Missing puzzle in cultural melting pot
Hong Kong has a duty to make its younger generation more aware of their roots, and better understand time-honored Chinese culture in line with the city's reputation as an East-meets-West exchange hub. Luo Weiteng reports from Hong Kong.
Age of change
At a time of uncertainty, chaos, complexity and ambiguity, the greater self-awareness rings particularly true. With a geopolitical storm as a harbinger of things to come, change in the international structure is being felt across every corner of the globe.
Such a sea change, Cheng points out, can trace its origins back to the past two to three centuries when the Western hegemony became a dominant force in shaping international politics, culture, and economics for much of the contemporary era.
The fading facade of the Western-led order manifests itself partly as a "cultural anxiety" among the broader West (invoked here as a roughly workable term referring to the United States, Europe and the Anglosphere). On the flip side, with a new world order in the making, regions originally outside the center of the West's once-unshakeable hegemony are undergoing change on a scale unseen in a century.
Amid conflicts, power shifts and sharpening competition, the West is falling into a state of tunnel vision with its focus fixed on a zero-sum game and abandoning the ideal pursuit of a harmonious world, mutual respect and inclusiveness, which sits at the core of traditional Chinese culture. Cheng expects such a chaotic situation to persist for several decades.
Since the later period of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China has been turning to the West for knowledge and learning to save the nation from being subjugated, and ensure its survival and rejuvenation. Cheng says the hard road of learning has left an indelible imprint on the country's modern history, but stands as an episode of Chinese civilization that stretches back to antiquity as a great continuum with strong unity, rich diversity and unbroken development.
With thousands of years to forge ahead and carry forward our civilization, what holds the key is "an open and inclusive mind" to show due respect to our national culture and draw inspiration from others' cultures for a shared future and a common stake of all humanity, says Cheng.
This underscores a mission of the times for Hong Kong that thrives on a sophisticated fusion of East and West to tell its own and the nation's stories well to the world in flux.
Cheng hopes education could play its due role in endowing local young generations with spiritual enrichment, as vividly reflected in the "Four Sentences of Heng Qu", to give them and the business-oriented city a firm footing amid global narratives of culture, history and development.
"At a critical historical juncture, our young people should have higher ideals for the continuity of Chinese culture and a sustainable, long-term path of our nation, rather than merely seeking personal benefits or material advance within the Anglo-American capitalist system, and resigning themselves to being its skilled workers."
