History records the long cultural contact and exchange between East and West. As we are faced at this time with a far greater cultural turning point than any ever experienced in the past centuries, it may be useful to consider how the three major Oriental countries have received Western culture.
The historical environment of a certain community plays a determining role in giving birth to the new culture that begins to form when heterogeneous cultures meet each other. Values, especially absolute values, should be given full consideration in dealing with the new cultural revolution that is our present concern. A basis for the harmonious development and cohesion of many different cultures can be found by examining the variability in the contact between the countries of China, Japan, and Korea with Western culture for the past several centuries.
Among those three countries, China represented to Japan and Korea both the window and the model for receiving Western Culture. But on the other hand, China, due to certain peculiar characteristics of the Chinese people (especially the Han people, the majority race of China), shows many differences from the other two countries.
At the end of the Ming dynasty, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), an Italian, came to China as a Jesuit missionary. He found that Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism coexisted not only in one country and in one community, but also in each individual's value-consciousness. He learned that there was a difference between the monochromatic Western value system and the polychromatic Eastern value system.
Ricci saw that the Nestorianism, which had come to China during the Tang dynasty (68-907 A.D.), had now decayed, and that Islam had gained a large following along the west frontier. He viewed as inevitable a collision between existing Chinese values and the foreign monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), and therefore he began preaching Christianity while respecting Chinese values such as ancestor worship as well.
Before he entered China, he had learned the Chinese language and writing during his stay at Macao, a Portuguese colony. Traveling extensively, dressed in Chinese costume, Ricci established churches in inland China in places where access was prohibited to foreigners.
In 1601, he entered the imperial city of Peking, and not only preached the gospel but also introduced the Chinese to Western astronomy, Euclidean geometry, and other technologies by translating or writing books. He brought a chiming clock from Europe and made a world atlas by himself, and then showed them to the Emperor and other high-ranking officials. He received a warm welcome from the Chinese government, successfully fulfilling cultural exchange activities through thirty years of missionary work.
Hsu Kuang-Chi, a high official at the close of the Ming dynasty, influenced by Matteo Ricci, tried to propagate Western civilization and Christianity within China. He converted to Christianity and even changed his name to Paul Hsu, a Christin name.
At the beginning of the Ching dynasty in 1619. Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666), a German Jesuit missionary, came to China. China had
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