What is a good way to deal with cultural friction? What can Chinese culture bring to the world? What issues does cultural fusion take care of? Yue Daishan, a literature professor at Peking University, set out to answer these questions, as reported by the social media platform Sohu.
When culture heads abroad from a country, it often leads friction with the culture of other nations, and the best way to cope with misunderstandings, wrote Yue, is just to let those different voices from various cultural backgrounds co-exist. Yue criticized China's previous over-stressing of the unity of thinking, which meant that many piercing and diverse ideas were eventually assimilated. Eastern and Western cultures are complementary, Yue added, which means communication is not unilateral in nature.
The core offering that Chinese culture should provide is China’s new ideas, since existing academic notions in general come from Western scholars with few fresh ideas or incisive thinking coming from Chinese experts, although they are increasingly active in global forums.
Cross-border communication in terms of culture, Yue warned, does not force other countries to accept Chinese culture; instead, the culture from different nations should lead to resonances during the process of mutual fusion, and then trigger further cooperation.
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