chinese disco was not a forward or sideways or backward process theorized by Liang Shuming, but an attitude toward all directions to cope with the dilemma of materialism, exoticism, and desire triggered by the economic reform. This modernity was an imagination coproduced by global agents, each offering distinctive capitals to transform China’s society throughout the 1980s.