Language Transfer in Learning Japanese and Interlanguage Development PDF

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US-China
Foreign Language
Volume 13, Number 4, April 2015 (Serial Number 139)
Contents
Linguistic Research
Analysis of Neologisms in Newspapers 231
Maboleba Kolobe
Language Transfer in Learning Japanese and Interlanguage Development 236
Xuexin Liu
Teaching Theory & Practice

Complex Communication in the Foreign Language Classroom: Hopes of Turn for the Better 245
Irina N. Lazareva
On the Enhancement of English as a Foreign Language Learners Productive Vocabulary 253
ZHENG Yu-rong
Switching to Mother Tongue-Based Education: The New Trend and Its Challenges 257
Safary Wa-Mbaleka
Literary Criticism & Appreciation

SHEN Cong-wens Aesthetic Modernity 265
CHEN Hua
Affinity of Mindscape and Landscape in Tao Qian and Emerson 272
King-Kok Cheung
The Same Free Soul Under Different SkyA Comparative Study About Qiu Jin and Mary
Wollstonecraft From Feminism Perspective 292
SHI Shao-hua, ZHAO Guo-dong
The Miniature World in the Genealogy of YoknapatawhaThe Superficial View on
Faulkners Novelettes 302
WANG Shuang, CHEN Qiang
Culture Research
Music as a Tool for Self-Realization in Chinese Culture: Based on the Practice of
Playing the Guqin 306
Rafa Mazur
US-China Foreign Language, April 2015, Vol. 13, No. 4, 231-235
doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.001
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Analysis of Neologisms in Newspapers
Maboleba Kolobe
National University of Lesotho, Maseru, Lesotho

The paper set out to explore processing of exocentric compound neologisms as used in Southern African
newspapers. It identified structures of these constructions and analyzed their interpretation. The rubric question this
paper addressed was: What is the relationship between constituents of an exocentric compound neologism, the
exocentric compound neologism itself, and the entity the exocentric compound neologism referred to as used in
Southern African newspapers? Grounded on pragmatic framework and WordNet Similarity tool, the paper argued
that neologisms processing is based on the knowledge of the world, the context in which the words appear and their
individual constituents.
Keywords: neologism, pragmatic theory, exocentric, Southern African media
Introduction
Post apartheid era marked change in the history of media in the sister countries of Lesotho and South Africa.
Matjama (2007) states that due to apartheid regime, media growth was stagnated in the two countries because
only government-related issues were aired. The situation did not only affect content of what should be
broadcasted but also the words used to communicate the content had to be well chosen (Reah, 1998). When the
two countries experienced democracy, there was improvement in media communication because in media,
people try to outdo each other with more and better words to sell their products and these words become absorbed
in their everyday use of language (Yule, 2006). Exocentric compound words also feature in media as
communication tool. The contribution of these constructions in media has not been of much interest because of
their semantic complexity (exocentric: Definition from Answers.com).
Language is a social phenomenon, and as such it mirrors the society which uses it, at the same time, it affects
the minds of the members of the society in which it is used. Its users may think that it happens automatically to
apply language anywhere because people learn and know it by heart. Stevenson (1994) affirms that applying
language within its cultural surrounding is not that simple. He states that even with literal definitions provided by
dictionaries, it is not simple to know what those words mean in their cultural surroundings. Therefore, besides
literal translations of words, processing of language is attributed to other external factors addressed in this paper.
Methodology
Data presented here were collected from feature stories excerpted from four quality newspapers published
and circulated in Lesotho and South Africa, namely Lesotho Times, Public Eye, Saturday Citizen, and Sunday
Maboleba Kolobe, lecturer, Ph.D., Department of English, National University of Lesotho.

232 ANALYSIS OF NEOLOGISMS IN NEWSPAPERS
Independence covering the period 2011-2013. The two countries were considered for this study because firstly,
Lesotho is landlocked and completely surrounded by South Africa. Secondly, both countries use English as the
business language (www.pressreference.com/ky-Ma/Lesotho.html). Thirdly, Bereng (2000) states that
[t]he economy of Lesotho is closely tied to that of South Africa for trade, finance, employment and access to the
outside world. While South Africa has, for a long time, depended on the migratory labour arrangements whereby Lesotho
provided manpower for the mining industry. (p. 40)
On the basis of this situation, it seems inevitable to consider the two countries for this study. The data
analysis for the study was done using a machine assisted method. The study adopted Kim and Baldwin (2005)
methodology of analysis using WordNet Similarity to measure semantic relation similarity or relatedness
between words.
Findings
Data revealed exocentric compound neologisms identified in the corpus. Katamba (1993) supports
productivity in word-formation that morphological theorising accommodates countless words used in
conversation. He states that what is advocated for by morphology is that speakers should understand not only
real words but also potential words instantiated in use in utterances. The following sections present exocentric
compound neologisms that featured in the corpus according to their formations.
Structures of Exocentric Compound Neologisms

String-Like Compound Neologisms
The following sentences carry compound-like structures made up from strings of words as shown below. To
process their meaning, two things are needed. Firstly, language user needs to consider the position and the role of
that construction in the sentence in which it appears. For instances, king-of-the-hill in Example (1) is classified as
an adjective because it modifies the noun Galaxy in that sentence. Moreover, better-devil-you-know in
Example (2) functions as an object of the sentence, therefore it is a noun while resources-for-arms in Example (3)
is an adjective modifying a noun trade. Secondly, the meaning of these neologisms relies on the knowledge of
the native speaker of the language as that may likely help to know the constituents of the compound word and that
knowledge may help determine the meaning of the compound word as a whole.
Example (1) The reviewer even went as far as to say the G2 can be favourably compared with Samsungs
king-of-the-hill Galaxy S4 on many fronts.
Example (2) This has led to some factory workers opting for the better-devil-you-know than the friend you
do not know.
Example (3) This would give Saracen a foothold in the resources-for-arms trade that characterised
Executive Outcomes military adventures in Angola and Sierra Leone among other trouble
spots in the 1990s.
Fromkin and Rodman (1988) add that new words may be formed by stringing together other words to create
compound words. The authors argue that there is no limit on the kinds of combinations that occur in English. On
the other hand, Bell (1991, 1995) also reveals that media uses strings of words to convey what could have been
presented in long sentences because of space constrains.
ANALYSIS OF NEOLOGISMS IN NEWSPAPERS 233
Pre-modified Compound Neologisms

There were instances of word pre-modification. Anderson (1992) and Bauer and Renouf (2001) share the
view that compound words may contain units that are either larger or smaller than a word. These researchers
found out that instances of prefixes such as un-, dis- denote lack of or reverse of what is conveyed by the other
constituent. Even in the case of this study, compound neologisms in Examples (4)-(6), express lack of the
characteristic expressed by or in the other constituent.
Example (4) So in a way this is the most un-Coen movie the maverick brothers have produced.
Example (5) It has been a process that has been de-linked from the ordinary citizen.
Example (6) Mthethwas interest emerge from portraits of women who reclaim disused bricks.
Processing Compound Neologisms

Constituent-Based Meanings
The compound words meanings below could only be deduced from the analysis of their constituents. That
is they were first stripped off their status as compound constituents and treated as separate entities in order to give
a suitable meaning to the whole compound word.
Example (7) This is a serious matter because we have to work hard or risk being down-listed as a world
heritage site in danger.
The exocentric compound neologism down-listed is analyzed as follows.
C1: down (26 senses) /adverb/ ~ from a higher to a lower level or position
C2: listed (6 senses) /verb/ ~ enumerate
Example (8) resist the temptation of joining the chorus of the cynics, the pessimists and the doomsayers
who would have us believe that ours is a lost cause.
Doomsayers is an exocentric compound neologism which is analyzed as follows.
C1: doom (4 senses) /verb/ ~ make certain of failure or destruction of
C2: say(ers) (12 senses) /noun/ ~ the chance to speak
Example (9) He wanted to have visibility but in a sort of distant uncle kind of way.
The exocentric compound neologism distant uncle is analyzed as thus.
C1: distant (5 senses) /adjective/ ~ remote in manner
C2: uncle (2 senses) / noun/ ~ a source of help and advice and encouragement
Example (10) It was the in-thing then; my friends and I just decided to take part.
In-thing is analyzed as an exocentric compound neologism as follows.
CW: in-thing /noun/ ~ unrecognized neologism
C1: in 97 senses) /adjective/ ~ currently fashionable
C2: thing (12 senses) /noun/ ~ a separate and self-contained entity
Partially-Context Based
There are compound neologisms that are interpreted in consideration of partial context. Thus, the compound
neologisms are interpreted through how they are used in context plus through consideration of at least one
constituent. For instance, the compound neologisms up-to and legwork gathered no contribution from any of its
constituents but their meanings could be processed in consideration of context.
234 ANALYSIS OF NEOLOGISMS IN NEWSPAPERS
Example (11) When I saw him on the day of the abduction, I had no idea he was up-to no good.
The exocentric compound neologism up-to is analyzed in the following manner.
CW: up-to /adjective/ ~ busy or occupied with
C1: up (14 senses) ~ no match sense
C2: to ~ no match sense
Example (12) Ministers and civil servants are no longer armchair officers but engaged in legwork to find,
discuss and answer the concerns from the electorate through media presentations and
continuous visits to villages for report back, a sign of transparency and accountability.
The exocentric compound neologism legwork is analyzed in the following manner.
CW: legwork /noun/ ~ unrecognized neologism
C1: leg (9 senses) /noun/ ~ no sense match
C2: work (34 senses) /noun/ ~ activity directed toward making or doing something
Totally-Context Based
The data reveal compound neologisms that are interpreted from the context only. Thus, even if such
formations are recognized and interpreted by the analysis tool, together with its constituents, the way it is used in
context does not reflect any relation between the compound entity and the compound constituents; therefore, it
could only be understood through the context in which it appears. Tailwinds and knee-jerk are such examples.
Example (13) Thats despite positive tailwinds such as record-low unemployment, high consumer
confidence government aimed at stimulating vehicle purchases.
CW: tailwinds /noun/ ~ wind blowing in the same direction as the path of a ship or aircraft
C1: tail (11 senses) /verb/ ~ trail
C2: winds (15 senses) /noun/ ~ an indication of potential opportunity
Example (13) Theyre a knee-jerk response to awkwardness, he suggests.
The exocentric compound neologism knee-jerk is analyzed in the following manner.
CW: knee-jerk /noun/ ~ a reflex extension of the leg resulting from a sharp tap on the patellar tendon
C1: knee (3 senses) /noun/ ~ joint in the human leg
C2: jerk (11 senses) /noun/ ~ an abrupt spasmodic movement
The present study aligns with Yule (2006) that journalists enjoy outdoing each other by means of generating
better words, nonetheless, people have the ability of understanding these new formations as stated by Aronoff
and Fudeman (2005).
Conclusion
The paper presented exocentric compound neologisms and how their meanings are processed. The data
collected demonstrated differing structures of these constructions. Such included string-like compound
neologisms as in king-of-the-hill, better-the-devil-you-know; pre-modified type such as un-Coen, de-linked. The
data again revealed ways of interpreting these compound neologism structures. That included compound
neologisms interpreted from constituents that make up the compound neologism; those that relied on context in
which the compound neologism appears partially and those that required total contribution of context for their
interpretation.
ANALYSIS OF NEOLOGISMS IN NEWSPAPERS 235
References
Anderson, S. R. (1992). A-morphous morphology. Cambridge: CUP.
Aronoff, M., & Fudeman, K. (2005). What is morphology? Fundamentals of Linguistics, 1, 49-54.
Bauer, L., & Renouf, A. (2001). A corpus based study of compounding in English. Journal of English Linguistics, 29(2), 101-123.
Bell, A. (1991). The language of new media. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bell, A. (1995). Language and the media. Applied Linguistics and Related Disciplines, 15, 23-41.
Bereng, P. M. (2000). Privatisation of the media in lesothoIts relevance in issues of national survival and development. The
Political Economy of the Media in Southern Africa Seminar, University of Natal, Natal.
Exocentric. (n.d.). [Definition from Answers.com].
Fromkin, V., & Rodman, R. (1988). An introduction to language (4th ed.). Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc..
Katamba, F. (1993). Morphology. London: Macmillan Press Limited.
Kim, S. N., & Baldwin, T. (2005). Automatic interpretation of noun compounds using Wordnet Similarity. In Proceedings of the
Second International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJC NLP-05) (pp. 945-956). Jeju, South Korea.
Matjama, T. (2007). Presentation on the media environment in Lesotho. Transformation resource centre media workshop.
Retrieved from www.trc.org.ls/LDP_website/downloads/MEDIA ENVIRONMENT-Presentation at TRC.pdf
Reah, D. (1998). The language of newspapers. London: Routledge.
Stevenson, R. L. (1994). Global communication in the twenty-first century. New York: Longman.
Yule, G. (2006). The study of language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.002
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Language Transfer in Learning Japanese

and Interlanguage Development
Xuexin Liu
Spelman College, Atlanta, United States

This paper explains language transfer in second/foreign language learning by exploring the nature and sources of
learner errors from some psycholinguistic perspectives. It claims that language transfer occurs at several abstract
levels during second/foreign language production processes, rather than at the surface level of configurations. Three
such abstract levels are identified in relation to potential sources of learner errors: the conceptual level, the
functional level, and the positional level. Each level plays its own distinctive role, and the three levels are related in
a sequential order of speech production process. It is assumed that language transfer may occur at any abstract level
in second/foreign language production. Thus, language transfer and learner errors are viewed as part of learners
active mental process, rather than mere surface carryover of linguistic items from one language into another. For
the study, the language transfer data, including both speaking and writing instances, were collected from adult
learners of Japanese as a foreign language with English as their native language.
Keywords: language transfer, learner error, lexical-conceptual, predicate-argument, morphological realization
Introduction
In most theories of second language acquisition (SLA), the role of learners first language (L1) in SLA has
been narrowly focused to the effect of L1 influence on learners second language developing system:
interlanguage (IL) (Corder, 1967, 1981; Bailey, Madden, & Krashen, 1974; Arabski, 1979; Ellis, 1982, 1985,
among others). One weakness of this is that the notion of language transfer, though sometimes defined as a
process in IL development, usually implies its negative role in IL development, and the relationship between
learners L1 and the target language (TL) is largely ignored. Recent refinements of language transfer theory
have paid close attention to cross-linguistic influence in second language learning. Researchers adopting
universalist approaches have found reconciliatory solutions between the traditional behaviorist and the
cognitive approaches. Kellerman and Sharwood Smith (1986), Frch and Kasper (1987), Ringbom (1987),
Odlin (1989), Gass and Selinker (1992), and Gass (1996) have been among the most influential in the field. For
example, in their revised position on language transfer, Gass and Selinker (1992) hold that it is not
incompatible to regard SLA as being affected by two interrelated processes: first, learners utilization of their
L1 knowledge and other languages known to them (the view advocated by Lado (1957)) and second, learners
build-up of a body of knowledge in which they rest hypotheses formed on the basis of the available L2 data (the
view advocated by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982)).
Xuexin Liu, associate professor, Ph.D, Department of World Languages and Literature, Spelman College.

LANGUAGE TRANSFER IN LEARNING JAPANESE 237
The question has been raised that if learners build up and revise the interim system by gradually increasing
the complexity of the IL system, what is the origin of IL? To explore this issue, this study poses and answers
several questions: From the beginning, is the TL always the target in projecting the morphosyntactic frame?
If the TL is not sufficiently known to be used to project the frame, when is there no frame at all? Is there
evidence that there necessarily always is a frame, and that learners first fall back on an L1 frame and then in
some incremental sense, moves toward a TL frame? How does the change to the TL frame begin? Can this
beginning be detected and what are the steps toward achieving the TL frame?
The major assumption regarding the nature of IL as a developing linguistic system to be presented in this
study is that learners L1 can be the origin of the initial IL system and it is the existence of the L1 as the initial
reference point that gives rise to a special transitional IL system. Such an origin of the initial IL system can be
understood as the source of language transfer. This is because learners may rely on their prior experience in
concept and language learning and may use transfer in tier learning and production of the TL. This is also
because early stages of second language learning are more likely to lead to transfer as the TL data available to
learners are not fully accessible to form hypotheses about the TL rules. Thus, at least in the initial stage of
learning, learners L1 may affect the IL in framing the grammar of the TL. The IL performance instances
discussed in this study indicate that L1 strategies may invade learners vocabulary acquisition and sentence
planning and thus constrain IL production. Learners may depend on their L1 strategies in order to map surface
forms onto functions in the TL.
Different from some previous studies of language transfer in second or foreign language learning which
described surface configurations of L2 production, this study explains instances of language transfer by
exploring the nature of sources of learner errors from some psycholinguistic perspectives. As assumed in this
study, it is abstract and complex lexical structures in IL that become potential sources of language transfer.
Accordingly, this study explores the nature and sources of learner errors by assuming that language transfer
may occur at three abstract linguistic levels: at the conceptual level, where lexical-conceptual structure (i.e.,
lexical items and their meanings) is realized; at the functional level, where predicate-argument structure (i.e.,
verbs and their required complements) is constructed; and at the positional level, where morphological
realization patterns (i.e., word orders and their sentential frames) is achieved (cf. Levelt, 1989; Wei, 2000a,
2002). Thus, each level plays its own distinctive role, and there three levels are related in a sequential order of
speech production process. This study assumes that language transfer may occur at any level during second or
foreign language production process. Thus, language transfer and learner errors are viewed as part of learners
active mental process, rather than mere surface carryover of linguistic items from one language into another (cf.
Schachter, 1983).
For the current study, the most commonly occurring learner errors were collected from adult learners of
Japanese as an L2 (as a broadly defined term covering any foreign language learning) with English as their L1
(Liu, 1999, 2001). The language transfer data include both speaking and writing instances. One of the major
pedagogical implications from this study is that lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and
morphological realization patters are language-specific, and they must be learned as such, and sufficient
acquisition of the TL at each of these linguistic levels will reduce or eliminate potential transfer from the
previously learned ones in learners L1. Thus, IL development is incrementally driven by acquiring the TL
abstract and complex lexical structure.

238 LANGUAGE TRANSFER IN LEARNING JAPANESE
Complex Lexical Structure and Its Implications for IL Construction

It has been recognized that lexemes have more abstract elements than surface lexical items themselves and
such abstract elements are contained in complex lexical structure that lexemes have. Lexical structure is
complex because it contains several levels, such as lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure,
and morphological realization patters (cf. Talmy, 1985; Rappaport & Levin, 1988; Pinker, 1989; Levelt, 1989;
Jackendoff, 1990; Bock & Levelt, 1994; Myers-Scotton & Jake, 1995; Jake, 1998; Wei, 2002). It has also been
recognized that lexical-conceptual structure maps onto predicate-argument structure. This is because the theta
criterion requires the mapping of lexical-conceptual structure (i.e., thematic structure) onto predicate-argument
structure (i.e., syntactic structure). In addition to the thematic structure, the lexical-conceptual structure of a
particular lexeme contains its semantic and pragmatic features and pointers to other lexemes with which it
occurs (cf. Levelt, 1989; Bock & Levelt, 1994). In addition, morphological realization patterns (cf.
lexicalization patterns discussed in Talmy (1985)) should be included in a formal consideration of lexical
structure in that the predicate-argument structure of a particular lexical entry specifies that a thematic role is
assigned or received, and it is the morphological realization patterns that encode the realization of a particular
morpheme/word order (cf. the production model of Levelt (1989) and Bock & Levelt (1994), the bilingual
production model of Myers-Scotton & Jake (1995), and the bilingual lemma activation model of Wei (2002)).
IL is always the learner language which shows the surface forms of the intended TL, but it also contains
abstract lexical structures from both the L1 and the TL (Myers-Scotton, 1994; Jake, 1998; Wei, 2000a, 2000b).
Such lexical structures are called abstract because they cannot be observed at any surface level of IL
production but at a deep level of the mental lexicon. This deep level is abstract because lemmas are abstract
entries in the mental lexicon which support the surface realization of actual lexemes. Lemmas contain
phonological, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, and morphological information in the mental lexicon (Levelt,
1989). Thus, the mental lexicon is defined as the speakers internal representation of language specific
knowledge about the surface forms. It is assumed that lemmas are language-specific in the bilingual mental
lexicon, and language-specific lemmas are in contact in IL production (Jake, 1998; Wei, 2002).
IL is a developing linguistic system, and, like other linguistic systems, its abstract lexical structure
contains several discrete but interacting subsystems: lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure,
and morphological realization patterns (Myers-Scotton, 1994). Such an abstract lexical structure in IL has
different sources (Wei, 2000a, 2000b).
Lexical structure is modular and can be split and recombined in novel, yet constrained ways in
constructing the linguistic system underlying IL (Jake, 1998). L1 transfer in IL construction is understood in
terms of lexical structure at abstract levels, which becomes necessary to fill gaps in the incompletely acquired
TL lexical structure. This is because parts of the lexical structure from L1 lexical entries may influence the
lexical structure of incompletely acquired TL lexical entries in the developing IL. In other words, each of the
three levels of the abstract lexical structure of IL may contain elements from L1 and/or TL, resulting in a
composite developing linguistic system.
The above assumptions identify the nature of lexical structure and its role in IL development. What
becomes directly relevant to discussion of language transfer in SLA is the assumption that the mental lexicon
has abstract entries (i.e., lemmas) which contain pieces of information about particular lexemes, and the
bilingual mental lexicon contains language-specific lemmas in contact. Such an abstract lexical structure

becomes complex in IL because it may have different sources, such as those from L1 and/or TL. As assumed,
parts of the lexical structure of L1 lexical entries may influence that of the incompletely acquired TL lexical
entries in SLA.
The most commonly occurring language transfer instances or learner errors examined in this study were
collected from adult learners of Japanese with English as their native language (Liu, 1999, 2001). The language
transfer data include both speaking and writing instances, and the analysis and categorization of language
transfer are based on the sources of learner errors as identified at each of the speech production levels:
conceptual level, functional level, and positional level.
Language Transfer in Lexical-Conceptual Structure

The first level of speech production is the conceptual level, where the speaker generates preverbal message
by selecting specific semantic/pragmatic feature bundles for realizing his/her communicative intentions
(Bierwisch & Schreuder, 1992; De Bot & Schreuder, 1993). It has been recognized that although the conceptual
structure is not language-specific (Levelt, 1989; Bierwisch & Schreuder, 1992), languages differ in the way
they lexicalize the components of a given conceptual structure (Talmy, 1985; Levin & Pinker, 1991). As
assumed, the lexical-conceptual structure of an IL lexeme may contain semantic or pragmatic features from an
L1 counterpart. This is because although the L2 lexicon contains only those L2 lexical items that the speaker
has learned, some of these lexical items are not yet fully specified in terms of the language-specific lemmas
they contain. Thus, such an incompletely acquired lexicon is called IL lexicon. When learners knowledge of
the TL lexical items is incomplete or when their TL lexical items are insufficient to express their intended
meanings, they may turn to similar or equivalent lexemes in their L1 at a certain point in IL production. In other
words, at the conceptual level, because different languages have different lexical-conceptual structures,
lexicalization patterns for certain universal concepts may differ across languages, and learners may select
certain lexical items from the TL based on their native lexicalization patterns to express their intended
meanings. Consequently, though they produce the TL lexical items, the selection of such items is based on the
lexical-conceptual structure of their native language about the issue of language-specific lemma activation.
Transfer in lexical-conceptual structure results in inappropriate lexical choices (cf. Kroll & De Groot, 1997;
Wei, 2000a, 2002). The following are some typical instances of transfer in lexical-conceptual structure
produced by learners.
(PART: particle, TOP: topic, NOM: nominative, POSS: possessive, OBJ: object)
Example (1) watashi wa mainichi jniji ni hirugohan ga aru.
I PART/TOP everyday 12 oclock at lunch PART/NOM have
I have lunch at 12 oclock every day.
In Example (1), the speaker uses the English concept aru (have) for have lunch rather than the Japanese
equivalent taberu (eat) for the same concept.
Example (2) haha wa shokuji no ato shokki o suru.
mother PART/TOP meal PART/POSS after dish PART/OBJ do
(My) mother do the dishes after the meal.
In Example (2), the speaker translates the English expression do the dishes into Japanese by using suru
(do) rather than arau: wash.
Example (3) kare wa shiken o toru.

he PART/TOP test PART/OBJ take

He will take the test.
In Example (3), the speaker uses the verb toru (take) rather than ukeru (receive) for the equivalent English
expression take the test.
Example (4) yoru anata ni denwa o ageru.
evening you to phone PART/OBJ give
(I) will give you a call in the evening.
In Example (4), the speaker translates the concept into Japanese by using the verb ageru (give) rather than
kakeru as required in Japanese.
Example (5) watashi wa tenisu o asobu.
I PART/TOP tennis PART/OBJ play
I play tennis.
In Example (5), the speaker uses the verb asobu (play) based on the English expression rather than suru
(do) as used in combination with other nouns.
The above instances of L1 lexical-conceptual structure in IL production provide the evidence that in IL
production, though learners use the TL lexical items, the selection of those items may be caused by their
incomplete of the TL lexical-conceptual structure of particular lexemes. In other words, language-specific
lemmas for the universal concepts based on learners L1 may activate or retrieve the TL lexical items in an
inappropriate manner, resulting in L1 transfer in lexical-conceptual structure (cf. Levin & Pinker, 1991). Thus,
transfer in lexical-conceptual structure should be understood in terms of cross-linguistic transfer at the
conceptual level.
Language Transfer in Predicate-Argument Structure

The second level of speech production is the functional level, where the speakers generated preverbal
messages at the conceptual level are syntactically encoded (Levelt, 1989; Wei, 2002). At this level, because
different languages have different predicate-argument structures, grammaticalization patterns for sentential
elements may differ across languages, and learners may activate their L1 grammaticalization patterns for the
TL sentences (Talmy, 1985; Bock & Levelt, 1994). This means that IL verbs may project the number of
arguments as required and the thematic roles assigned to each of the arguments as their counterparts in the L1,
resulting in L1 predicate-argument structure in IL grammatical construction. Because of their incomplete
knowledge of certain TL lexical items, although learners may choose the right TL verbs, they may not know the
predicate-argument structure as required by those verbs and use them inappropriately in IL production (cf. Wei,
2000a, 2000b). In other words, although learners produce the TL sentences, the grammar of these sentences is
based on the predicate-argument structure of their L1. Consequently, transfer in predicate-argument structure
may occur (Jake, 1998; Wei, 2002). The following are some of the typical instances produced by learners.
Example (6) densha o totte gakkoo ni iku.
train PART/OBJ take school to go
(I) take the train to go to school.
In Example (6), the speaker uses the English predicate-argument structure for the verb toru/totte (take)
where the means of transportation densha (train) is introduced as the THEME (the direct object). In Japanese,
however, densha must be introduced as the LOCATIVE in a prepositional phrase, rather than introduced as the

THEME, by the verb noru/notte. According to the Japanese predicate-argument structure, the same concept
should be realized as below.
densha ni note gakk ni iku.
trainin take school to go
(I) take the train to go to school.
Example (7) maiasa watashi wa kare no inu sanposaseru.
every morning I PART/TOP his dog walk
I walk his dog every morning.
In Example (7), the speaker uses the Japanese verb sanposaseru (walk) as a transitive verb whose object is
the THEME (or PATIENT). However, in Japanese, the direct object or the THEME (or PATIENT) in this case,
must be introduced by the particle o, but the speaker uses the English structure for the same concept.
Example (8a) haha wa shopping iku.
mother PART/TOP shopping go
(My) mother goes shopping.
In Example (8), the speaker translates the English expression go shopping into Japanese, violating the
Japanese predicate-argument structure for the verb iku (go). While in English shopping is introduced as the
GOAL by the verb go, in Japanese shoppingu (shopping) is introduced as the GOAL by the preposition ni.
Example (8b) haha wa shopping ni iku.
mother PART/TOP shopping for go
(My) mother goes shopping.
Part of the reason for the speaker to use the English predicate-argument structure in the Japanese
production is that because shopping is a borrowed word from English, the speaker may generalize the English
predicate-argument structure into the target production.
Example (9a) gozench kare o yonda.
in the morning him PART/OBJ called
(I) called him in the morning.
In Example (9), the speaker employs the English predicate-argument structure for the verb call
yobu/yonda where the semantic features of communicate with by telephone are conflated in the verb call.
Thus, in English the object of call is actually the RECIPIENT. Unlike in English, in Japanese the
RECIPIENT must be introduced by a preposition and the phone-call itself must be introduced as the object, the
THEME, by a specific verb such as kakeru or suru.
Example (9b) gozench kare ni denwa o kaketa (or:denwa o shita).
in the morning him in phone PART/OBJ called phone PART/OBJ did
(I) called him in the morning.
It is apparent that the speaker transfers the English predicate-argument structure for the similar lexical
item call into the Japanese production.
Example (10a) kare no uchi made noseru o ageta.
his home to ride PART/OBJ gave
(I) gave him a ride home.
In Example (10), the speaker translates the English expression give a ride into Japanese, violating the
target predicate-argument structure. While in English ride noseru is introduced as the object, the THEME, by

the verb give ageru, in Japanese the means of transportation must be introduced by a preposition as the
INSTRUMENT rather than the THEME, as shown below.
Example (10b) kare no uchi made kuruma de okutte ageta.
his home to car by sending gave
(I) gave him a ride home. (Literally: I sent you to your home by car.)
The above instances of learners Japanese production show transfer from English in the
predicate-argument structure for certain TL verbs, that is, learners L1 may contribute its predicate-argument
structure to IL construction at the functional level. In other words, although learners produce the TL verbs, the
selections of those verbs are based on their knowledge of L1.
Language Transfer in Morphological Realization Patterns

The last level of speech production is the positional level realization of higher levels of lexical structure,
where surface devices for case, agreement, tense/aspect marking, word order, etc. are achieved. At this level,
because different languages have different morphological realization patterns, learners may adopt their L1
surface devices in the TL production (Liu, 1999, 2001; Wei, 2000a, 2002). The following are some of the
typical instances produced by learners.
Example (11) watashitachi wa shigoto ni iku mainichi.
We PART/TOP work to go everyday
We go to work everyday.
In Example (11), although the sentence basically keeps the Japanese verb final order, the adverbial of time
mainichi (everyday) appears in the sentence final position, which is not allowed in Japanese.
Example (12) watashi wa m kaki-owatta watashi no repto.
I PART/TOP already finished my paper
I already finished my paper.
The sentence in Example (12) is produced in the typical English word order where the object follows the
predicate verb. Although the learners violation of the TL surface word order does not frequently occur, such
instances of transfer in morphological realization patterns from the learners native language may still exist,
especially in the early stage of learning.
Example (13) kono hon wa takai arimasen.
this book PART/TOP expensive be not
This book is not expensive.
In Example (13), the adjective takai should be conjugated as takaku in the negative sentence, but the
speaker simply negates the verb according to the English rule without also conjugating the adjective.
Example (14) sono hito wa ymei arimasen.
that person PART/TOP famous be not
That person is not famous.
In Example (14), the speaker negates the verb aru (be) according to the similar rule in English without
including ja in the predicate verb. The learner fails to recognize that in Japanese if the adjective belongs to the
na-adjective, in the negative predicate jaarimasen, ja is part of the morphological pattern.
Example (15) watashi wa kono hon o yomu nai.
I PART/TOP this book PART/OBJ read not

I dont read this book.

In Example (15), the speaker negates the verb according to the English rule without also changing the verb
ending to yoma in the negative predicate.
Such instances of language transfer in morphological realization patterns reflect the fact that
language-specific surface devices may also present learning difficulty especially to early stage learners, and
such learning difficulty is partly caused by transfer from learners L1.
Conclusion
Although it has been recognized in SLA studies that not all learner errors are caused by language transfer,
potential language transfer or L1 influence in second or foreign language learning has become a commonly
observed phenomenon. The IL performance instances discussed in this study provide the evidence that learners
may apply their L1 strategies to L2 vocabulary acquisition, grammar construction, and sentence formulation.
This study explores the sources of language transfer at three levels of speech production. At the conceptual
level, language transfer may occur in lexical-conceptual structure, where learners may activate and select TL
lexical items based on similar lexical items in their L1. In other words, learners intended meanings are
translated into the TL by using their L1 lexical-conceptual structure. At the functional level, language transfer
may occur in predicate-argument structure, where learners may adopt their L1 grammaticalization patterns in
constructing TL sentences. In other words, if such a transfer occurs, TL sentences will be constructed based on
L1 syntactic rules. At the positional level, language transfer may occur in morphological realization patterns,
where learners may violate TL morphological requirements by using their L1 morphological realization
patterns for morphology and surface word order. In other words, learners may adopt their L1 surface devices in
the TL production.
This study concludes that learners incomplete knowledge of the TL specifically includes their incomplete
knowledge of TL abstract lexical structure, including lexical-conceptual structure at the conceptual level,
predicate-argument structure at the functional level, and morphological realization patterns at the positional
level. Language transfer may occur at any of the three levels of speech production during second or foreign
language learning. Thus, language transfer is viewed as part of the learning process, rather than the surface
products themselves. Since lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological
realization patterns are language-specific, they must be learned as such (Kellerman, 1984; Ellis, 1985; Gass &
Selinker, 2001; Wei, 2002). Sufficient acquisition of the TL abstract lexical structure will eventually replace the
previously learned ones in learners L1.
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doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.003
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Complex Communication in the Foreign Language

Classroom: Hopes of Turn for the Better
Irina N. Lazareva
Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia

An impetus given to this study is the commitment to make a real difference to skills and capacity gained through
education. The main purpose of this paper is to articulate the concept of complex communication and elicit its
potential for making progress in the global environment. In the focus of attention is an essential condition
fundamental to students active and productive participation in intellectually challenging language activities. The
study examines how well the students are prepared for complex communication and brings to light generic
difficulties which are certain to result in troubles that young people may have in attempt to contribute to
higher-leveled communication. The paper calls attention to creating the context in which learners can develop
advanced skills valued in the 21 century.
Keywords: complex communication, high-level intellectual performance, higher order questions, students
preparedness
Introduction
Despite a great deal of debate about whether to call 21st century skills an artificial concept or a vital
necessity for surviving in the global age, the idea of cultivating certain competences that are critical for collective
and individual success in todays world brings together views and aspirations of business leaders, politicians,
employers, and educators. Education and effort to reform it place the emphasis on high expectations for
intellectual challenge in the classroom (Conceptual foundation, 2014; Marzano, Yanoski, Hoegh, & Slimms,
2013). For their part, educators face enormous challenges in delivering future survival skills to students.
Therewith you may notice that educational industry sometimes is more fascinated with technology and less
concerned about peopledetails of human learning, students preparedness, and their potentials development.
Learning-Centered Approach
Constructionism-based theories have triggered a paradigm shift in the education process towards
learning-centered mission of education. The concept of the learning-centeredness places learning first and
represents a significant dedication to generate a higher intellectual return from education (Blumberg & Everett,
2005). The assumption is that student-centered learning activities can give exactly what was wanted for education
quality change insofar as it relates to raising students intellectual standards and strengthening complex thinking
abilities. Adding learning-centered values to the program statements will be promotive for students to learn to
interact with each other, practice using ways of thinking in the discipline, and develop learning skills for further
Irina N. Lazareva, associate professor, Ph.D., School of Regional and International Studies, Far Eastern Federal University.

246 COMPLEX COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
learning (Weimer, 2002). Embedded with this approach is a concept of advanced skills that enable a learner to
meet the challenges of and opportunities of rapidly developing society, economy, and environment.
The cognitive key to College and Career Readiness elicited by Dr. David T. Conley (2013) comprises
critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and effective communication skills and dispositions. In
recognition of the fact that obtaining this survival package is critically important to graduate competitiveness and
competency in todays world, the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) as a key-capacity building institution,
hopes that new generation of students will have a high level of attainment in them. Therefore, opportunities need
to be created and acted.
To improve the landscape of academic training, Education Programs and Technologies Department, with a
view of creating lifelong learners, knowledgeable thinkers, and effective communicators, offered FEFU
institutions opportunities to adopt the best new ideas and have a share in Creating Innovative Training for 21
Century Specialists program, requiring some form of focused practical actions alongside specialist subject
knowledge. This initiative has sensitized the faculty to curriculum change to the advantage of active learning
methods and development of instructional materials designed to facilitate productive thinking in undergraduate
students.
The FEFU university has a communicative approach to foreign language (FL) teaching which is objective
driven. This time, high priority has been given to engaging students in higher cognitive level communication
which makes a real difference in rising prospective professionals to the challenging work. For turning a
classroom into activity-based space, a hard line of active learning practices was assigned to be used intensively
on a scheduled basis: exploratory and academic discussions, assigned reading dispute, problem solving team
meeting, high-stakes writing, simulation, empathetic interview, mock trial. They can be described as
improvisational activities that require intellectual flexibility, an openness in ideas, an ability to think out of the
box. Incorporated authentic intellectual activities are intended to develop a broad array of universally
acknowledged generic and work-related competences necessary to interact with people in diverse environments.
Research Question
The requirement to use language to think beneath the surface means that students are expected to exhibit
intellectual capacity to efficiently participate in the complex communication activities. Most of the activities
charged with hope of elevating educational background, require students to think at a higher end of cognitive
taxonomy. Therefore, if the students are expected to actively participate in the open-ended activities of mind they
should be safe in the knowledge and preparedness for this level intellectual performance. In order to generate a
clear picture of whether complex communication target level objective is in congruence with students
ability-status, a small-scale investigation was initiated. The research question was:
How well are the students prepared to efficiently participate in the complex communication activities to
the effect of taking full advantage of intellectually challenging practices along with making maximal use of their
own intellectual capacities?
Review of Literature
The theme of complex communication is an important learning goal that promotes student success in
college and careers (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2010). As well as in the case of other pedagogic
innovations the concept complex communication is non-pedagogic. According to Shedrovitskiys (1999)

COMPLEX COMMUNICATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM 247
logic of reasoning, it was detected in philosophy or socio-cultural sphere, assigned a pedagogic meaning and
brought to pedagogy which in this regard serves as a ground for intellectual investment. When integrating
Poppers (1971) views of critical analysis, intellectual capacity and joint discussion as essential devices for
building an open society with socio-cultural deliberations about development options for improving local and
global communities (Pocheptzov, 2001; Sorina, 2009), inference should be drawn that relevant to social
advancement is the type of communicative relations that develop facilities for building-up crucial fields of
human functionality to shape the way for culture and civilization through implementing various forms of
intellectual activity. As opposed, trivial communicative events function in mode of perpetuating existing
information and presuppose wasteland in all areas of life (Sorina, 2009, p. 58). As far as complex
communication is a complex intellectual activity, it involves complex thinking and can be attributed to
high-cognitive level performance which involves a broad array of core thinking skills and processes.
Questioning as the Wellspring of Intellectual Excitement

Indispensable component part of a communication act is ability to initiate questions. In classroom
interaction, student participation is promoted through questions that act as stimulation and guiding force setting
the pattern and shaping the fundamental nature of the discourse. In addition to its prominence in FL classroom,
questioning is the issue of paramount importance on the labor market.
Wagners research on the skills to be a good citizen and build successful career presented the evidence that
the most eagerly sought-for skill in the world of work is asking good questions insomuch as We can teach
them the technical staff, but we cant teach how to ask good questionshow to think, say business and
nonprofit leaders (Wagner, 2008, p. 21). As for other skillscritical thinking, working with others in team,
engaging in discussion, engaging customers, reference is made toward higher-order communication with
integral component of producing questions.
Questions can be categorized in terms of their function and purpose. There are a number of question
classification systems (Barners, 1969; Mills, Berliner, Rice, & Risseau, 1980; Nuttal, 1982; Gull, 1984; Graesser
& Person, 1994; McKenzie, 2003) given different names by different scholars which overlap at times. In the
methodological materials, questions are commonly categorized into closed and open-ended (Schuman & Presser
1979; Hanson & Wolfskill, 2000) though this categorization suggests oversimplification as does not produce the
intended effect sufficiently.
Closed questions motivate less communicative involvement (Chaudron, 1988) and require little original
thought. They may also be referred to as display/factual/surface questions. The term with which this study is
concerned is data-gathering questions (Costa & Kallic, 2008). They are designed to draw information and look
for anticipated response (see Example (1)).
Example (1) When did it happen?
How many people work in the area of social work?
Open-ended is an umbrella term for outside fact/referential questions. These questions need more than
mechanical searching for an answer. They help to elicit concepts and ideas and require answers produced by
students themselves (see Example (2)). In this way, they enable students to be more productive. The term with
which this study is concerned is processing questions which as described in Costa and Kallic (2008), are
designed to process information and make meaning of the data (p. 138).
Example (2) Why did it happen? What are some of the reasons of going into area of social work?

Alongside data-gathering and processing questions, Costa and Kallic (2008) distinguish the category of
questions that apply concepts in new situations (see Example (3)). These questions can be called transfer
questions, which require students to reason outside the scope of the given situation.
Example (3) What would we have to do to change this state of things?
In keeping with the goal orientation of elevating intellectual quality of communicative tasks and activities,
it is more consistent to turn to classifying questions by reference to the level of cognitive procession they trigger.
According to the complexity of thinking, questions are grouped into low-leveled and high-leveled. Lower
cognitive questions (Mills et al, 1980)/low order (Wilen, 1991) questions involve low cognitive operations.
Higher cognitive/higher-order questions emphasize high levels of thought. They make students go through
higher-order mental processes of analyzing, interpreting, restructuring, and making inferences.
Reciprocally, self-explanatory name for complex questioning procedure gives accent to complex thinking
involved, i.e., requiring kinds of reasoning as a thinking method of posing and responding to the question (Gage
& Berliner, 1998); encouraging learners to bring their own thoughts and recollections into conversation and
investigation inquiry (Burns, 1999); fostering effort and depth of processing in the learners (Thornbury, 1996);
calling for assessment and judgment (Cullen, 1998). Conceptual differences representing division between the
two broad categories of questions are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1
A Summary of Question Categorical Differences
Question class Closed-ended Open-ended
analytical questions
display questions referential questions
Variations factual questions processing questions
data-gathering questions transfer questions
insightful questions
drawing information building deep understanding;
Aimed at
looking for anticipated response make meaning of the data
detail-oriented
Outside fact questions, thoughtful,
Defining characteristics surface
penetrating, probing, substantive, incisive
shallow
- independent thinking;
Focus on rehearsing information
- students productivity
- in search of facts, experience - in search of ideas/opinions
Type of response required - immediate response - think time is necessary
- one-surface, obvious answer - under-the-surface answer
- Information processing
- Observing - Complex reasoning
Thinking method involved
- organizing - Generating and integrating
- Metacognition
Inquiry
- recognition and recalling;
Type of learning motivated Complex communication
- little communicative involvement
Lifelong learning
Developing the habits needed for academic,
Importance Limited educational value
professional and personal success
Level of thinking involved Low-order thinking Higher order thinking
Recognizing questioning as a communication part-skill (Littlewood, 1992) that draws speakers into
conversation and stimulates the production of oral discourse inviting new thoughts and new meanings, this
method was chosen as a an object matter and test tool of action research on students questioning abilities in the
FL classroom.

The Study
Action research is a realistic extension of professional development (Burns, 1999) and a contributor to
accomplishing social tasks. Action research can be described as a contextual, small-scale, and localized study,
which investigates a problem within a specific situation. This form of research is not an end in itself. It is aimed
at bringing about change and improvement in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) practice.
The purpose of this study was to inquire how well the students were prepared for complex communication
activities that require a certain level of proficiency in asking questions engaging mental operations at a higher end
of cognitive taxonomy (information processing, inference, complex reasoning, evaluating, interpreting).
Participants
The study was conducted with two groups composed of 13 and 11 students. The population for this study
consisted of second-year students, taking EFL course and possessing proficiency in English. EFL classes refer
to those given to help students improve their second foreign language skills to maintain communication in
English in diverse environments.
Procedure
A test on Formulating good questions was administered, in which the students were assigned the three
items aimed to appraise their questioning abilities.
Items 1 and 2 contained external reality (environment around the students mind) content for phrasing
questions.
Item 1 was aimed at examining and finding meaning in the visual image on Getting into Accident topic.
Item 2 was aimed at creating questions about a reading text concerning eco-life (Spinning a Web of
Walkways).
The questions generated in test item 3 addressed a students personal reality content (environment inside
the students mind). It was a task in the form of self-directed interview. Each student wrote down the questions
that (s)he would like to be asked in the context restricted to the area of Jobs and Professions.
The students were given a certain amount of time (40 minutes) to think over phrasing good questions.
Data Collection
The qualitative data were collected through the questions supplied to the test provided as preliminary
investigation if students complex communication skills ability. The number of student-generated questions was
counted and their types were determined. Each question was estimated by the criterion of question categorical
format provided above. It was distinguished a sublevel of questions that had not been identified in the materials
before the class procedure. On the one hand, the questions produce dare thought-provoking, on the other hand,
these questions are just imaginative and do not stimulate great effort.
What is the police officer writing in his notebook?
How much would the car maintenance cost?
What punishment is OK for this offence?
How would you feel if you were involved into in such a situation?
Why do some people spend too much time in their workplace?
The questions that refer to this group trigger speculative thinking, a type of thinking based on arbitrary
assumptions. The effort involved in asking and answering speculative question does not stimulate depth or
require reasoning so they were referred to low-cognitive level group of questions. Table 2 summarizes the data

interpretation results.
Table 2
Distribution of Students Questions
Total number of questions: 596
Number of data-gathering Number of speculative Number of processing
Number of transfer questions
questions questions questions
Lower-cognitive level Higher-cognitive level
525 53 12 6
The analysis of quantitative data indicated that out of 596 questions asked during the test, 525 were
data-gathering questions (88%), 53 were speculative ones (9%), 12 of the total were processing questions (2%),
six were transfer questions (1%).
It can be concluded that observed students asked a good deal more lower-cognitive questions than higher
order questions whether addressing external or internal reality content. The percentages of the number of
lower-cognitive level and higher-cognitive level questions are shown in Figure 1.
3%
Low-order questions
High-order questions
97%
Figure 1. Pie chart to show percentages of higher and lower order questions.
Results
The question posed in this case study was: How well are the students prepared to efficiently participate in
the complex communication activities to the effect of taking full advantage of intellectually challenging practices
along with making maximal use of their own intellectual capacities?
The analysis of the students questioning ability selected as a part skill of not specified communication and,
a high-level questioning ability in particular, as a target complex communication strategy, allowed to make the
following observation.
The action-research evidentiated that students could formulate mostly factual and speculative questions,
which is not sufficient for complex communication proficiency. Therefore, the second-year students are trained
for meaningful communication activities on a personal level (sharing of information, feelings, ideas). However,
they are not skilled enough to efficiently participate in the complex communication activities that require
higher-order thinking instrumentality.
Discussion
Conspicuous is the fact that higher-level language learners used though carefully worded, but principally
factual, closed questions of low cognitive level. Students ask these questions because in the actual practice FL

instruction teaches mostly the mechanics of questioning in the target language and does not teach higher-order
question skills. Consequently, this class of questions does not exist in students schemata. The categories of
abstract thinking represent innovative elements in FL syllabus specifications so far and are often neglected
because teachers think that students can develop this ability unassisted.
There is no exception for Intensive FL Complex Communication Practice programfrom the undertaken
study follows the pre-requisite that intellectually challenging activities which the program calls for, include many
skills not taught or developed explicitly in most training programs. This complicating disorder will make students
reluctant to take a part in complex thinking activities, since prospective participants will not possess a certain
minimum proficiency.
Recommendations
Setting an objective of fostering a learned thinker is linked to incorporating cognitive development
component, which introduces another layer of complexity onto communication-related classroom. Providing not
just useful (nobody doubts that experience of high intellectual quality is useful) but relevant practice (when
students are able to efficiently fulfill the task) is a factor that contributes to the effectiveness of complex
communication language lesson. Based on the discussion above the following strategies were devised to provide
the impetus for change.
(1) In the communication that appeals to intelligence transmission, questioning is the language activity of
producing oral discourse that invites taking new thoughts and new meanings, and as work tools of
communication are bound up with higher cognitive functions. Thus, asking higher-level questions activates
thinking and reasoning and makes students behave at relatively higher levels of cognitive processing. Hence, it
appears that having students ask questions that are assumed to trigger complex communication without teaching
the instrumentality of higher-order questioning may not be effective.
(2) Higher order part-skills of communication can be improved through focused instruction. A teacher
should be aware of the skills necessary for students to complete a high-level thinking communication task at an
adequate level. The broader spectrum of skills a student can use efficiently to complete a task, the better quality is
implied (Ennis, 1997; Lipman, 2003).
(3) In order to ensure that teaching of complex questioning skills will deliver benefits, explicit instruction
is needed to provide learners with an awarenessraising package of process strategies and complex thinking
skills.
Thus, creating an intellectually sensitive environment can become a key factor for students willingness to
communicate at a higher level of cognitive complexity.
Conclusion
The emphasis of education is no longer the importance of knowledge and definite answers but developing
higher order thinking and open-ended questions.
The action-research described above shows that it is important to teach students higher-order questions
which are necessary for communicative purposes and prospective research projects as well.
Though, with all these things considered, complex communication practice can become an irreplaceable
experience of high intellectual quality only if students are geared up to use their minds well just as teachers are
prepared to teach in ways the new-day standards expect.

References
Barnes, D. (1976). From communication to curriculum. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Blumberg, P., & Everett, J. (2005). Achieving a campus consensus on learning-centered teaching: Process and outcomes. To
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doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.004
D DAVID PUBLISHING
On the Enhancement of English as a Foreign Language

Learners Productive Vocabulary
ZHENG Yu-rong
Shanghai Institute of Technology, Shanghai, China

Vocabulary enhancement has always been a big issue for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, especially
for beginners. Although Chinese college EFL learners have a large reservoir of English words and expressions,
when it comes to speaking and writing, they find it difficult to retrieve these words, and consequently, they overuse
a word or an expression throughout their talk or writing instead of using other alternatives. This paper attempts to
explore this phenomenon and to analyze these EFL learners difficulties in retrieving vocabulary productively. First,
a brief literature review is made so as to set a theoretical framework for the paper. Next, the paper probes into three
categories of factors that hinder words retrieval, based on the current foreign language teaching and learning
situation in China. Afterwards, some strategies for enhancing productive vocabulary are proposed to Chinese EFL
learners and instructors. Words retrieval will no longer be a problem for EFL learners, when a comprehensible
input, an effective consolidation, and a meaningful output are guaranted.
Keywords: productive vocabulary, retrieval, English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
Introduction
When asked what is most difficult in the process of foreign language learning, most college students may
rank vocabulary as first. A great number of students complain that after entering the college, some of the words
they have learned in the middle school have been forgotten and large numbers of newly learned words are very
likely to be left in the forgetting curve very soon. Still worse, students complain that they tend to use words
they have learned for many years and seldom use those newly learned words, so that their compositions seem
quite dull due to the overuse of certain words repetitively. A similar phenomenon can also be found in speaking.
Students cannot retrieve the right expressions for the message so that they stammer and pause a lot, which in turn
will wear away their confidence, and consequently they dare not speak English in public. However, if these same
expressions appear in listening or reading, most students will find them easy to understand. Therefore, it appears
very interesting as well as necessary to explore this problem and to provide possible solutions as well.
The Productive Retrieval of Vocabulary

First of all, it is essential to define the term productive retrieval. In defining knowing a word,
McCarthy (1990) raises a question when it can be said a language learner knows a word in L2. He points out
ZHENG Yu-rong, associate professor, master, School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Institute of Technology.
254 ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY
that if a language learner cannot actively use a particular word when it is needed, without too much mental
searching, then it might be felt that he is dealing with an incomplete knowledge of the word, or at the very least
this incomplete knowledge of the word should be distinguished between receptive and productive knowledge.
In other words, if the learner knows the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of the word but cannot produce it
in speaking or writing, s/he only has receptive knowledge of the word. If the learner can make a step forward:
to produce it when needed, s/he has a productive knowledge of the word. According to McCarthy, learning a
word involves three phases: input, storage, and retrieval. Input usually takes the form of orthographic shape as
well as phonological shape. How words are stored in peoples mind is quite complicated. McCarthy uses
metaphors like nets, boxes, webs, and lines to describe vividly the storage of words. He uses
receptive retrieval and productive retrieval respectively to refer to the use of a specific word. Receptive
retrieval takes place when the learner matches the spoken or written input to the stored sound and orthographic
forms and their associated meanings, which often occurs in listening or reading. However, productive retrieval
is different in that learners have to produce the form as well as the meaning of a word with no visual or aural
stimuli at all. More often than not, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners are more capable of retrieving
words receptively than productively, while native speakers have less difficulty in retrieving productively.
Vocabulary learning and teaching has been widely researched with fruitful outcomes. Based on Krashens
Input Hypothesis and Elliss division of input, intake and output, Dr. Joseph H. W. Hung formulated a model of
second language acquisition (see Figure 1) and presented it in a speech entitled Input and English
TeachingLearning in 2005.
Filter
Input Intake Internal process (Interaction) Output
Motivation
Figure 1. A model of second language acquisition.
From the model, it is clear that motivation is the crux of the matter. If learners motivation could be
aroused and maintained throughout the whole process of learning, more output could be ensured. Furthermore,
vocabulary learning needs to be comprehension-based (Nunan, 2001). Also, the field of cognitive psychology
indicates activities requiring a deeper, more involved manipulation of information promote more effective
learning (Schmitt & McCarthy, 2002). Learners active and deep processing of the new information can lead to
further consolidation of the information. Therefore, if comprehensible input could be provided, interactive
environment between the teacher and the students and that among students could be built up, meaningful output
could be designed, then learners motivation would be prolonged and information would be retained over long
periods in the learners mind and would be retrieved quickly.
ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY 255
Factors That Impede EFL Learners Productive Retrieval of Vocabulary

The reasons why learners are not able to memorize as well as retrieve newly learned words vary from
person to person. Nevertheless, those factors concerned may be roughly classified into three categories:
biological factors, linguistic factors, and socio-cultural factors.
According to the forgetting curve, humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a
matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material. That is to say, all input will go
directly to the short-term memory, if adequate attention has been paid to. Then, most of the information (about
80%) that has been kept in the short-term memory will be forgotten within a couple of weeks, unless the
memory has been reinforced time and again.
Apart from human beings biological incompetence in memory, studies have shown that words themselves
play a great part in affecting the ease/difficulty of learning. For instance, on the basis of evidences obtained
from empirical studies on vocabulary acquisition, Laufer points out that some intra-lexical factors affect
vocabulary learning (see Chung, 2004). To begin with, the pronounceability and length of a word affect
learners productive retrieval. The longer the word, the more difficult it will be for learners to produce.
Grammatical characteristics involving inflectional complexity and derivational complexity prove to be another
barrier to words production. Next, semantic features are able to facilitate or hinder words retrieval. Specific
terms and idiomatic expressions tend to be more difficult than general terms and non-idiomatic meaning
expressions. Thirdly, the register of a word plays an important role in the retrieval of that word. Neutral words
that can be used in all registers will be much easier to learn and thus to retrieve. Lastly, words with multiple
meanings such as homonyms and polysemies are more difficult to retrieve than words with single meanings.
Another factor that counts is the impact of culture and customs. Most Chinese EFL learners, if not all, find
it hard to express themselves in a foreign language. They dare not speak English because they feel their English
is poor, despite the fact that it is often not the case. Students are afraid of making mistakes. They do not talk
in class unless they feel quite certain that the utterances they are going to make are completely correct.
Consequently, the lack of practice directly leads to the failure of vocabulary retrieval.
The Enhancement of EFL Learners Productive Vocabulary

Based on the theoretical framework and the analysis of the factors that may impede the productive
retrieval of vocabulary, a couple of effective learning and teaching strategies are encouraged as follows.
Strategies for Providing Comprehensible Input
Motivation is the key to successful comprehension, efficient retention, and effective production of
vocabulary, which can be ensured through two principles in the initial stage: gaining and maintaining learners
attention and activating learners prior knowledge. Information can be moved from the sensory register to
working memory if a learner pays attention to it (Chung, 2004). Further, learners background knowledge and
life experience are essential to effective vocabulary instructions. Integrating prior knowledge with to-be-learned
material is crucial to learning a new word. Therefore, strategies that can not only arouse students interest but
trigger their prior knowledge are accorded top priority, such as verbal-visual word association strategy, word
maps, concept wheels, brainstorming, etc..
256 ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY
Strategies for Effective Consolidation

Consolidation and storage of vocabulary can be achieved through instructors deep processing of a word
and learners active involvement. The instructors active and deep processing of the to-be-learned material will
provide the learners with rich information. In addition, a cooperative learning setting should be encouraged.
Through peer or group negotiations, learners are expected to comprehend, construct and reconstruct the
meaning of the word. Besides, the amiable learning environment can definitely be helpful to timid and introvert
learners. Lastly, a successful consolidation of a word cannot be achieved without repetitive revision. Therefore,
it is indispensible for EFL learners to keep an individual vocabulary notebook.
Strategies for Eliciting Meaningful Output
The meaningful production of a word is the vital criterion (if not the only) in deciding whether the learner
has learned the word completely or not. Normally, meaningful output of vocabulary can be presented in two
forms: writing and speaking. So far, various methods have been advocated as effective by researchers such as
vocabulary chunks (LI, 2004), semantic mapping, pantomiming, drama (Chung, 2004), etc.. No matter what
strategy is used, there are two critical principles. One is to try different approaches so as to arouse the learners
interest, and the other is to provide learners with frequent opportunities to practice using new words.
Conclusion
Vocabulary learning has always been a big obstacle for learners in the process of language learning.
However, this obstacle can be removed as long as the three stages of vocabulary learning can be guaranteed:
comprehensive input, effective retention, and meaningful output. No matter what learning and teaching strategy
might be used, the key lies in the notion that all the strategies should be learner-centered with learners more
involved in the pragmatic, authentic, and functional use of language.
References
Brown, H. D. (2001). Principles of language learning and teaching. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Chung, S. F. (2004). A brain-compatible vocabulary teaching strategy applied to underachieving ELF learners (Master thesis).
Ming Chuan University, Taibei.
CUI, Y. P. (2005). A three-dimensional approach to vocabulary teaching. Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, 4, 28-31.
LI, H. Y. (2004). A focus on productive chunks in vocabulary practices. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 1, 57-61.
Littlewoods, W. (1981). Communicative language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCarthy, M. (1990). Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nunan, D. (2001). Second language teaching and learning. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Schmitt, N., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). (2002). Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign
Language Education Press.
Taylor, L. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. Cambridge: Prentice Hall International.
doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.005
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Switching to Mother Tongue-Based Education:

The New Trend and Its Challenges
Safary Wa-Mbaleka
University of Phoenix, Arizona, USA

The new millennium began with a strong hope for success through collaboration in globalization. People were told
that globalization would bring a significant boost in transportation, communication, and information, which would
contribute to the foundation of the global village. Many predictions came true. One new trend was evident to
support all the new innovationsmost leaders wanted to integrate English in their own educational system. Around
the world, schools promoted English in order to meet the competitive market that globalization had created. In fact,
some linguists predicted that English was going to take over other languages, and that it could actually take some
indigenous languages to their eternal rest. Today, there is a new trend that shows more and more countries
promoting mother tongue-based education (MTBE). Due to the fact that this is a fairly new paradigm shift, it is
catching a lot of government and educational leaders off-guard. Based on careful survey of a number of countries
promoting mother tongue education and recent research studies on MTBE, this presentation synthesizes common
factors that either promote or hinder MTBE. It concludes with recommendations of what must be in place for
success to happen when switching to MTBE, especially in the Asian context.
Keywords: Philippines, research synthesis, mother tongue-based education, MLB-MLE, English, Southeast Asia
Introduction
There is no more doubt today that the world has become a global village. Globalization has become a
reality. Whether one is aware of it or not, everyone is influencing and is influenced by globalization. In the
daily life, it is common to deal with issues, news, tools, products, and people from all the different parts of the
world. People now live more interdependently than ever before. One of the languages that has been strongly
promoted and mostly used to connect people around the world is English. In air traffic, international politics
and economics, and international education, it is common to find more preference given to English. This trend
has influenced human communication for the past several decades.
Today, however, there is another trend. From different linguistic circles, it is common to hear scholars
from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds promote mother tongue-based education (MTBE). While the
focus on English is still heavily strong around the world, the wave is changing in the direction of promoting
indigenous languages. Some countries, like the Philippines, are now even passing national laws to integrate
indigenous languages into the curriculum as medium of instruction.
Just like many other paradigm shifts that this world has witnessed before, changes always come with a
level of excitement, uncertainty, frustration, some failure, and some success. Just like any other change in the
Safary Wa-Mbaleka, EdD, PhD, University of Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

258 SWITCHING TO MOTHER TONGUE-BASED EDUCATION
past, the issue of MTBE is creating two camps among the discussants. Some support it and have their own
reason to go that way, while others do not.
For this reason, this paper presents a careful analysis of different factors from six countries about their
success or failure of their MTBE integration. From analyzing the best six and the worst six countries in
implementing MTBE, scholars are left to decide whether a country has a chance to be successful in
implementing MTBE in Southeast Asian countries. The findings of this analysis can be used to generate MTBE
discussion in other settings similar to the ones discussed here.
Review of the Literature

The discussion on MTBE in this paper is directly linked to English, English learning, and teaching.
MTBE is discussed from the standpoint of the fact that many countries in what is known as the Outer Circle
(B. B. Kachru, 1985, 1990; B. B. Kachru, Y. Kachru, & Nelson, 2009) have been using English as a
medium of instruction for quite a long time. According to B. B. Kachru, the decision of using English as the
official language (and therefore as medium of instruction) in a country is usually reached as people try to
give a level ground to all local languages. The spread of English around the world, however, has been
interpreted in all the different ways. It has been seen as imperialism of nations that use it as their mother
tongue (e.g., the United States), which may have negative effect on local language, or as an opportunity for
economic advancement.
English Imperialism
Decades ago, it was not uncommon to predict English imperialism in different scholars works
(Canagarajah, 1999; Finegan, 2011). In fact, the dominance of English in different parts of life around the
world is evidence that the prediction came true. This fact is true regardless of ones view about whether the
effect of this imperialism is positive or negative. Using critical pedagogy and critical analysis of
post-colonialism and neocolonialism, Canagarajah (1999) went even further to suggest that English imperialism
should be resisted in educational systems.
According to the other scholars who see Englishization as imperialism, it is believed that it is a threat to
the indigenous languages. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
sees Englishization and other use of colonizers languages as threats to indigenous people. In fact, UNESCO
claimed (2005a, 2005b) that there is a significant rise of the number of endangered indigenous languages due
to the heavy spread of Western languagesamong those Western languages, English. The endangered
languages were estimated at about 50% of the 6,000 to 7,000 that are currently recorded around the world
(UNESCO, 2003).
The phenomenon of this linguistic endangerment was even worse in the Asia-Pacific region, where 60% of
languages are reportedly endangered. In this region, some studies have revealed that when students are
expected to use English-only policy in their learning, too much pressure is placed on them. For instance, this
pressure is associated with high rise of suicide in South Korea (Kang, 2012). In other parts of the world,
English-only policy as official language and medium of instruction has resulted in the stigmatization of African
languages (Phillipson, 1992, 1996).
It is this feeling of English imperialism that has led some scholars, educators, and politicians to result in
promoting local languages through popular phrases such as first language first, mother tongue first
bilingual education, mother tongue-based bilingual education (UNESCO, 2005a, p. v) and the new policy

SWITCHING TO MOTHER TONGUE-BASED EDUCATION 259
in the Philippines called Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). The goal is to preserve
the indigenous languages and try to give them the same value that English enjoys, whether or not this vision
is possible.
More than half a century ago, UNESCO (1953) launched a campaign to educate children in their mother
tongue. Their campaign was based on findings that MTBE had a highly positive impact on childrens education.
This recommendation was made with the understanding that many countries with a large linguistic diversity
have an ethos which balances and respects the use of different languages in daily life. From the perspective of
these societies and of the language communities themselves, multilingualism is more a way of life than a
problem to be solved (UNESCO, 2003, p. 12). Not surprisingly, however, these countries have the
responsibility of having education systems to adapt to these complex realities and provide a quality education
which takes into consideration learners needs, whilst balancing these at the same time with social, cultural and
political demands (UNESCO, 2003, p. 12). It is from this reality that MTBE is promoted.
Benefits and Challenges of MTBE
The benefits of teaching children in their mother tongue have already been well documented (Dutcher,
2001; Kirkpatrick, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2011a, 2011b). It is believed to develop L1 skills in the learners.
It promotes academic success in all subjects that students take. This success in return boosts students
self-esteem. Additionally, it is believed to lay a solid foundation for the learning of other additional languages.
Last, it is viewed as facilitative of more parent-school collaboration.
Research conducted on MTBE have proven for instance that it is more successful in countries with limited
number indigenous languages (Kang, 2012). Such findings would explain why a country like Papua New
Guinea (with about 800 languages) would struggle with MTBE. Additionally, the success of MTBE has been
documented more in Western countries than in other countries (D. Malone, 2008). Last, MTBE is seen
successfully when both the teachers and the students share the same language (Espada, 2012).
On the other hand, some undesirable results have come out of MTBE research. It has been found that
MTBE is challenging in multilingual settings (Gacheche, 2010; Ghimire, 2012). Additionally, in Southern
countries, the benefits of MTBE have led to inconclusive results (D. Malone, 2008). Last, MTBE is challenging
in countries where a Western language has been used for instruction or as official language for a long period of
time (Mahboob & Cruz, 2013). These inconclusive findings lead one to question whether the discussion of
MTBE could successfully be integrated to all educational systems all over the world. Yet, UNESCO has a
strong commitment to support mother tongue instruction and bilingual/multilingual education to improve the
quality of education, especially for disadvantaged groups, and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity in all
societies (UNESCO, 2005a, p. v).
Other MTBE challenges that have been consistently documented in publications include three main ones
(D. Malone, 2008; S. Malone & Paraide, 2011; Wa-Mbaleka, 2014). First, teachers are rarely ever trained in
teaching in mother tongues. So, if they are used to teaching in English, it is quite an insurmountable task to
ask them to teach in a mother tongue, including their own. Second, in countries where English is used as
official language and medium of instruction, extremely limited instructional materials exist in different
indigenous languages. Last, teachers are not usually trained on first language and second language learning
theories. Yet, these theories are important for teachers to help students learn better a language, be it first or
additional language.

Methodology
The goal of this study was threefold. First, it was intended to synthesize the characteristics of most
successful MTBE countries. Then, it aimed at summarizing the characteristics of most unsuccessful MTBE
countries. Last, from the findings of the first two, the study was intended to draw a conclusion on what is
necessary for MTBE implementation to be successful.
Research Design
This study is a critical analysis based on the research synthesis design (Norris & Ortega, 2006). It is also a
systematic review (Cooper & Hedges, 1994) of the different countries that were selected on basis of their
success or failure in the implementation of MTBE. This approach was used to try to determine the most critical
element that can make some countries successful and others unsuccessful in the implementation of MTBE.
Sampling
Based on UNESCOs (2005a) report, six most successful and six least successful countries were identified
in the implementation of MTBE in Southeast Asia (see p. 3), among the 25 countries that were included.
According to this report, the most successful countries in MTBE include respectively South Korea, North
Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Vietnam. The six least successful countries in this region include
Brunei, East Timor, Pakistan, Bhutan, Indonesia, and Philippines respectively. The most successful is South
Korea while the least successful is Brunei.
Three main sources of data were utilized. First, Ethnologue: The Languages of the World was used for the
classification of languages. This source was preferred because it is probably one of the most comprehensive
and most up-to-date sources on classifications of languages around the world. Next, the UNESCOs (2005a)
report was used to classify the six most successful and the six least successful countries in MTBE
implementation. Last, the World Factbook, hosted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, was used
to identify the countrys Gross Domestic Product (GDP), population size, literacy rate, and independence day.
Analysis
To understand and analyze the different factors of this study, it is important to consider UNESCOs (2010)
statement that there are objective, historical, political, psycho-social and strategic reasons to explain this state
of affairs, including their colonial past and the modern-day challenge of globalisation (p. 5). For this
reason, a number of factors were intentionally selected to come up with the possible reason behind success and
failure of MTBE in the Southeast Asia region.
Linguistic diversity was one of the factors considered. It was important to find out the ratio of languages to
speakers and the official language. Additionally, it was important to find out if there was an indigenous
language that was spoken by the majority of the countrys population.
Additionally, the historical background of the country was considered. For instance, the Western language
being used in the country, the role that it has played (for imperialism purposes vs. used as lingua franca), and
the independence day. The last two factors considered in this study included the countrys literacy rate and the
predominant religion. All these factors we deemed important in the investigation of the critical element for the
success and failure of MTBE implementation in different Southeast Asian countries.
Both frequencies and ratios were computed. This study uses simple descriptive statistics to analyze the
quantitative data presented here. The study is not necessarily intended to draw conclusions over the whole
world but specifically about Southeast Asia. If findings are applied out of this context, they need to be taken

with care, following the steps outlined here about this study.
Results
This section presents the different data found in the analysis of the 12 countries included in this study.
Table 1 displays the independence year and the power that had controlled each country before the
independence.
Table 1
Countrys Independence Day and Former Power
Most successful in MTBE Least successful in MTBE
South Korea: 1945 (Japan) Brunei: 1984 (Britain)
North Korea: 1953 (South Korea & US) Timor-Leste: 1999: Indonesia
Japan: 1603 (Tokugawa reign) Pakistan: 1947: Britain
Sri Lanka: 1948 (Britain) Bhutan: 2007: India (1865: Britain)
Maldives: 1965 (Britain) Indonesia: 1949: Netherlands
Vietnam: 1954 (France) Philippines: 1946: Japan
From Table 1, it is evident that there is no clear trend that can be taken for sure as being critical on the
successful implementation of MTBE when both the independence year and the former occupation power are
analyzed. Table 2 presents the data reflecting the number of languages spoken in a country (both living and
extinct languages) and the literacy rate.
Table 2
Number of Indigenous Languages and Literacy Rate
Most successful in MTBE (living & extinct languages) Least successful in MTBE (living &extinct languages)
South Korea: 1; 0; 97.9% Brunei: 15; 0; 95.4%
North Korea: 2; 0; 100% Timor-Leste: 19; 1; 58.3%
Japan: 15; 0; 99% Pakistan: 72; 0; 54.9%
Sri Lanka: 7; 0; 91.2% Bhutan: 24; 0; 52.8%
Maldives: 2; 0; 98.4% Indonesia: 706; 13; 92.8%
Vietnam: 108; 1; 93.4% Philippines: 181; 4; 95.4%
Average Literacy: 96.7% Average Literacy: 66.1%
Results in Table 2 demonstrate that the average of the literacy rate in most successful
MTBE-implementation countries is quite high (96.7%) compared with the least successful ones (66.1%). This
finding would corroborate UNESCOs claim over the years that MTBE facilitates literacy development.
Additionally, other than the case of Vietnam, it looks like the most successful countries in MTBE have quite a
smaller linguistic diversity than the other countries. This result is in line with what has been claimed before that
the plurality of languages in a country make MTBE harder to implement. Table 3 displays the language spoken
by the majority and the Western language that is primarily promoted in each country.
From Table 3, it is evident that English is the Western language most widely used. Two of the most
successful MTBE-successful countries do not have an official Western language (North Korea and Japan). It
does not seem to matter, however, whether the Western language used in the country is English or the other
language. Additionally, whether a majority of people uses the same language or not did not seem to matter much
in the successful implementation of MTBE, due to the lack of the exact number of speakers of each language.

Table 3
Majority Language and Promoted Western Language
South Korea: Korean (English) Brunei: Malay (English)
North Korea: Korean (no Western language) Timor-Leste: Tetum (Portuguese)
Japan: Japanese (no Western language) Pakistan: Punjabi (English)
Sri Lanka: Sinhala (English) Bhutan: Sharchhopka (28%)
Maldives: Dhiveli (English) Indonesia: Bahasa (English & Dutch)
Vietnam: Vietnamese (English) Philippines: Tagalog (English)
It was important to analyze the size of people who share the majority language. This analysis was
important to investigate whether it made a difference whether the majority of people shared one language.
Table 4 is a synthesis of this specific factor.
Table 4
Majority Sharing the Same Language
South Korea: Korean: 99.9% Brunei: Unknown
North Korea: Korean: 100% East-Timor: Unknown
Japan: Japanese: 98.5% Pakistan: Punjabi: 48%
Sri Lanka: Sinhala: 74% Bhutan: Sharchhopka: 28%
Maldives: Dhiveli: Unknown Indonesia: Bahasa: Unknown
Vietnam: Vietnamese: Unknown Philippines: Tagalog: 28.1%
From Table 4, it is evident that a critical element is emerging. The majority of the most successful MTBE
countries have a large number of local language speakers who share the same language. Those with no majority
language are all in the least successful MTBE category. The next table presents the predominant religion and
the position of each country based on GDP per capita performance as of 2014.
Table 5
Success in MTBE Implementation
South Korea: Christian: 31.6% // #42 Brunei: Islam: 78.8% // #12
North Korea: Buddhism: Unknown // #106 East Timor: Christian: 99.1% // #68
Japan: Shintoism: 83.9% // #36 Pakistan: Islam: 96.4% // #177
Sri Lanka: Buddhism: 69.1% // #145 Bhutan: Buddhism: 75.3% // #142
Maldives: Sunni Muslim: Unknown // #125 Indonesia: Islam: 87.2% // #158
Vietnam: None: 80.8% // #168 Philippines: Christian: 92.5% // #165
Results in Table 5 do not give a clear trend between religion and success in MTBE implementation, neither
does the GDP per capita. The next table displays the information from each country about its number of
indigenous languages, the institutionalized languages, and the ratio between the number of speakers per
language.
If Pakistan is removed from Table 6, there is a fairly clear trend here. When drawing a ratio between the
number of speakers per language in every country, it is clear that the MTBE-successful countries are those with
the smaller linguistic diversity. In other words, the more the number of speakers per language, the more

successful the MTBE implementation. Stated differently, if fewer people share the same language, it becomes
more challenging to implement MTBE.
Table 6
Indigenous Language, Institutionalized Language, and Ratio
South Korea: 1 & 1; 1/24.3M Brunei: 15 & 8; 1/.03M
North Korea: 1 & 1; 1/23.4M Timor-Leste: 19 & 2; 1/.06
Japan: 15 & 1 ; 1/8.5M Pakistan: 72 & 6; 1/2.7M
Sri Lanka: 7 & 3; 1/3.1M Bhutan: 24 & 3; 1/.003M
Maldives: 2 & 2; 1/.2M Indonesia: 706 & 19; 1/.4M
Vietnam: 108 & 1; 1/.8M Philippines: 181 & 41; /.6M
Conclusion
This study has presented results from different potential factors for the success or failure of MTBE
implementation. The only most critical element that came out as being so influential in MTBE implementation
was the ratio of number of speakers per language. All other factors selected for this study did not yield any
clear trend as did this one.
If the ratio between the speakers and the languages of the country is that important, this result creates a
serious challenge for countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines with quite large population and with the
ratio of 1 language per .4 million and 1 per .6 million respectively.
In these countries that have been unsuccessful so far, it seems that they must choose to use one national
language as the medium of instruction. Such a decision would improve their ratio. In the case of the Philippines,
for instance, Filipino could be adopted as the medium of instruction everywhere in the country. In this case,
Filipino-based instruction would count as MTBE. That would give MTBE a better chance for success. In
Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia could be selected for the whole country. Of course, such a decision would call for
the national language to be fully embraced all over the nation.
Another finding from this study was that all the countries with successful MTBE implementation showed
quite a high level of literacy. This study therefore confirms that MTBE implementation has some relationship
with literacy development. It was, however, surprising that MTBE implementation success did not correlate
with economic development as expressed in GDP per capita.
As different scholars continue to find ways to continue with English or reverse to MTBE, this study has
brought to light some factors that may have not been carefully analyzed before. These findings should help
continue the discussion to better understanding what is necessary, what direction needs to be followed, and
what factors need to be considered as policymakers decide to go one way or the other. From this study, it is
clear that policymakers have some important decisions to make, if MTBE must be promoted in lieu of English
or other dominant European languages.
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doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.006
D DAVID PUBLISHING
SHEN Cong-wens Aesthetic Modernity
CHEN Hua
Southwest University, Chongqing, China

SHEN Cong-wens aesthetic modernity is mainly reflected in three aspects. Firstly, SHEN Cong-wen negated the
progressive linear time view of enlightening modernity, accepting modernity in an elastic time structure which
consists of the new and the old as well as constancy and change. Then, SHEN Cong-wen carried forward
the sensual life of human beings to make up for the abuse of reason in enlightening modernity, though he did not
abandon the enlightenment reason. Moreover, in the Chinese context which lacked reason at that time, SHEN
Cong-wen expected to bridge the gap between two cultures, namely, the culture of reason and the culture of
sensibility. At last, the aesthetic view of redemption proposed by SHEN Cong-wen that beauty lies in life is
essentially a kind of aesthetic utilitarianism which interweaves aesthetic independence and mind enlightenment.
Keywords: SHEN Cong-wen, aesthetic modernity, sensibility, aesthetic utilitarianism
Introduction
The theory of modernity is the meta-discourse dominating all fields in the 20th century. As the modern
Chinese culture is just developing synchronously with the modernity of Chinas society and history, the modern
Chinese culture has been under the influence caused by the discourse of modernity for a long time. The most
notable manifestation is that the narrative of enlightening modernity has become the mainstream narrative pattern
in Chinese literature. Moreover, the aesthetic modernity differentiates itself from the modernity per se, and it
constantly reflects on the modernity in the meantime. Being different from the enlightening modernity which
concerns material aspect and group consciousness of the society, the aesthetic modernity pays more attention to
the individual sensual life. It undoubtedly enriches and develops modern Chinese literature on another dimension,
which always lacks the sense of personality and life. A clue of aesthetic modernity throughout can be found
in SHEN Cong-wens literary works and thoughts of literary theories with a detailed review of them.
SHEN Cong-wens Concept of Modernity

The notion of modernity is first a kind of time consciousness or a kind of straight-forward and unrepeatable
historical time consciousness, and it is a kind of notion of history which is completely opposite to the circular or
mythic time frame (WANG, CHEN, & WANG, 1994). This indicates that time consciousness is an important
dimension to understand modernity. Being different from the endogenous and spontaneous Western modernity,
Chinese modernity is implanted forcibly by Western powers and it is of obvious exogeneity and post-occurring
characteristics. Moreover, because of the voluntary realization of dropping behind, most intellectuals in the 20th
CHEN Hua, Ph.D. candidate, School of Liberal Arts, Southwest University.

266 SHEN CONG-WENS AESTHETIC MODERNITY
century had a firm belief in the progressive linear-vector time view of modernity. When those intellectuals
indiscriminately applied the time view enlightening modernity of social-level to literature, they fell into
dilemmas of binary opposites such as new/old, modernity/tradition, West/East, and so on, stepping onto a
theoretical path of single-linear modernity on which the former is superior to the latter. Just as KONG Fan-jin
(2003) put it that,
from the literary revolution to the revolutionary literature, the realization of modernity of mainstream literature and
the realization of historical modernity are taken in an integrated consideration, that is to say, the realization of modernity
of both literature and history is the result obtained in inevitabilities of the law of historical evolution. (p. 99)
Nonetheless, the time view of enlightening modernity is different from that of aesthetic modernity.
From the social and historical perspective, modernity has inherently a strained relation of opposition and negation
with traditional and ancient characteristics, whereas, from the aesthetic perspective, instead of a strained relation of
opposition and negation, a relation of continuation lies more often between modernity and traditional ancient
characteristics. This significantly shows the difference between social modernity and aesthetic modernity. (WEN, 2004, p.
6)
SHEN Cong-wen had a profound understanding on this paradoxical time view of modernity. On the one
hand, SHEN Cong-wen had a clear time view of enlightening modernity in real life. In his essay Responsibility,
for example, based on the time view of enlightening modernity, SHEN Cong-wen criticized fiercely the
party-cleansing movement which happened during the Kuomintang-Communist splitting period and the
classics-reading movement which aimed at restoring ancient ways. On the other hand, in his literary works
implying personal emotions, SHEN Cong-wen queried the enlightening modernity which was dominated by the
progressive linear-vector time view. In his novel The New and the Old which was also themed on the party
cleansing movement, SHEN Cong-wen ridiculed the notion of penalty that the modern execution of shooting
was considered more advanced than the ancient execution of cutting heads. Just as some researchers pointed it out
that, in SHEN Cong-wens views,
the new is not completely opposite to the old, for it is more common to see that a new thing is mixed with old
elements and that an old thing is provided with a new brand. Thus, it can be seen that history does not evolve in a linear
way and that the situation of historical regression in which the new is inferior to the old often happens. (QIAN, 2001, p.
416)
This indicates that SHEN Cong-wen looked forward to modernity out of sense while lingered on
pre-modernity out of sensibility. This envy-resentment complex of modernity forms a temporal polyphonic
structure when it is reflected in literary works of SHEN Cong-wen. He once said he expected to design his works
to express the trend of past, present and future by focusing on combining constancy with change (SHEN, 2002b,
p. 7). Lamenting that people living in western parts of Hunan were out of the historical course of modernization,
SHEN Cong-wen (2002c) once said:
They live with such loyalty and dignify and are responsible for their own fate, In their life with love and hate as
well as gain and loss, they are destined for crying, laughing, eating and drinking. They are more likely to feel the
solemnity of the change of seasons at the summer or winters coming than other people around the world. To them,
history makes no sense. Nevertheless, their changeless and non-recorded history may bring about wordless sadness. (p.
253)
SHEN CONG-WENS AESTHETIC MODERNITY 267
On the other hand, SHEN Cong-wen (2002b) harbored to a certain extent resentment against negative values
of modernity when people living in western Hunan were coerced into the course of modernization:
It superficially looks that all things and events have had great progress. If we look into those things and events
closely enough, we will find that they are gradually in the trend of degradation. The most obvious thing is that the beauty
of integrity, simplicity and kindness remained in the rural community is nearly about to disappear, and unfortunately it
will be replaced by the reality-first and interests-first vulgar outlook on life which has been formed in the real society in
recent two decades. Superstition in which ghosts and gods are respected and the mandate of heaven is revered has been
destroyed by common sense. However, at the same time, the virtue of abandoning profits for righteousness and
distinguishing the right from the wrong has also been lost. Although the term modernization has been popularized in
western Hunan of China, in terms of concrete modern things, only a large number of luxuries are imported to embellish
the urban civilization and first-rate cigarette and various canned goods are massively consumed by people at all levels. In
terms of abstract things, there are only eight-part essays as official documents and sophisticated communication which are
popular in political circles. (p. 3)
In order to keep the constancy characteristic of western Hunan, SHEN Cong-wen created a literary Xiang
Xi (western parts of Hunan) with his dreams, memories, and imaginations to fight against the reality and to
criticize the modern urban civilization. Enlightening modernity glorifies the new and change while SHEN
Cong-wen indulged in the old and constancy, and negated unified prospect of enlightening modernity on
progress.
Bridging the Gap Between Reason and Sensibility

In Western culture, enlightening modernity is the result of the Enlightenment Movement. The
Enlightenment Movement broke shackles of religions and theologies in the Middle Ages, and it showed a
prospect of world based on knowledge and reason after disenchanting the religious world. However, some new
problems have been caused to the social development since the Enlightenment Movement due to the excessive
reliance on knowledge and reason. Just as Schiller (1984) pointed it out that,
if reason has excessive expectations over human beings, and even deprives human beings of the means with which
they exist with animality, so as to keep some kind of human nature (whose lack does not damage human beings survival),
then its nothing but to take away the conditions on which human nature survives. (p. 41)
Modern civilization develops at the cost of suppressing the emotional impulsion (instinct) of human
beings with instrumental reason. Therefore, Western countries have always tried to create an aesthetic Utopia
since Rousseau called on returning to Nature, aiming to make up for the disintegration of human nature.
SHEN Cong-wen inherited the tradition of aesthetic modernity advocated by Nietzsche that sensual life was
the priority. In his essay My Studies, he said:
Immaterialism and materialism as well as science and metaphysics intrude into my ideas and consciousnesses
successively without my permission and their influences on me are therfore in a mess. Since the mode of thinking is in
many ways, it is easier to combine the mode of thinking with personal emotions. Moreover, the mode of thinking is not
Marxs new designs which are well organized and are made for the human society but some individual-centered
segmented impressions or thoughts of the school of Gide and Nietzsche. (SHEN, 2002d, p. 362)
For this reason, SHEN Cong-wen was fond of such themes as promoting the sensibility of human beings and
opposing constraints of knowledge and reason to life.
In After Raining, Sigou enjoyed sexual pleasures with Dajie (an elder lassie) in a wild field on such a
sunny day after raining. SHEN Cong-wen (2002a) could not help but exclaiming, Fortunately, Sigou is illiterate,
or otherwise, this pair of lovers should have been more unlikely to find out such funs in this good weather (p.
276). His other works eulogizing this barbaric libido include Picking Fernbrake, The Inn, and Cedar Seed.
Sex is the most primitive life instinct of human beings. Carrying forward the sensual desire and the subjectivity of
human being, these works describing primitive and instinctive sexual activities are people-centered, for they
challenge feudal ideas and the hypocritical modern civilization which consider sexual activities as nasty events in
the name of morality.
Enlightening modernity upholds knowledge and reason, but SHEN Cong-wen (2002e) was doubtful to this
point:
In terms of the material, human beings progress is obvious. However, in terms of the reason, what is the difference
between the people now alive and the people one thousand years ago? What progress has already been made? Answers to
these questions are indeed doubtful. (p. 60)
In his novel The Story of Meeting Again the Barbaric Man (2002f), SHEN Cong-wen caustically
ridiculed knowledge and reason by describing a barbaric man refusing to accept the modern education and
escaping back to the place which was surrounded by high mountains and marshlands and suitable to his growth.
SHEN Cong-wens critical comments on the modern civilization are expressed more often in his novels themed
on the urban civilization critique. According to SHEN Cong-wen, it is knowledge that makes the urban people
become pathetic and hypocritical.
To SHEN Cong-wen, it is indubitable that the development of any culture has its advantages and
disadvantages; Xiangxi is the symbol of nature and health and its primitive culture symbolizes ignorance. In
Cedar Seed (2002g), SHEN Cong-wen spoke highly of the primitive and strong vitality of human beings while
criticizing that human beings were never ready for the mercy from others or themselves. In Xiaoxiao (2002h),
the heroine Xiaoxiao could not control her own destiny from beginning to end. People in Xiangxi live a
primitive, authentic, and natural life, and therefore, they lack the enlightenment of reason. Their world of reason
is always in an unawakened chaotic and dormant state, which is contradictory to the urban civilization advocating
reason. It also made SHEN Cong-wen upset, for he was in the conflict and confrontation between two
civilizations. He once said, the cognition on both sides bring many troubles to me, and the conflict and the
incompatible life make me separated from happiness forever (SHEN, 2002i, p. 306). To him, the aim of
criticizing modern civilization is not to call on returning to the barbarism and instinct. Similarly, the return of
aesthetic modernity to sensibility does not mean it completely abandons reason. China was then confronted with
domestic strife and foreign aggression, and reason was not as too much as in Western countries but obviously
insufficient. SHEN Cong-wen spared no effort to describe the primitive sensibility of people in western Hunan
in his works, for the purpose of rectifying the unbalances of human nature caused by the deformed development
of reason in modern civilization. He also wanted to integrate the primitive, strong, and authentic vitality with
beauty and kindness, leading the pursuit of truth to the pursuit of beauty and kindness as well as leading the
pursuit of the natural state to the pursuit of the moral state, so as to complete the transition from the human nature
to the divine nature. He finally hoped to unfasten the fast knot interweaving nature and culture due to the lopsided
development of human society and use the integrated culture to reshape national characters of the Chinese nation,
so as to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and to focus the eyes on the outlook of human beings.
Aesthetic Utilitarianism and Aesthetic Redemption

Pursuing literary and artistic independence and self-discipline is a distinct characteristic of aesthetic
modernity. SHEN Cong-wen firmly insisted that the literature discipline should be independent, and he called on
retaking literature as a department of academic science.
The solemnity of academic science lies in the pursuit of genuine knowledge and the wide application of free
criticism and exploration spirit, which is exactly the necessary condition for producing great literatures. Super-utility view
of academic science has been recognized as one principle of academic progress in national education design, and it is
beneficial to the national development. (SHEN, 2002j, p. 295)
SHEN Cong-wen made a severe criticism on the almost-enough phenomenon which was widely discussed
in the literary world, and he held that the reason for the loss of artistic individuality is that writers had too close a
relation with the era and they took literature as political and commercial tools and they did not attach importance
to the laws of literature itself. According to SHEN Cong-wen, a writer was evaluated by his or her literary works,
so the writer should take literature as religion, be a willing martyr of literature and never hold a playing or fad
attitude towards literature.
What we should do now is to persuade writers not to play literature. We should pay much attention to any positive
attitude opposite to the playing attitude towards literature. Literary utilitarianism has become a diction which can
degrade literature to a vulgar thing. Nevertheless, if the utilitarianism can change our weakness into health, the bad into
the good as well as the unbeautiful into the beautiful, it still has its advantages. (SHEN, 2002k, p. 40)
It may seem contradictory that SHEN Cong-wen advocated literary super-utility view on the one hand and
stressed literary utilitarianism on the other hand. In fact, this is out of his Chinese-style misunderstanding and
transformation of Western aesthetic modernity. It is notable that literary utilitarianism proposed by SHEN
Cong-wen is obviously different from left-wing literature which is intertwined with politics and Shanghai-school
literature which has a collusive relation with business. It is also different from Western aesthetic modernity which
simply takes aesthetics as its representation. It is essentially a kind of aesthetic utilitarianism interweaving
aesthetic independence with mind enlightenment, and it is an ideology of aesthetic modernity with distinct
Chinese characteristics.
To SHEN Cong-wen (2002l), literature should be given the historical mission of reconstructing tools:
The society must be reconstructed, which should start with reconstructing literature. After the literary revolution,
literature can be used to evoke the whole nations emotions which were restrained by power and to stimulate the whole
nations reason which was shriveled and distorted by fortune. Both emotion and reason must be emancipated, and new
literature must take many responsibilities for the emancipation of emotion and reason. (p. 375)
In his article Contributions of People in Western Hunan to New Literature Movement (2002m), SHEN
Cong-wen directly equated new literature movement to tool-reconstructing and tool-reusing movement. To
him, major problems of China lies in poverty, foolishness, and selfishness:
There are solutions to the problem of poverty in material, so it is easy to solve. However, the problem of foolishness
should be solved through planting new educational ideas into the mind of some conscientious people. In each educational
phase from elementary school to college, educators should pay attention to how to cultivate peoples emotions, evoke
their emotions, broaden their emotions and explore their emotions. (SHEN, 2002n, p. 392)
Literature is just the best carrier for the religion of beauty and love. To him, a good literary work should not
only provide people with a sense of truth and beauty but also possess a force leading people to a tendency towards
kindness. He believed that beauty is a form of kindness, and the progress of a culture is just a symbol of pursuing
kindness or beauty (SHEN, 2002o, p. 343). Anyway, the aesthetic utilitarianism advocated by SHEN Cong-wen
is different from the absolute aestheticism and the absolute moralism, for it centered on combining aesthetics
with life and it is an art for life. Moreover, its ultimate orientation lies in the understanding of life, in other words,
life is provided with divine ideology.
Conclusion
SHEN Cong-wen had always spiritual beliefs in advocating divinity. He thought that the divine spirit had
the power to prevent human spirits from being degraded in the age lacking values and beliefs. Human beings are
able to recreate divinity and use the abstract divinity to prevent the degradation from being expanded and then to
provide the new life with stimulation and enlightenment (SHEN, 2002p, p. 362). He dealt with the difficult
situation where human nature and beliefs lose due to enlightening modernity by providing the divine ideology
with the function of redemption. In the modernity context where divinity and enchantment are abandoned, SHEN
Cong-wens divine ideology is of the significant meaning of aesthetic redemption.
However, the orientation of aesthetic redemption is not limited to this point. SHEN Cong-wen deemed that
the understanding of life enables one to make out how humans divine characters are related with humans evil
characters in a negative way, to understand various life forms, and to consider other things beyond personal life
experiences (SHEN, 2002q, p. 494). Moreover, he held that the ultimate orientation of understanding of life lies
in integrating vitality of individuals into efforts of the whole nation in making progress. In this way, aesthetic
redemption has the meaning of mind enlightenment with Chinese characteristics.
Indeed, just as LIU Xiao-feng (1998) pointed it out, there is no Chinese modernity which is absolutely
different from European and American modernity, although Chinese modernity is of concrete historical
characteristics, and so it is worth trying to look into the problems of Western countries while investigating the
problems of China and thereafter return to the problems of China (p. 3). Therefore, it is particularly necessary
for us to examine SHEN Cong-wens aesthetic modernity from the double perspectives of both the Chinese and
the Western perspectives.
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doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.007
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Affinity of Mindscape and Landscape in Tao Qian and Emerson
King-Kok Cheung
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

This paper compares the reclusive ideal extolled by Chinese poet Tao Qian (TaoChien or Tao Yuanming) and the
solitude that Ralph Waldo Emerson regards as a prerequisite to self-trust. Tao Qian and Emerson are the fathers of
Chinese and American pastorals respectively. Both the Chinese poet and the New England sage disparage the social,
economical, and political pressures that curtail individual spirit, as well as material aggrandizement and social
conformity, deem nature to be at once salubrious and edifying, and discern correspondences between ecological and
moral well-being. Their differences are no less pronounced. Tao Qian, who considers the countryside to be essential
to solitude, is content to lead a self-effacing pastoral existence. Emerson, who sees nature as ancillary to the divine
spark within each human being, avers that the enlightened soul can find solitude anywhere. While Tao Qian
believes that he can only be true to his high-minded nature by literally removing himself from the world of affairs,
Emerson never shirks his responsibility as a public intellectual and always weighs in with a piece of his mind
concerning pressing social and political issues.
Keywords: Emerson, Tao Qian, solitude, pastoral, Taoism, Transcendentalism
Introduction
Although Tao Qian (also known as Tao Yuanming and Sire of the Five Willows
, 365-427 CE) and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) hail from different epochs and continents, the two
arguably have inaugurated Chinese and American pastorals, respectively. Tao Qian, the preeminent recluse
poet of the Six Dynasties period, spearheaded the Return Home to the Farm tradition, while Emerson (along
with his disciple Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman) ushered in American Transcendentalism. Their
considerable impact went beyond national borders into each others country. Tao Qian has inspired not only
Tang and Song poets such as Li Po , Tu Fu , and Su Shi , but also American Beat writers of the
1950s and 1960s.1 Emerson is venerated not only by American and European luminaries such as Thoreau,
Whitman, Thomas Carlyle, and Friedrich Nietzsche, but also by diasporic Chinese writers such as Gao Xingjian
and Ha Jin. Most remarkable are the multiple convergences of the reclusive ideal of Tao Qian and the
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the International Association for Comparative Study of China and the West,
Peking University, July 14-16, 2013 and Ninth Annual International Conference on Chinese and American Comparative
Literature, Nanjing University, July 18-20, 2014. An excerpt has appeared in Comparative Studies of China and the West 1 (2013:
62-74) and a Chinese version, entitled : (Li Hanping (), Trans.)
will appear in[Chinese and Western Literature and Translation Studies] (2015), Gu Zhengkun
(Ed.). Beijing: Higher Education Press ()). I thank my colleague Michael Cohen for his most helpful
comments; Hannah Nahm and Robert Kyriakos Smith for their scrupulous research assistance.
King-Kok Cheung, Ph.D., professor, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
1
Jack Kerouacs Running Through (Chinese Poem Song) (1961), for example, contains the lines Nobody has respect/for the
self centered/Irresponsible wine invalid./Everybody wants to be strapped/in a hopeless space suit where they cant move./I urge
you, China/go back to Li Po and Tao Yuan Ming.

AFFINITY OF MINDSCAPE AND LANDSCAPE IN TAO QIAN AND EMERSON 273
transcendentalist worldview of Emerson: Both writers take for granted the contiguity of ecological and moral
landscape, of nature and existential solitude; both prefer independent living to social conformity, wealth, or
fame. Despite their parallel conviction in the linkage between topos and ethos, between nature and intuition,
and between landscape and mindscape, they differ markedly in their conceptions of self and nature and in
their visions of the relationship between self, nature, and society. Tao Qian feels the need to cultivate virtue in a
Spartan setting; for him the self should seek to live in unison with nature, which could be found only in the
countryside. Emerson holds that the mind can prevail over any environment; for him both human and nature
(whose meaning keeps shifting in his oeuvre) partake of divine intelligence, and an open mind could access
natural solitude anywhere. The two also respond in disparate fashions to public service and governmental
interference. Tao Qian resigns from official posts and returns to the countryside, which he relishes as a
natural abode. Emerson, though also averse to social organizations, including organized charity and reform
societies, never ceases to be a public intellectual who speaks out vehemently against unjust policies.
Through an analysis of selected works by Tao Qian and Emerson, this paper marks their common religious
and literary predilections, their revelry in nature and solitude, as well as their divergent construals of selfhood
and responses to society. The first section of this essay shows the Taoist inflection in Tao Qians reclusiveness
and Emersonian Transcendentalism, in their reverence for nature and antipathy to social and political demands.
The second examines the confluence of ecological and ontological climates in their works. The third contrasts
their views concerning the relationship between self and nature. The fourth sets Tao Qians quiescence against
Emersons activism. The last illustrates how their spiritual and stylistic orientation comports with their pastoral
ideal.
Taoist Impact on the Reclusive and Transcendentalist Appreciation of Nature

Tao Qian and Emerson are of like mind that human beings should be nature-centered rather than
society-centered. Their mutual conviction in the human spirits intimate relationship with nature is consonant
with Taoism. Tao Qian lived during a period marked by warfare and instability in the years between the
collapse of the Han dynasty (220 CE) and the reunification of northern and southern dynasties by the Sui
Dynasty (589 CE). He embraces a simple life close to nature and decries the pernicious effects of politics and
commerce. Quitting official life to farm in the countryside, he exemplifies the Taoist virtues of humility,
gentleness, resignation, quiescence, and contentment. He says of himself in The Life of the Sire of Five
Willows (hereafter Life), his self-portrait: Living quietly in solitude and spare of speech, he
covets not rank nor wealth [] (Sun 72-73). His Taoist bent is further evident in lines such
as The Tao has been lost And people everywhere are misers of their feelings [];
The life of man is like a shadow-play/Which must in the end return to nothingness [/]
(Sun 72); and in his persistent association of nature with individualist freedom (as opposed to Confucian
emphasis on duty and hierarchy).2 As recorded in his autobiographical Five Poems on Returning to Dwell in
the Country, Tao Qian considers the life of affairs in the city to be a net or a cage, and
the countryside to be his natural habitat: Inadvertently I fell into the Dusty Net Too long I was held within
the barred cage./Now I am able to return again to Nature [] (Acker
2
TaoChien, Six Poems Written While Drunk and Five Poems on Returning to Dwell in the Country, in William Acker,
trans., Tao the Hermit 65, 56; Chinese original in Xu Wei (Ed.), 65, 28. All English and Chinese citations
of Tao Qian are to Ackers and Xus texts unless otherwise stated.

274 AFFINITY OF MINDSCAPE AND LANDSCAPE IN TAO QIAN AND EMERSON
52-53; Xu 24-25). Urban living, to borrow from Macbeth, is cabined, cribbed, confined.
Taoist philosophy also seems to resonate with Emerson. Whether he has actually read The Book of Tao
and Teh (c. 4th century B.C.) is open to speculation, for most scholarly discussions of his indebtedness to
Oriental thought are confined to Persian, Hindu, and Hebrew influences, though his familiarity with Confucian
classics has been documented extensively by Frederic Ives Carpenter (1930) and Arthur Christy (1932) (see
also Dimock, 2006; Gura, 2008; Obeidat, 1988; Packer, 2007; Richardson, 1996). According to Lyman V.
Cady (1961), Thoreaus acquaintance with Oriental texts began with his residence in Emersons home in 1841
(20), and among the Oriental books in Emersons private collection were Joshua Marshmans The Works of
Confucius (1809) and David Collies The Chinese Classical Work, Commonly Called the Four Books (1828),
the latter being also Confucian classics.3 Emerson has obviously read French translations of Chinese texts as
well. The name of the French Sinologist Jean Pierre Abel Rmusat (1788-1832), Christy indicates, was often
on the tongues of the Concordians; Emerson even marked in his journal that Rmusats LInvariable Milieu
(1817) begins with promising definitions of nature (Christy 45, 317). Although LInvariable Milieu is also a
translation of The Four Books, Rmusats Extrait dun memoire sur Lao Tseu, which dealt with parallels of
Taoism, Plato, and Pythagoras appeared in the Journal Asiatique of 1823 (Christy 49). Emerson, given his
exhaustive reading and his familiarity with Rmusats other works, might have come across this article, pace
Carpenters assertion to the contrary: Lao-tse [Emerson] had never read (235). David T. Y. Chen, in
Thoreau and Taoism (1972), reports that another French translation of Taoist texts, G. Pauthiers Memoire
sur lOrigin et la Propagation de la Doctrien du Tao, published in 1831 by Libraire Orientale, was also
available to the Concordiansa translation Chen strongly suspects Thoreau to have read (409). If so, Thoreaus
mentor is unlikely to be oblivious of its content.
Because its author is not a Sinologist, the present paper refrains from claiming any definitive imprint of
Lao Zi on Emerson. Yet one of the most elusive concepts in Transcendentalism, about an all-encompassing
spirit that is the source of all wisdom and intuition, is highly reminiscent of The Book of Tao and Teh: Tao is
invisibly empty,/But its use is extremely plentiful. It is profound like the originator of all things. I do not
know where it comes from/It seems to have appeared before the existence of God [
] (Gu 11). Compare this with Emersons formulation of the
primal Intuition:
Who is the Trustee [of self-trust]? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of
life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition In that deep force, the last fact
behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which
makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that
causes, all philosophy is at fault.4
Emersons premise about a pervasive spirit with no beginning and no end, that is at one with all things, has
an insistent Taoist ring. Gu Zhengkun, the translator of The Book of Tao and Teh, observes: Taoism is
systematically constructed with four integral parts: (1) Tao as the ontological being, (2) Tao as the dialectic law,
3
Cady also makes a convincing case from textual evidence that Thoreau is also familiar with G. Pauthiers Les Livres sacrs de
LOrient (1841), a French translation of The Four Books.
4
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, in Carl Bode and Malcolm Cowley (Eds.), The Portable Emerson (pp. 149-150); all
citations from Emerson are to The Portable Emerson unless otherwise stated. Emerson is also very much influenced by British
poets (e.g., Wordsworth and Coleridge) whose works reflect Eastern philosophical currents.

(3) Tao as the epistemological tool, and (4) Tao as a practical guide to worldly affairs (30). Emersons
Intuition similarly has an ontological, dialectical, epistemological, and practical dimensions.
Also highly redolent of Tao is Emersons bedeviling exposition of nature, which ranges from a
common understanding of the word as designating outdoor terrains such as woods, fields, and mountains to
much more abstract and elusive entities approximating over-soul, divinity, and spirit:
The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other In the presence of
nature a wild delight runs through the man Crossing a bare common I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration In the
woods, too, a man casts off his years In the woods its perpetual youth In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism
vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I
am part or parcel of God I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. (Nature, 10-11)
Like Tao Qian, Emerson sings the praises of nature as a conduit to perfect exhilaration; thrice he uses
the phrase in the woods to underscore its rejuvenating power, wherein one can cast off years, enjoy perennial
youth, and recover reason and faith. Like Lao Zi, Emerson wraps his head around the ecstasy of being at one
with nature. There is no original sin that separates human beings from God, but any mortal can partake of the
beneficent Universal Being, much in the way that Tao is everywhere accessible.
Lao Zis notions about the law of nature and about the paradox of less is more similarly surface in Tao
Qians and Emersons writing. Both the Chinese poet and the American doyen favor a simple life of wandering
in the woods, removed from the din of the city and unencumbered by wealth, power, or official duty. In Peach
Blossom Spring, Tao Qians utopian fable, a fisherman who follows the course of a brook through
a grotto finds a grove aflame with blossoming peach trees (Birch 167-168; Xu 136-137). By leaving his boat
and walking through a small pass, he comes upon a village founded dynasties ago by refugees from wars, draft,
taxation, economic rivalry, and political persecution. No potentate controls the populace in this egalitarian
community, where villagers make their living by farming and raising cattle. After the fisherman returns to his
prefecture he informs the prefect of the unique village, but when officers are dispatched to go back with the
fisherman, he is unable to locate the wonderland again. Peach Blossom Spring, Tao Qian implies, exists only in
the imagination. In the fable, the ruling class is responsible for the ills of society; magistrates often reek of
toadyism, rapaciousness, and oppression. Both officialdom and affluence (which tend to go in tandem) are
deemed corrupting, unworthy of a poets pursuit and detrimental to artistic integrity. Tao Qian himself resigned
from the Jin court to become a farmer and lived in the countryside for 22 years before he died at 63; he is
known for his acerbic refusal to grovel to petty provincial functionaries for his livelihood [
] (literally, How can I bend my waist for five bushels of rice?) (Xu 2; the authors
translation).
Although Emerson never worked as a bureaucrat, he gave up his secure post as Unitarian minister in 1832
when he was scarcely 30, without any assurance that he [would] ever be employed again (Bode ix). After
touring Europe, he retired to the Old Manse in Concord in 1834 to live with his step-grandfather. Like Tao
Qian, he associates official life with spineless conformity and looks askance at social mores, religious creeds,
and national laws: the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that
the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen (Politics, 254). In other words,
individuals must abide by their innate promptings even if these run afoul of official edicts.
Emersons ruminations about solitude and nature, like Tao Qians reclusive ponderings, are grounded in

the presumed opposition between the realm of the collective, the organized, and the worldly on the one hand,
and the personal, the spontaneous, and the inward on the other (Marx 44). Tao Qian senses a palpable rapport
between self and nature; Emerson finds something more dear and connate [in the wilderness] than in streets
and villages (11). A starry sky can induct someone into solitary selfhood:
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read
and write, though nobody is with me. If a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those
heavenly worlds, will separate him and what he touches. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always
present, they are inaccessible. (9)
This passage suggests that solitude is a sublime experience accessible to the human faculty in natures
presence. Just as Tao Qian credits his bucolic surroundings with insulating him from the vulgar tone of the
city and allowing him to regain his intrinsic self (Five Poems, 52), so Emerson lauds the restorative power of
the natural landscape:
To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their
tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man
again. (14)
Both men concur that humankind can get in touch with the sacred core of their beings through firsthand
communion with nature.
Correspondence Between Topos and Ethos

Nature is more than healing and restorative. Tao Qian and Emerson look to it for existential, intellectual,
and moral edification, as well as for poetic and philosophical inspiration. Both, for example, find in plants the
model of carefree and glorious living. Tao Qian muses in Spending the Ninth Day in Solitude:
Our lives are short and our ambitions many

And while one can with wine exorcize all sorrows
Chrysanthemums know how to restrain declining years.
How is it with me the thatch-cottage scholar,
Vainly watching how my time and fate decline
These cold-weather flowers bloom of themselves alone.
I pull close my lapels and sing to myself at leisure,
Which somehow distantly awaken deep emotions.
Even in retirement I do have many pleasures,
Even in my lassitude I still get things accomplished. (Acker 50-51; Xu 22)
The poet learns from chrysanthemums to live with gusto even in the face of adversity or death, instead of
bemoaning missed opportunities or grieving about twilight years. By living life to the brim each morn,
implicitly in natures lap, one can catch intimations, if not of immortality then at least, of vibrant mortality. He
sketches a comparable scenario in Life:
As there are five willows beside his abode, he has called himself by such a title. His short coats of coarse fabric are
patched and knotted, his reed cereal case and gourd shell for liquid food are often empty: but he takes such at his ease
He quaffs at his beaker and chants his poems to find happiness in his sublimating will. Isnt he a free, blissful subject of

our legendary kings at the dawn of the world, the One of Care-free Rule and the One of Heavenly Grace? [
] (Sun
72-75)
The five willows refer explicitly to the shrubs outside his house, but the soubriquet nicely befits a sire
who enjoys a blithe if slender existence. Despite his meager means, he likens his persona to the happy subjects
of legendary kings in prehistorical times (rulers who exercised a Taoist form of libertarianism), exulting at
being a free, blissful soul heedless of material abundance and worldly renown.
Nature also vouchsafes Emerson virtual majesty: Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of
emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria, the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos (14-15). Regal pomp and
circumstance dwarf beside natural bounty, which teaches by luscious examples how to live with aplomb in the
present:
Man is timid and apologetic; he dares not say I think, I am, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before
the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones;
they are for what they are; they exist with God today. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present,
but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.
He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. (Self-Reliance, 151)
The blade of grass and the blowing rose call forth the biblical lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin
(Matthew 6:28), offering the New England seer a lesson congruent with the one set by chrysanthemums for the
Chinese poet. Humankind too can bask in the moment, instead of measuring themselves against predecessors,
submitting themselves to ancient authority, regretting the past, or fretting about the future. For both Tao Qian
and Emerson, the riches that nature affords outweigh any worldly gratifications or recognitions. It is telling,
however, that while Emerson compares these riches with royal splendor (as a close analogue that still falls
short), Tao Qian equates them with the luxury of being a subject under benign rule. This minor difference
perhaps indicates that Tao Qian, much as he has absorbed Taoist thinking, still adheres to the Confucian ideal
of righteous governance, while Emerson seems more than glad to dispense with any form of authority.
Nature, which both Tao Qian and Emerson regard as the perfect classroom, is also conducive to their
common goal of self-cultivation. Far from associating it with untrammeled wilderness or barbarity, the two
thinkers are genteel countryside dwellers who cherish a life of farming and study. Tao Qians thatched hut is
stocked with books; Emersons journal entries attest to his capacious library. The Chinese bard discloses that he
is often so engrossed in his reading that he jovially forgets his meals (Life, Sun 72). He registers in On
Reading the Classic of the Hills and Seas that browsing is his reward after farm work:
Ploughing is done and also I have sown

The time has come to return and read my books
I read at length the story of King Mu
And let my gaze wander over pictures of hills and seas
Thus with a glance I reach the ends of the Universe
If this is not a pleasure where could I ever find one (Acker 99-100; Xu 129)
Significantly, the rapture the poet derives from reading consists in being transported vicariously to hills
and seas; the civilized pleasure unleashed by texts is of a piece with his delight in nature.

Besides providing a blueprint for right living, nature as conceived by both Tao Qian and Emerson
bespeaks a deeper ethic (whether grounded in Taoism or Transcendentalism) than social propriety or received
morality. Tao Qians Peach Blossom Spring situates the utopia in a secluded niche away from corrupt power
holders, ruthless landlords, and greedy merchants; his poetry bears out a synergistic relay between the natural
and ethical environment, between ecological boon and moral well-being. In Six Songs of Poor Scholars
, he associates a prosperous official life with real pain, and contrasts it with the poor scholars rustic
existence:
A bed of straw was always warm enough

And fresh-gathered yams were good enough for breakfast
Poverty and wealth will always war within us
But when the Tao prevails there are no anxious faces
Utmost moral power will crown the village entrance
And purest chastity shine in the western gateway (Acker 132; Xu 118)
The poem, particularly the last two lines, exhibits a noted Taoist paradox: Flex to remain whole;/Bend to
be straight;/Empty to be filled;/Be worn and be renewed;/Seek less and gain;/Seek more and be dazed/The
self-effacing shines;/The humble wins acclaim;/Brag not and be decorated [
] (Gu 58; the
authors translation). Tao Qian intimates that utmost moral power resides in the lowliest abode and purest
chastity issues from the humblest quarter. Tucked away in remote mountains and hidden hamlets, his locus
amoenus is free not only of air pollution butperhaps more importantlyof political infighting and economic
competition. The poet does not, however, downplay the hardship of being indigent. Laments about bitter cold
and gnawing hunger crop up in another canto of Six Songs of Poor Scholars, but the speaker consoles himself
by observing that many ancient sages were in an analogous plight (!) (Acker 127).
Emerson, too, disparages worldly possession and dominion and couples salubrious milieu with ethical
conduct: The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White
House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes (Compensation, 169).
His reasoning, which implies that architectural grandeur and political clout are inversely proportional to inner
peace and personal integrity, may have been inspired by Christs Sermon on the Mount:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven/Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the
earth./Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Mathew 5:2-5)
The blessing for the spiritually hungry echoes the Taoist paradox cited above: Empty to be filled.
However, unlike the Beatitudes, which promise delayed gratification in the kingdom of heaven, the Book of
Tao conveys the benefit of material abstinence here and nowan idea to which both Tao Qian and Emerson
subscribe. Tao Qian shuns worldly profit and official life for the sake of self-cultivation; Emerson considers
the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, [as] the want of self-reliance
(163).
Like Tao Qian, Emerson exalts nature as a discipline that disseminates intellectual and moral truths:
Sensible objects conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience. All things are moral; and in their
boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature every natural process is a version of a moral sentence.

The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference.
As such, everything about a natural landscape educates:

What is a farm but a mute gospel? Nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment, which thus scents the air, grows
in the grain, and impregnates the waters of the world, is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The moral influence of
nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him. Who can guess how much firmness the
sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? How much tranquility has been reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose
unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrinkle or stain? (Nature, 28, 29)
Nature dispenses moral truth; the laws of nature translate into moral laws. A fisherman can learn from the
sea-beaten rock to stand firm against adversity, and presumably also against the tide of public opinion; a man
can learn from the azure sky to remain unruffled and unclouded by earthly storms and stresses.
By far the greatest lesson instilled by Nature is self-reliance. Using imagery that echoes the Taoist paradox
Bend to be straight, Emerson posits:
Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its
poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable,
are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul. (Self-Reliance, 153)
He adamantly holds that what I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think (143). No less
importunately than Tao Qian, he cautions against social pressure that induces one to kowtow to power, fame, or
fortune: Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the better security of his bread to
each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most requests is conformity.
Self-reliance is its aversion. Hence the oft-quoted corollary: Whoso would be a man must be a
nonconformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and
you shall have the suffrage of the world (141). Emerson, ever against herd values, would applaud Tao Qians
decision to tune out vulgar tone so as to recover his inherent personality through self-sufficient husbandry.
Analogies abound between Emersons transcendentalist notions of self-reliance and Tao Qians reclusive
ideas concerning self-sufficiency, as well as between their stances against societal affiliations. The Chinese
poet reckons as obstacles to the Way of Tao what the New England sage remonstrates against as impediments
to self-trustdogma, property, government, discontent stemming from regret about the past, and anxiety about
the future. Both espouse the paradox of less is more, pitching natural living against material comfort, craven
security, and obsequious existence.
Divergent Ideas About Nature, Selfhood, and Solitude

With regard to the definition and interconnection of nature, selfhood, and solitude, one discerns both
striking coincidences and sharp discrepancies between Tao Qian and Emerson. Like-minded in their
coordination of nature and solitude, the two regard studying nature and knowing oneself to be twin pursuits.
But Tao Qians ideas about nature and self veer from Emersons. Tao Qian sees nature as a haven from feudal
ministry; individuals must remove themselves to the countryside to cultivate their native temperament under the
auspices of nature. For Emerson, it is the human mind that must intuit the meaning of the external
worldwhich is not confined to rustic regionsand communicate its lessons. Hence nature can only manifest
itself through agency. He anticipates Darwins theory of evolution in designating homo sapiens as the highest
form to which nature aspires while proclaiming, against both Darwinian atheism and orthodox Unitarianism,

that God is here within (Self-Reliance, 153). Where Tao Qian envisions the self to be living in concord
with nature, Emerson bids the self-reliant individual to explicate the world, generating order out of chaos. The
solitude that Tao Qian savors can be found only in the countryside; the kind that Emerson extols can be found
anywhere by the self-possessed.
Tao Qian associates nature and solitude with the countryside, but not with a hermetic existence. While
distancing himself from hubs of power and commerce, he continues to enjoy being with his family and friends.
He reveals in Retracing My Way Home: A Prose Poem [] that despite ending his intercourse with
the world [], he is pleased with the feeling words of kin and friends [] (Sun
62, 65). He describes the hard work of a farmer providing for his kin: I have never yet utterly failed my
family/Even though cold and hungry/they always had bran and gruel [] (Seven
Miscellaneous Poems, Acker 78; Xu 111). He celebrates the joys of being surrounded by children: Now I
hold hands with a train of nieces and nephews,/Parting the hazel growth we tread the untilled wastes [
] (Five Poems, 56; Xu 28). Above all, he revels in drinking with others: Fond of wine, he
is too poor to resort to it often; knowing this, his kin and friends would invite him to bumpers [
] (Life, Sun 72-73). The poet is a hermit only in the Chinese sense
of choosing to live in a rural area, but still within human earshot. All he needs for his inner peace is the freedom
to follow his hearts desire, as celebrated in Retracing My Way Home:
To be wealthy and to be high in rank are not what I wish; to be in the celestial city is not what I expect. I may wish to
go somewhere on a fair day alone, or to weed and manure the soil Or I may wish to rise on the eastern bank to halloo in
easing my heart, or to compose poetry by the side of a limpid stream. In such wise, I may merge into Nature and come to
my end, delighting in the decree of heaven and doubting nought. [
] (Sun 62-63, 66-67)
It is worth noting here that although Tao Qian stresses his autonomy, the poet sees himselfwhether
fertilizing the soil, composing by a stream, or dissolving back into the earth eventuallyas very much a part of
the landscape. This point will be taken up again later in this papers discussion of the Taoist sense of self as a
vanishing act.
Tao Qian and Emerson share a free spirit and wish above all to be true to themselves and their inward
promptings. The Chinese poet, as recounted earlier, does not deign to grovel for a living. Emerson, who
values honesty and liberty far above tact, likewise refuses to ingratiate himself:
If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions But so may
you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility.
Neither of them is willing to pay lip service to those they dislike. Just as Tao Qian would rise
spontaneously on the eastern bank and halloo to ease his heart, so Emerson intends to do whatever inly
rejoices [him] and the heart appoints (Self-Reliance, 155).
Nature for both men is the repository of knowledge and self-knowledge. Emerson asserts:
The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and
after sunset, Night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows The scholar is he of all men whom this
spectacle most engages. (The American Scholar, 53)
He believes that nature and the human soul are rooted in the same order, that a law of nature is also a

human law, so much so that the ancient precept, Know thyself, and the modern precept, Study nature,
become at last one maxim (54). But it is not always easy to nail down this lay philosophers ideas owing to his
contempt for consistency. While Emerson identifies the open air as the ideal setting for learning and for solitary
communion in his first book Nature (1836), he opines in a later essay with the same title that nature is
ubiquitousas omnipresent as Tao:
If we consider how much we are natures, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force
did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear too much
of rural influences. The cool disengaged air of natural objects, makes them enviable to us chafed and irritable creatures
with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be men instead of
woodchucks, and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk. (Nature
[1844], 111)
In this piece nature and solitude are no longer confined to bucolic locales but within reach everywhere,
even in an ornate boudoir, inasmuch as ivory and silk are also natural products. Nature even cycles as thought
in this essay: Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and
gas. Hence every moment instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form (Nature
[1844], 117). Nature here encompasses just about everything under the sun. The alert mind can be illuminated
by any external objects, including those found indoors or in cities.
If nature is construed much more broadly in Emersons later work, it is also much more contingent upon
the apprehension of an individual who can actively shape the world around it, rather than passively receiving
information from it. Solitude is also increasingly allied with self-reliance, more and more a prerogative of the
inner self:
It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is
he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. (Self-Reliance, 143)
Solitude is nearly synonymous with independence here. This solipsistic mindset, linked to a firm
individual conviction unshaken by popular opinions, must remain intact even when one is surrounded by a
rabble.
Emerson thus goes much farther than Tao Qian in his insistence on self-amplifying solitude. Unlike the
Chinese poet, who never shuns family and friends, Emerson declares that the mental state essential for
self-reliance must preclude any extrinsic interference, including that of ones closest kin:
Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be
in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child all knock at once at thy closet door But
keep thy state; come not into their confusion. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived
with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truths. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law
less than the eternal law I must be myself. (Self-Reliance, 154-55)
Unlike Tao Qian, who remains mindful of his domestic duties, Emerson would turn a deaf ear to all
immanent demands when the transcendentalist spirit beckons. The enjoinment to keep thy state appears to
pun on state of mind and a sovereign state: An individual must hold his own mind supreme like that that of
a sovereign who does not have to heed anyone else. The next injunction (bidding parents, spouse, sibling, and
friend to leave the speaker alone), which echoes 12-year-old Jesuss response to his mother, further elevates the
sovereign into the role of the Son of God. The biblical teen, unbeknownst to his parents, has stayed behind in

the temple in Jerusalem. Upon being rebuked, he ripostes: How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must
be about my Fathers business? (Luke 2:49). Just as Christs retort implies that his unique alliance with God
supersedes earthly filiation, so individuals, Emerson argues, must get their priorities straight by ministering first
to the God within.
Tao Qian and Emerson further differ in their ideas concerning the relationship between self and nature.
Tao Qian, as his line about merging eventually into nature adumbrates, adheres to the Taoist worldview in
which man is not separated from nature either by intellectual discrimination or by emotional response; he is
one with nature, and lives with it in harmony (Levenson & Schurmann 112). As in traditional Chinese
paintings where human figures are often tiny specks amid grand landscapes, so the speaker in Tao Qians
Retracing My Way Home, as noted earlier, quietly blends in with nature, a fleeting presence in the scheme of
things.
In contrast with Tao Qian, who is content to lead a self-effacing georgic existence, Emerson sees nature as
thoroughly mediate, subject to human orchestration:
It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its
kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful One after another his victorious thought
comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes at last only a realized will, the double of the man. (Nature,
28)
Although Emerson is not espousing this as the only true relation between human and nature, the idea of
nature serving humankind, who can also mold it into what is useful, goes against the Taoist grain of being
subsidiary to nature. The last line, with its cocksure sense of nature as the realized human will, would never be
uttered by Tao Qian or any traditional Chinese poet, not even grandiloquent Li Po or Su Shi. Emerson deems an
enlightened person to be the creator in the finite (Nature, 43), with ascendency over nature, which
presumably remains nebulous and inchoate till it is quickened by God-given human intelligence. While
individuals can learn from nature, they must first invest the universe with meanings: We animate what we can,
and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them (Experience, 269).
Writing centuries after Tao Qian, Emerson has also incorporated scientific knowledge in his understanding
of the world, as the epigraph for the 1849 edition of Nature shows:
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form. (7)
The chain at first glance resembles the Chain of Being in Renaissance British literature. But upon close
examination, it looks not so much backward to the Elizabethan world picture as forward to Darwins
evolutionary theory. Instead of depicting humankind clambering up the ladder to the galaxy, man in this
Emersonian hierarchy is the highest order of beings toward which the worm inches upward. Furthermore, while
natural objects such as rose and worm embody fundamental lessons, it is the human eye that divines these
omens. Nature itself cannot deliver any message until it is thus penetrated.
Because Emerson believes human beings to be endowed with godlike intelligence, cultivation of the self
takes on very different forms than those found in Confucian or Taoist literature, in which the self must exist in

harmony with the social or natural scheme of things. In Confucian culture, self-cultivation is often associated
with self-control, self-restraint, even self-abnegation, and with learning ones place in multiple hierarchies.
Although Taoism gives freer reign to the individual spirit, a human being, as one miniscule cog in the universal
wheel, must not strive for a detached existence. In the words of Joseph Levenson and Franz Schurmann:
Nature is not merely observed, for observation implies separation of ego and objecta separation which, for the
Taoists, isolates the self, thus condemning it to the striving they hold vain and to the suffering they see as the inevitable
concomitant. It is identification with nature that banishes consciousness, a consciousness that in the last analysis is always
and ominously of self. (112)
This Taoist diffusion, if not dissolution, of self, which has found its way into much of Tao Qians poetry,
is anathema to Emerson.
The Taoist and Transcendentalist construals of self and of the relation between self and nature are in some
way encapsulated by Tao Qian and Emerson. William Ackers translation of one of Tao Qians poems evinces
this dissonance between a discrete self and one that is Taoistically absorbed:
Renouncing my cap of office I will return to my old home

Never more entangled with love for high position
I will nourish my REAL self under my gates and thatch
And by doing this be all the better known
(Written in the Seventh Month of the Year Hsin-chou while Passing Tu-kou in the Night on my Way back to
Chiang-ling for my vacation [], Acker 111; Davis 70-71; Ackers emphasis)
The line rendered as I will nourish my REAL self is at variance with the Chinese expression
nurture natural disposition and cultivate truthbetraying the translators Western bias for an inalienable
self. In the Chinese idiom, nurturing disposition and cultivating truth are cognate pursuits, and the idea of an
irreducible ego is notably absent. Tao Qian implies that it is through identifying with natureand definitely not
through raising self-awarenessthat one can attain enlightenment. A related mistranslation occurs in the phrase
be all the better known. What the poet desires is not worldly prestige but a sense of honor. Tao Qian may be
recasting a saying in Analects: Be not grieved that you are not known, but seek to be worthy of being
known [] (Analects IV: 14; Collie 14). He makes this
distinction himself when he writes: After our death our name should also perish. Should we not labour
To do good in such a way that men will love us for it [?]
(Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, Acker 46-47; Xu 18). Elsewhere, Tao Qian has also lamented that The Tao
has been lost And people everywhere are misers of their feelings And think of nothing save keeping their
reputation [] (Six Poems Written While Drunk, Acker
65; Xu 65). He is unlikely to be vain along the same vein. A. R. Daviss translation of these linesIll
cultivate truth under a cross-beam door;/So may I make myself a name for goodness (I: 83) seems closer to
the original meaning.5
Solitude for Tao Qian involves reclusiveness and asceticism; it is affiliated with intellectual independence
in Emerson, in whom self-cultivation amounts to developing complete trust in ones intuition, to the degree of
5
Daviss wording also provides an uncanny parallel to Emersons oft-quoted (and Confucian-sounding) exaltation: He who
would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness (Self-Reliance,
141). Both Tao Qian and Emerson yearn for an authentic core of being rather than a hollow reputation.

making light of the teachings of past saints and savants and being deaf to the criticism of ones peers. Instead of
seeing humans as dissolvable specks in the universe, he contends that a true man is the center of things.
Where he is, there is nature (Self-Reliance, 147), while noting the poverty of nature and fortune beside our
native riches (154). Because nothing is grander than the self-reliant mind, which holds its own compass,
solitude for Emerson does not entail actual mountain retreat: Think alone, and all places are friendly and
sacred. The poets who have lived in cities have been hermits still. Inspiration makes solitude anywhere
(Literary Ethics, 105).
The restive independence Emerson champions differs from Tao Qians pragmatic self-sufficiency. Urging
individuals to harken to their own callings without dreading public censure or hankering after popular acclaim,
he famously exhorts: Hitch your wagon to the star. He uses this sidereal axiom twice (once with a different
possessive) in Society and Solitude: Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch
his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. And again: Hitch your wagon to a star.
Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Work rather for those interests which the
divinities honor and promote (Society and Solitude, 25, 27). Deployed in the first instance to describe human
ingenuity in harnessing the forces of the elements and in the second to inspire humankind to harbor high
principles, in common usage the phrase is often used as an exhortation to pursue lofty enterprises and to have
faith in ones unlimited potential.
Although both Tao Qian and Emerson view knowing oneself and knowing nature as inextricably
intertwined, the grand entelechy signaled by Emersons starry metaphor differs from Tao Qians low-key (if
epicurean) pursuit. In lieu of the boundless confidence of the American lecturer, who proclaims, Speak your
latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense and Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string
(Self-Reliance, 138, 139), Tao Qian describes himself as spare of speech [], writing merely to
please himself and show his bent [] (Life, Sun 73).
Relationship Between Self and Society

The starkest difference between the two pastoral enthusiasts is their relationship to the world of affairs.
Tao Qian, after his stints as civil servant, abstained completely from bureaucracy and ensconced himself in a
rural backwater. He even changed his name from Tao Yuanming to Tao QianQian meaning hiding or
submergingsignifying his resolve to escape from the public eye and to avoid the tarnishing effects of
official life.
Christy surmises that Emerson was nudged by his friends to do the same (possibly to go somewhere akin
to the Peach Blossoms Spring): [Amos Bronson] Alcott might have begged him to enter the ill-fated
Fruitlands venture. Thoreau was considering Walden (126). Fruitlands and Brook Farm were two of the most
well-known Utopian communities of the mid-1840s. Emerson might be reluctant to join because of his distaste
for group venture, for these were ultimately voluntary enterprises that imagined the reform of the world to be
possible in advance of the reforms of individuals. But Christy, who infers Confucian leanings in Emerson from
the journal of 1843, suspects he stayed put out of a Confucian sense of duty, aligning himself with the Chinese
sage, with Alcott and Thoreau as Chang Tsoo [] and KeeNeih []:
Chang Tsoo and KeeNeih retired from the state to the fields on account of misrule, and showed their displeasure at
Confucius who remained in the world. Confucius sighed and said, I cannot associate with birds and beasts. If I follow not
man, whom shall I follow? [

] (Journals VI: 403; quoted in Christy 126)
Notwithstanding his insistence on resolute intellectual freedom and his reproof of a controlling political
organ (the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen), Emerson remains
scrupulously mindful of his Confucian duty to the state by continuing to be a public spokesman after
resigning as Unitarian minister.
In his opinion, a true thinker must not retreat from an imperfect world but must assay to usher in a brave
new world:
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of
custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor
working wherever a man works. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age. A man Caesar is born, and for ages
after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius. An institution is
the lengthened shadow of one man and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest
persons. (Self-Reliance, 147-148)
Instead of retiring from society, Emerson implores the reader to affront and reprimand, to remove
obstacles to progress, to affirm that outstanding individuals such as Caesar and Christ could advance
civilizations, that every human has the potential to become a vanguard. Drawing a sharp distinction between
geniuses and social institutions, hes all for the one, and none for the other. Instead of succumbing to
institutional constraints, a genuine leader can overhaul the institution.
The obligations of a seminal mind through everyday action are expounded in The American Scholar:
There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, as unfit for any handiwork or
public labor as a penknife for an axe. Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it he is not yet
man. Without it thought can never ripen into truth Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic
mind. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action.
Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not. (The
American Scholar, 59)
Thinking and active living, according to Emerson, must go hand in hand. The office of this scholar of
action is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances (62). He must figure
things out for himself and forego the pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education,
and the religion of society, he must bear the cross of being contrary, endure poverty and solitude, and the
state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society (63). He can
only take as consolation the awareness that he is the repository of wisdom for others, exercising the highest
human functions: He is the worlds eye. He is the worlds heart (63). The American scholar, in short, must
act as the social conscience and communicate the noblest thoughts and sentiments to the public.
Emerson himself never retracts from his self-appointed mission as the worlds eye and heart, as the seer
and conscience of his age; he continues to bring his considerable talents to bear on flashpoint events of his time.
Much as he craves solitude, he maintains that the reason why an ingenious soul shuns society, is to the end of
finding society. It repudiates the false, out of love of the true (Literary Ethics, 105). Much as he begrudged
acting as a public man, he spoke out against three major political issues during his prime: the expulsion of the
Cherokees from Georgia, the war against Mexico, and slavery (Bode xvi; see also Petrulionis, 2006; Menand,
2002). The entry on Emerson in The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography provides a cogent assessment:

It is no slight sign of the greatness of the thinker, that he can leave the amenities of the city and the quietudes of the
forest to stand upon the anti-slavery platform. The subordination of the pursuit of a thought to the love of a duty thus
manifested, may be accepted as the crowning lesson in the life and works of Emerson. (Part 4: 245)
Nature, Spirit, and Writing

Having discussed the points of convergence and divergence in these two men of letters, this paper now
turns to their metaphysics and aesthetics, which are alike informed by their regard for nature. Despite a spiritual
strain that often accompanies their compositions, and the respective Taoist and biblical allusions therein,
neither of them devotes much thought, if at all, to life after death. Their works, presented in limpid and
unadorned verse and prose free of abstruse references, seem natural growths from the soil of old China and
New England. Instead of citing precedents and bowing to hoary authority, they appeal to firsthand experience
and intuition. In both, one finds a tonic blend of piety and irreverence.
The Chinese poet openly embraces the beliefs of Tao as moral and eternal, but he steers clear of ZhuanZis
mysticism and occult folk practices associated with Taoism (such as the search for elixirs via alchemy). Take,
for example, Substance, Shadow, and Spirit:
Appearing by chance/[man] comes into this world,/And suddenly is gone never to return. I have no art/to soar and
be transfigured. I cannot tell you how to preserve life,/And have always been inept/in the art of guarding it. [
] (Acker 45-45; Xu 16-18)
Tao Qian clearly does not place much credence in an afterlife: To be in the celestial city is not what I
expect [] (Retracing My Way Home, Sun 66-67). He is content to bookend life with birth and
death: To be born in the morning possessed of Love and Faith/And die at evening, what more could one desire
[?] (Six Songs of Poor Scholars, Acker 130). The elegy below is a variation on the
same theme of human finitude:
Where there is life there also must be death

Success or failure he will not know again
Questions of right or wrong mean nothing to him now
In a thousand autumnsafter ten thousand years
Who will know whether he had glory or disgrace ?
The only pity is while he was in the world
Of drinking wine he never got enough
(Three Songs Written in Imitation of Ancient Bearers Songs [], Acker 101-102; Xu 132)
The sentiment is replicated in Written on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month of the Year I-yu
:
From ancient times/there was none but had to die,/Remembering this scorches my very heart./What is there I can do
to assuage this mood?/Only enjoy myself drinking my unstrained wine./I do not know about a thousand years,/Rather let
me make this morning last forever. []
(Written on the Ninth Month of the Year I-yu, Acker 121-22; Xu 58).
Though the thought of eventual nothingness sometimes gives rise to melancholy, the poet uses this
unpleasant fact to counsel against transient glory and prompt his readers to make the most of their numbered days.

His recurrent advice is to drink before it is too late. The poet definitely practices what he preaches, as
borne out by one of his several poems entitled Drinking:
I set up my cottage in the world of men ,

Away from the hubbub of horses and carriages
Being asked how it could be thus, I reply ,
My heart stays apart, so secluded must be the spot
In plucking chrysanthemums beneath the east hedge ,
I vacantly see the southern mountains afar ;
The mountain aura hovereth fair morn and eve ,
The birds fly from and back to their nests early and late
There is the pith of truth in all this sight ;
When I am about to say how, I forget my words (Sun 76-77)
The poem is deceptively simple. While the first two quatrains use concrete imagery and everyday
language to answer a simple question and evoke a rustic scene, the last two lines bring the self-analysis to a
philosophical (but not at all didactic) close. The enigmatic couplet invites at least two interpretations. In light of
the title, the poet may be too inebriated to find words to flesh out his insights. Or the insights may be too deep
for articulation, like those referenced in The Book of Tao: The Tao that can be expressed in words/Is not the
true and eternal Tao [] (Gu 3). The pith of truth gleaned by the Chinese poet from his
nature-watch perchance surpasses language; his epiphanypossibly precipitated by alcoholmust be intuited
rather than verbalized.
Drinking is emblematic of Tao Qians disarming and resonant style, which modulates lithely from a
descriptive to a philosophical register. He has indicated in Life that he does not chase after fancy diction or
obscure references, that he takes delight in books, but is not enmeshed in mere words []
(Sun 72-73). On account of his verbal transparency the bard was slighted by his eras critics and only fully
appreciated by later generations of readers (Stuewe 2071). Unlike his contemporaries, who flaunt their
learning by observing rigid conventions, citing literary authorities, and using esoteric references, Tao Qian
writes directly, using down-to-earth expressions and vignettes from country life. In the words of David Hinton,
Tao was the first writer to make poetry of his natural voice and immediate experience, thereby creating the
personal lyricism which all major Chinese poets inherited and made their own (5). He was keenly admired by
Tang poets such as Meng Haoyan and Wang Wei on account of the freshness of his images,
his homespun but Heaven-aspiring morality, and his steadfast love of rural life (Stuewe 2073).
The overlapping contours of rustic vista and moral high ground in Tao Qian anticipates Emersons claim
that particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts (Nature, 19). Indeed, Emersons ideas
about the Over-soul or the eternal One are almost indistinguishable from Lao Zis and Tao Qians
delineations of the eternal Tao. Although the one-time pastor refers frequently to God in his work, his idea of
divinity is much closer to the Taoist universal spirit than to the Judeo-Christian God:
Spirit suggests the absolute. It is a perpetual effect. Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks
most, will say least. We can foresee God in the coarse but when we try to define and describe himself, both language
and thought desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in propositions,
when man has worshipped him intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It is the

organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to it. (Nature, 41)
Here and elsewhere Emersons cogitations about the universal spirit sound exactly the same as the Taoist
paradox about ineffable truth: the highest truth on [Intuition] remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all
that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition (Self-Reliance, 152); My words do not carry its
august sense; they fall short and cold (The Over-Soul, 211). The transcendentalists assumptions coincide
with Lao Zis philosophy regarding the interconnection of everything; accessibility of the Spirit to all;
alignment of the divine and the human (through self-cultivation); manifestation of the comic or
transcendentalist ethos in immanent action.
Like Tao Qian, Emerson is loath to dwell on the afterlife:
Men ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven and so forth These questions which
we lust to ask about the future God has no answer for them [!] It is not in an arbitrary decree of God, but in the
nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow By this veil which curtains events it instructs the
children of men to live in to-day. (The Over-Soul, 219-220; the authors exclamation mark)
A Confucius saying readily comes to mind: If we dont know life, how can we know death? [
?] (Analects, Xian Jin : 11). Emerson, speaking putatively on behalf of God, likewise dismisses
interests in posthumous affairs as low curiosity and urges his readers to channel their energy into the here and
now: work and live, work and live (220).
Stylistically, Emerson also mirrors Tao Qians poetic immediacy, using figurative language spontaneously
to imbue abstract ideas with welcome clarity. There are even uncanny echoes in Self-Reliance of Tao Qians
Drinking. The Chinese poet does not miss stately conveyances, preferring natural resources. The pith of
truth for him is embedded in the profuse mountain air that is available throughout the day, in the birds that go
out with sunrise and return at sunset. Emerson, too, prefers living in sync with nature to modern conveniences:
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much
support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun and it may be a
question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity,
entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. (Self-Reliance, 162)
Had Emerson been Tao Qians coeval, probably he too would have chosen a secluded spot away from the
hubbub of horses and carriages, learning to tell time, build muscles, cultivate wild virtue, and decipher truth
from an invigorating vicinity.
Emerson envisions not only a moral symbiosis between humankind and nature, but also a homological
relation between microcosm and macrocosm, between the inmost and the outmost, so that an unadulterated
individual can readily cull moral lessons from the external world:
The visible creation is the terminus or the circumference of the invisible world. A life in harmony with Nature, the
love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense
of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden
life and final cause. (Nature, 25)
This passage can easily pass for a Taoist gloss, and nature rubs off as much on Emersons style as it does
on Tao Qians. Convinced that every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that
state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture (Nature, 20),
Emerson is no less felicitous at drawing inspirations from the surrounding landscape. In addition to the tropes

of the sun, rain, stars, blade of grass, blowing rose, and worm introduced earlier, he has forged piquant conceits
in lines such as the world globes itself in a drop of dew God reappears with all his parts in every moss and
cobweb (Compensation, 171).
Like the Chinese poet, Emerson flouts the authority of the ancients and the foreign influence of his
contemporaries, recommending instead an original relationship with the cosmos:
Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us,
and not the history of [our predecessors]? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and
through us, and invite us by the powers they supply why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the
living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the
fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship. (Nature, 7)
This passage, in which Emerson bemoans how veneration for past theories has sapped the creativity of his
generation, is also a rhetorical tour de force. He obeys his own precept by seldom citing other authorities to
support his observations, confronting the reader instead with spectacular evidence from the teeming fields.
After posing a series of probing questions, he directs the readers eye to the plenitude of the New World with
three crisp sentences before ending with a simple exhortation, rendered all the more persuasive by the
preceding imagery yoking classical antiquity to the macabre and coupling personal intuition with cornucopia.
Through such graphic imagery the American scholar drives home the point that books by ones forefathers are
no match for nature in providing individuals with the raw material for philosophy and poetry. Each person must
learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of
the firmament of bards and sages (Self-Reliance, 139). He mentions other worthies of the past only to
further bear out his point: the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught
books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought (138-139). These men are great precisely
because they put little stock in their predecessors and contemporaries.
Emerson rivals Tao Qian in articulating his thoughts briskly and winsomely. Self-Reliance concludes
thus:
A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend raises your spirit,
and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can
bring you peace but the triumph of principles. (164)
These sentences cut a fetching arc. Emerson starts by taking the reader (addressed intimately in the second
person) for a seductive rhetorical spin, via a lengthy sentence full of promising scenarios, till she is stopped in
her tracks by the summary enjoinder: Do not believe it. He then ends with two anaphoric sentences, pounding
his message home. The periodical structure, turn of thought, and teasing suspense are of Tao Qians vintage, at
once playful and soulful, proffering instruction and diversion in equal measure. The metaphysical observations
and stylistic maneuvers of these two masters seem part and parcel of their resolute individuality and their
enchantment with nature.
Conclusion
Tao Qian and Emerson speak to readers afresh in this materialist age riddled with social pressures and
ecological concerns. Though separated by millennia and a vast ocean, the two transpacific pillars might be
considered kindred spirits with singular affinities: propensity for rustic living and seclusion; disdain for

establishment, gilded acquisition, and servile conformity; predilection for self-cultivation and recourse to nature
for intellectual and moral guidance; adherence to a spirituality that pertains to the here and now; and preference
for a plain style not laden with erudite allusions or external authorities. Because of their disparate notions of
selfhood, however, the two envisage the relationship between self and nature and between self and society
dissimilarly. Although both thinkers strive to be true to themselves, Tao Qian perceives the self as a relatively
insignificant shadow subsumed by natural landscape (Vast and majestic, mountains embrace your shadow);
Emerson, for his part, adverts to the salience of a unique human intelligence in radiating divine wisdom and
illuminating a higher ethic. Tao Qian can find solitude only in the countryside; Emerson holds that where a
true man is there is nature. Instead of retreating from the public world, he continues to denounce benighted
practices and unjust policies. Still, these two aficionados of solitude share a profound belief in the intercourse
of mindscape and landscape. They see the visible world as a living text awaiting apprehension by a soul attuned
to its lessons, whether during a moment of heightened (if occasionally tipsy) reverie or in a flash of intuition.
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doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.008
D DAVID PUBLISHING
The Same Free Soul Under Different SkyA Comparative

Study About Qiu Jin and Mary Wollstonecraft
From Feminism Perspective
SHI Shao-hua, ZHAO Guo-dong

Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, Huhhot, China

Qiu Jin was a legendary female figure in Chinese modern history; Mary Wollstonecraft has always been regarded
as the founder of Western feminism movement and the earliest feminist as a British writer and philosopher. These
two heroines not only established their own feminism thoughts in their own limited boundary under limited
condition, but most of their feminism ideas are astonishingly similar. Besides, these two heroines never surrender to
a miserable life, painful sufferings, even abuse and betrayals from their beloved ones. This paper analyzes the
different aspects of these two heroines, who are from two different countries and live in different eras, and uncovers
the authors own ideas towards females freedom.
Keywords: Qiu Jin, Mary Wollstonecraft, feminism, comparative study
Introduction
Morning StarRoad of Feminism
Since the year of 475 BC, when ancient Chinas Warring States period began, the long and dark feudal
society spread all over China. This was the beginning in China of men oppressing women, the patriarchy era.
From then on, thousands and thousands of females lost their sacred status which was set up firmly in the previous
matriarchal society, in other words, for well over a thousand years, the collapse of the matriarchal society led to
the fall of females social and financial status.
As is said in Woman Precepts (around 90AD) written by Ban Zhao, a traditional and virtuous lady should
obey the golden rule of the three obedience and the four virtues which tells that the standard woman image is
saying yes to everything a man said and never ever expresses her ideas. Saying something loudly, rationally and
reading some books are considered to be rude and ignorant. In a word, woman was tightly suppressed under
patriarchy and in feudal society. Besides, the policy of isolation toward the outside world made this situation even
worse. New ideas and new thoughts could not penetrate into China.
So under the ruling of feudal society, patriarchy created so many ways of torturing females. Since the South
Tang Dynasty, the emperor Li Yu gave a nation-wide order for females called foot-binding which aimed to make
SHI Shao-hua, lecturer, Master in Art, School of Foreign Languages, Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics.
ZHAO Guo-dong, associate professor, Master in Art, School of Foreign Languages, Inner Mongolia University of Finance and
Economics.
THE SAME FREE SOUL UNDER DIFFERENT SKY 293
womans feet never grow up into normal shapes and sizes but crushed them into three-inch long, lotus-shaped
twisted feet. Foot-binding actually is to make woman feets metatarsal bones dislocated or even fractured through
completely physical power, people would use a special stripe of cloth to twine a girls feet one layer after another,
and this physical suffering began at the age of 4 or 5. Everyday, a girl would wear this set of torture tools,
suffering pains beyond description and because of this, women could not walk quickly or go out of home, some
women even become disabled or even died. There was a local saying that feet binding, tank teardrops. This
extremely evil practice began to torture womens body and mind; women became more physical and mental
inferior to men.
Things were similar in 18th century Britain. Women were treated as inferiors. A ladys marriage prospects
were closely connected with her dowry. It can be seen in Jane Austins Pride and Prejudice (2006) that ladies
were desperate to marry a rich man because a ladys future depended on a man. Elizabeths close friend, Charlotte,
a rational and beautiful lady, married the snobbish and boorish Mr. Collins who had just proposed to Elizabeth
and got ruthlessly rejected. The only reason Charlotte married Mr. Collins was that she did not want to be a
burden to her family anymore. And since her family could not prepare her an abundant dowry, so she had no
choice but to marry Mr. Collins. Apparently Charlotte just could not let go the last chance of marrying someone
who could support her.
In a word, in Britain females were set as inferior to males from birth. Females had always been living in a
world ruled by males and there was no freedom or legal rights for females in the patriarchy society of the time.
Guiding Stars
Often when the feminism movements at home and abroad are mentioned, two figures come to mind because
they are the earliest pioneers, for their extraordinary, profound, and outstanding feminism thoughts; they are Qiu
Jin from late Qing Dynasty and Mary Wollstonecraft from Great Britain.
Qiu Jin was born at a tragedy time of the late Qing Dynasty, when the once splendid China had been torn
into pieces by the Eight-Power Allied Forces with cannon and opium on their hands. They obtained endless
benefits through unfair trade and unfair contracts. But on the bright side, these foreign businessmen also
introduced advanced ideas from the West; particularly the preachers who established several schools for females,
which were the earliest in China. Endowed Human Right, equality for every human beings, and ideas of this
kind now came into this abundant and weak China, giving inspiration to those who were eager for China to be
strong and long for own freedom. Qiu Jin was the earliest and the unforgettable one.
Qiu Jin (1875-1907) has always been seen as the first female leader who advocated and participated in
Chinas earliest woman movement, the first one to accept and spread the idea of equality of both sexes, and the
fundamental founder of Chinas feminism movement. Sun Zhongshan, the President of National Republic of
China, designated Qiu Jin as the honorary of Qiu Association; Mr. Lu Xuns great work Medicine (1919) was
created based on Qiu Jin; President Zhou Enlai also mentioned and praised Qiu Jin for many times. There is no
doubt that with so many honors.
Qiu Jin called women to wake up to pursue their own happiness and to stand up to fight for their own benefit.
She enthusiastically gave out speeches on teaching females to be independent both home and abroad, not only
fighting against the patriarchys powers, but also participating in various liberation groups or associations. In a
294 THE SAME FREE SOUL UNDER DIFFERENT SKY
word, Qiu Jin was a great female revolutionist.

The other great heroine, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), who has been seen as a great British writer,
philosopher, and founder of Western feminism, contributed to womans liberation in Britain. Mary left the
readers beings with her masterpiece, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), which has been seen as the first
internationally influential works for womans movements theoretical system and the base of feminism.
Mary Wollstonecrafts ideas came into being by the late of 18th century, which was called the
Revolutionary Era. The ideas of reason and sensibility advocated by the enlightenment movement and the
onslaught of French Revolutionary changed the arbitrary patriarchy society. Ideologists during the enlightenment
movement fiercely fustigated the inequality and illiberality and fought against the hierarchy and personal
bondage of feudal society. Rousseaus All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and ideas
of freedom, equality and fraternity educated all the human beings, most importantly, people also began to
realize the situation of women, and many women were woken up by the democratic ideas.
The enlightenment movement was a glorious period when talking about respect for individual and for
subject consciousness became more common. Particularly with the Galileos geocentricism, Newtons universal
gravitation, and other scientific discoveries, both educated and common people realized the universal truth
instead of believing only in religion or immortal powers. In 1789, with the coming of French Revolutionary, all
human beings are endowed with God-given rights, being free and equal, and ideas of this kind shook the
scattered and battered feudal society which soon began to collapse. Many women began to realize that a womans
destiny was not set from the moment of birth.
Among these, Mary Wollstonecraft was among the bravest, because in order to experience the magnificent
French Revolutionary, she went to Paris alone. The stay in Paris was terrifying, and she almost died there. Many
friends of Marys were sent to the guillotine (Montero, 2005). During this vivid and afflicting trip to Paris, Mary
clearly saw that women from all fields and ranks joined in the revolution actively and bravely even paid with their
lives. But men refused to meet their promises, instead, continued to take women as the lower rank to men, they
still claimed that women belonged to the kitchen and the yard. This political circumstance provided Mary
Wollstonecraft with a unique perspective of thinking.
From the above paragraphs, it can be concluded that although Qiu Jin and Mary Wollstonecraft were from
different eras and countries, they still have several things in common. The first and the most obvious one is their
rebellion consciousness fighting against patriarchy to purse their own freedom and being themselves. Qiu Jin
went to Japan to pursue truth of saving her country and people while Mary went to Paris to see how female
participated in the liberation movement; Qiu Jin unbound her three inch golden lotus feet to encourage other
women to wake up while Mary Wollstonecraft left her indifferent noble family to live on her own; and the most
important one, both Qiu Jin and Mary Wollstonecraft accepted Rousseaus ideas of being equal and so on, under
these democratic and liberal teachings, the earliest feminism pioneers were born.
The second one is that the two great figures both were living in a changing society where advanced ideas and
old ideas conflicted. The 18th century was a magical era when the long-sleeping independent consciousness
began to awaken and the women with sharp foresight began to observe the patriarchy society they were trapped in
and begin to find their roads to being free and independent. Qiu Jin sensed this turbulent stream of pursuing
liberation and freedom would win the final victory so she never surrendered to destiny or the corrupt Qing
Government while Mary Wollstonecraft noticed that if females did not liberate themselves, no one was going to
rescue them. These two feminism pioneers encouraged women to shake off the fetters of men and familys, to
break away from the feudal regulations trammel, to cast off the stigma and wrong labels imposed by males. The
truth that a woman was born as equal and as smart as man made it reasonable and normal for a lady to have rights
of education and making decisions on her own.
The third one in common is that both the two pioneers had persistent characters. Though many difficulties
stood in their way of pursing freedom, they never gave up but went forward; they never bowed to destiny nor the
outside powers but chose to be true to their own inner desires; though fate intervened at times, they never
surrendered but kept following their dreams.
With these three merits, nothing would stop them. These two figures gave people the understanding that the
true and authentic equality means equality under the law in daily life, both suitable for males and females, and
both in philosophical and social aspect for men and women
Great Women of the Era

Different Childhood Dreams
Since the Opium Wars, the eight powers or the the red hair opened Chinas gates by cannons and violence.
From that moment on, the Chinese people had to suffer pains and suppression from both the feudal rulers and also
the overseas invaders. Especially after the first Sino Japanese war of 1894-1895, the foreign invaders began to
scramble for China, this big juicy cake. All the invaders wanted to subjugate China for her abundant natural
resources and infinite treasures. Facing this dying and critical moment, every conscious Chinese needed to take
up what they had by hand and fight for the countrys independence and existence.
Qiu Jin was born in a royal, traditional, and incorruptible family who in previous generations began to work
for the Qing Dynasty. Qiu Jin accompanied her grandfather and father who transferred from Fu Jian province to
Tai Wan and finally Hu Nan. This experience at a young age gave her a broad experience, multiple perspectives
of thinking, and a strong sense of patriotism.
Qiu Jins hometown was Shao Xing which is rich for countless patriotic personages, such as Da Yu who
dredged the Yellow River for 13 years but never come into his own home even walked by the door gate, peasant
Yao Zhangzi who fought back the Japanese pirates, and Emperor Gou Jian of State Wu who slept on the
brushwood and tasted the gall just in order to take his own state back from his former enemies. Besides those ones,
the famous female poet Li Qingzhao, patriotic poet Lu You and Du Fu were all born in Shao Xing. This
hometowns strong patriotic atmosphere granted Qiu Jin with a strong sense of protecting her country and these
peoples brave stories produced indelible effects on the teenaged Qiu Jins mind which lay a foundation of
patriotism in her heart.
This was quite different from Mary Wollstonecraft whose feminism ideas came from her own miserable and
unhappy experience. Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 from a fallen middle-class family whose father kept
committing family violence and drinking excessively. In order not to give her father any chance of hitting her
mother, Mary had to sleep outside her mothers door during her teenage times. This unstable and poor drifting
experience plant a seed of hatred for men at a young age. Later, her sisters marriage replayed this tragedy again.
On seeing this, Mary rescued her sister by helping her escape from her husbands house. These miserable and
pathetic issues kept taking place until the age of 16. An event changed Mary Wollstonecraft completely. Mary
seldom made friends with others, but Fannie Blood (1774) was an exception. Fannie was an educated woman
whose behaviors and sayings produced a positive effect on Mary.
So Mary Wollstonecrafts feminism ideas originally came from her own dreary and lonely childhood
memories and personal experience which produced limitations on thinking. Her fundamental idea is about how to
become independent through proper education and if possible, not get connected with a man by marriage.
Marriage she saw as a horrible tomb for women due to her fathers image.
Qiu Jin was very different because she treated womans problem with a radical and violent attitude. She
worshiped Bismarcks tough approach very much which settled conflicts through ruthless means (YU, 2007).
During her studying in Japan, Qiu Jin organized a donation activity just in order to help two concubines to be
ransomed free.
Significant Education
Qiu Jin grew up in a rich family which offered her a good education as that she could read and write what she
wanted to. And second, Qiu Jins mother was traditional and kind and her father was generous and democratic;
they gave Qiu Jin the best elementary education by telling her many patriotic stories and always supported her,
even when Qiu Jin decided to dress like a man and participated in revolutionary activities. Compared with Mary,
who just went to the day school for a short while, Qiu Jins education circumstance was much better and this
granted Qiu Jin possibilities of cultivating rational thinking and offered her a broader understanding.
In Marys time and society, it was rare for females to have chances of education. Though there were already
several schools for middle-class ladies, the only purpose of this kind of school was to train ladies to be elegant
and good-mannered so they could marry a better man. Mary was very dissatisfied with this limited education
chance for girls so she brought the claim that society and government should offer more chances for girls to read
and write, not just for future marriage but on the sake of developing a ladys own way of thinking and expressing
which was based upon her own story and inner desires.
But Qiu Jins ideas of asking government to offer girls more chances of having education came from the
thoughts that only the ability to know about history can give ability to protect ones country. Even with this
difference, Qiu Jin and Mary Wollstonecraft share one thing in common, to give girls more chances of education
because only education can develop a girls ability to support herself, to be financially independent, to be free
from mans supervision, control, and suppression.
Pathetic Marriage but No Pathetic Women
Even though Qiu Jins parents gave her free chances of accepting education, such as read and write, still they
were feudal inside. Qiu Jin suffered from foot-binding and seldom went outside the home.
Having seen too much invaders bullying common people and Qing Dynastys flabby policies, Qiu Jin
decided to learn martial arts, horse-riding, fencing, and archery, even when her feet were too small to tolerant
these fierce actions. After practicing, Qiu Jins feet were always bleeding and swelling. This experience cast an
iron-strong personality of Qiu Jin.
At the age of 22, under her parents and matchmakers arrangement, Qiu Jin reluctantly married Wang
Tingjun, who possessed a woman face, slim body figure, and a weak personality. The most important part is that
Wang Tingjuns father had been a poor and ignorant farmer; but became rich overnight since he became Zeng
Guofans accountant because he was one of his distant relatives (YU, 2007).
After marriage, Qiu Jin became more and more distressed. Qiu Jin longed for a husband who had shared
interests, knowledge, personality, and character, but Wang Tingjun certainly was not the right man. Born in a
family which highlight money more than inner heart surely granted Wang Tingjun a personality which can be
described as stingy, snobbish, indifferent, disloyal, bragging, selfish, whoring, and nasty. Qiu Jin once said that
she acted as the husband and Wang Tingjun acted as the wife. Later, after Qiu Jins fathers death, Family Wang
began to abuse Qiu Jin, even once Wang Tingjun hit Qiu Jin. Qiu Jin could not put up with this cold-blooded,
snobbish, and corrupted husband anymore, she went to Japan to pursue truth of saving herself, saving Chinese
women and China.
But married a rich man who can support wife and family is luckier than being cheated. Mary Wollstonecraft,
who advocated never getting married was cheated and betrayed several times. She acclaimed to the public that
she was crazy in love with a married man who accepted her affection but abandoned her two years later. This
broke Marys heart. Later, on a trip to America, she met a loafer who once again cheated her and this time, Mary
Wollstonecraft gave birth to a baby girl. When the dawdler wanted to discard her and her daughter, Mary
Wollstonecraft attempted suicide twice. These grieved love affairs made Mary Wollstonecraft begin to reckon on
a womans outlet rationally and calmly.
So it is easy to say that no matter whether you are educated or what kind of family are you from, marriage is
always the same. Marriage is a cage where you can never fly out or live on your own mind. It is pathetic and
hopeless if a woman wants to take her husband as the main resource of happiness.
Qiu Jin was a persistent lady who never surrendered to difficulties or unfair destiny, which made her will to
revolt even stronger and more fiercely. Based on her own experience, she brought out the idea of revolution
should begin from ones own house, which is called family revolution. This is the starting line of social
liberation. On how to realize family revolution, Qiu Jin put forwards her primary feminism ideas of self-reliance,
learn skills, sociable.
Self-reliance means that woman should cultivate the belief that woman can support herself through learning
some skills that can make woman become financially independent. Not depending on man for money, woman can
have the basic condition of pursuing her own dream. Woman should choose to take up some skills according to
their own qualification, interest, and future plan. And if possible, education is the first priority. And the third one,
sociable means woman should unite to set up some organizations to achieve freedom and happiness together. Mr.
Guo Moruo once commented Qiu Jins feminism ideas like this, Qiu Jin not only set up an example for Chinese
womens liberation movement, but for the national liberation movement as well (as cited in ZHOU, 2009, p.
113).
While with the painful lessons, Mary Wollstonecraft began to observe how the patriarchy society treated
women. Why could not the women live as wonderfully and freely as men did? Why were women always the
inferior and disadvantaged ones? Mary Wollstonecraft accepted Rousseaus ideas critically. She supported his
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity,
but on the other hand, she could not agree with his ideas that women belong to the second sex and should obey
men unconditionally. Based on her experience, observation, and reckonings, Mary Wollstonecraft stressed that
rationality and merit are the same, if rationality is power granted by God, then, this tie connected God and human
beings, thus should be the same for both sexes.
She explained that womans inferiority can be taken as physical weakness, ignorant, narrow-minded,
superficial, which could be traced back to their limited and insufficient elementary education. In other words,
womans inferiority came into being after birth.
Being encouraged by the enlightenment movement and rationalism, Mary Wollstonecraft reconsidered all
the advanced theory and ideas; she established her own unique feminism ideas with a critical thinking and bold
attitude.
Qiu Jins feminism ideas came out of life, familys edify, a miserable marriage life, enlightening ideas
obtained from studying in Japan and intimate friends during the revolution activities. All those experiences
helped Qiu Jin cultivate unique revolutionary ideas. Secondly, Qiu Jin always contended to achieve liberation
through violent armed rebellion and revolution. While studying in Japan, Qiu Jin found it very necessary to
spread revolutionary, free, and liberation ideas through making good and persuasive speeches. So she practiced
oral ability a lot by joining in the speech association and initiatively to improve her oral skills. Qiu Jin once said,
it is a must to civilize common people and touch them by addressing (SHEN, 1988, p. 24). Besides this, Qiu Jin
established Colloquial Chinese Newspaper which aimed at women whose culture was not so high.
Coincidentally, in 1784 Mary Wollstonecraft established a school for ladies. Mary Wollstonecraft criticized
the 19th centurys popular custom that women were served as the decoration of their living rooms; women were
destined to take orders from their masters, husbands. Wollstonecraft pointed out that the social education for
woman made the noble ones become flighty and the poor ones become lost in vanity and indulge in creature
comforts. So on education for women, Wollstonecraft put forward several ideas. The first one is that it is very
necessary for women to accept proper education on rationality. She pointed that the perfect education aimed to
build up body strength, cultivate spirit and a carefully-planned rationality practice, and then to grant women
independent personality and habits. Wollstonecraft did not deny womans born characteristics, such as emotional,
kindness, and passion.
Second, Mary made the importance of family education and school education clearly. She suggested that the
country should establish day schools to realize national education (LIU, 2008). This idea came up after Mary
compared the advantages and disadvantages of private schools. She always held the idea that public ethics came
after personal ethics. The children, especially the girls should go to school together to develop the most priceless
affection-friendship and cultivate each others mental power and independent character.
Third, it is rare and commendable for Wollstonecraft (2006) to bring forward an idea of mothers education.
A mother always succumbed to the father in a familys relationship.
Mary Wollstonecraft showed her unique and advanced feminism ideas through her actions, such as
establishing schools and education focused on rationality for females, but this also made her isolated from other
females. Marys occupation and friend group made her become lonelier. Her ideas were sharp and unique; the
males took her as talented and radical, while the female friends took her as a bit weird.
In contrast, Qiu Jins behavior was much more popular and got most peoples support and understanding.
While she was studying in Japan, many classmates and friends strongly supported her by joining in the revolution
organizations and she was once chosen the team leader of Death squads when they heard that the Qing
Government forbade patriotism activities and restrained their freedom. The students abroad followed Qiu Jin
devotedly and passionately.
Her newspaper Chinese Woman gave the massive number of Chinese women who were in darkness and
under patriarchys control for thousands of years a deep and vivid lesson on liberation and pursuit for happiness.
This was the first time they were encouraged to think about themselves and think about their social status or a
future of being herself without mans, or husbands, or even sons guiding, management, and supervision.
Besides education, Qiu Jin firmly believed in an armed struggle to overthrow the Qing Government and
expel foreign invaders. Qiu Jin had long realized that only the social liberation movement can liberate women
completely. She practiced martial arts at a young age, and after coming back from Japan, she and her fellows
organized an uprising in 1906 in Hu Nan, which was her hometown. Qiu Jin was also an exert in explosives
making. She was the chairman of Da Tong school which trained military talents and purchased and taught
students how to use weapons, such as guns, swords, and knifes. Many students described Qiu Jin as wearing in
mans uniform, holding a browning pistol in chest and an enemy knife at the waist, commanding students while
riding a horse. Students and kids called her Uncle Qiu instead of Aunt Qiu.
To conclude, Qiu Jin yearned to set up a whole-new society where both males and females respect each
other through armed struggles, while Mary Wollstonecraft longed for a new relationship between female and
male which can be called equal and cooperative. This was a new relationship which was integrated with mutual
caring and mutual respect.
All in all, in several aspects, Qiu Jin was more thorough, radical, and rational than Mary Wollstonecraft. Qiu
Jin always believed in violent means to overturn the old and set up a new one. If the Qing government was too
corrupted to be placed trust and hope on, then it should be overturned. While, Mary Wollstonecraft showed a kind
of compliance to patriarchy, which can be inferred from her propositions, such as how to be a qualified and good
mother and housewife, both two sexes belong to their exclusive fields, and so on. Mary Wollstonecraft
strengthened on regulation rather than setting up ones own domain.
Lovable Friends
With the invasion of the big powers from across the world, Beijing was turned into a semi-feudal and
semi-colonial city for about 100 years which made Beijing a place of fusion, new ideas, and sparks. The earliest
and the most radical Chinese Revolutionary League were all born here, such as Tung Meng Hui. These leagues
established various newspapers to awaken the common people, gave endless touching speeches to teach common
people the truth and principles and even organized many brave uprisings to achieve their dreams of having a
strong, independent, and rich China.
Qiu Jin accompanied her husband to pay for official positions three times. Each time Qiu Jin went to Beijing,
she became more and more rebellious at her husbands behavior and the late Qing Governments corruption and
incompetence; on the other hand, her motivated friends, such as Wu Yingzhi couple, doctor Takayuki from the
imperial university of Peking, influenced her greatly. The trips to Peking became more enlightening and
stimulating than miserable.
Besides these two earliest guides who enlightened Qiu Jins self-consciousness awaking, Qiu Jin was also
greatly encouraged and inspired by Sun Zhongshan, who gave Qiu Jin directions, Tao Chengzhang who was her
comrade and ally, and Chen Tianhua, who strongly shook Qiu Jin by throwing himself recklessly into the ocean
to wake up Chinese people to stand up and fight.
While for Mary Wollstonecraft, she got the publisher Joseph Johnsons appreciation, who was actually the
first one to encourage Mary to write what she thought; Thomas Paine, one of the most distinguished British
radicals, appreciated Marys talent and always had heated debates and discussions with her; Henry Fuseli, the
Swiss artist; even her rival, Edmund Burke, who wrote Reflections on the French Revolution (1909), stimulated
her to write her classic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
In brief, the birth of Qiu Jin and Mary Wollstonecrafts feminism ideas came from their own experience, but
also under the catalyst of their peers and instructors.
Conclusion
A shooting star flashes through the sky, leaving sparks and flames for human to see. Qiu Jin and Mary
Wollstonecraft just look like two guiding stars, who were brave enough to be themselves and confident to create
their own world.
If Qiu Jins feminism ideas are tough and violent, then, Mary Wollstonecrafts feminism ideas are relatively
gentle and mild.
Qiu Jin was one of these bright intellectuals. She always dressed like a man which symbolized that she
longed to be a man who could rescue country without any doubt. Her distinctive and radical feminism ideas
derived from a strong sense of patriotism. She realized that only the complete social liberation movement can
bring truly and meaningful liberation for women.
Mary Wollstonecraft brought out an improved way for the two sexes to live in harmony. That is first to offer
women equal education and then pour rationality ideas into womens education. Third, the country should not
ignore the significance of a mothers education.
The two heroines both strengthened the importance of education for females. Education is the first and
necessary door to open another world for women. They established magazines and newspaper and wrote articles
to show their rebellion against mans discrimination. They disagreed to be taken as mens attachment or slave.
They called out loudly for equal rights in education, working, and marriage.
Qiu Jin and Mary Wollstonecraft are among the earliest female pioneers in the feminism movement. Their
awakening of the subjective consciousness led them to conflicts about dream and reality. Facing this confusing
and dark situation, the two pioneers did not surrender but chose to carry on and explore the roads of liberation.
References
GUO, X. C. (2005). (An analysis on Qiu Jins feminism ideas from her works).
, 18(4), 39-42.
GUO, Y. L. (2011). (The unhappiness and fight over marriage of Qiu Jin). , (8), 4-7.
LI, X. Z. (2007). (The construction of Qiu Jins female revolutionist image). ,
(5), 147-152.
LIU, J. (2008). A study on Mary Wollstonecrafts moral thoughts (Masters thesis). Central South University, Hunan Province,
China.
Montero, R. (2005). The female biographies (J. WANG, Trans.). Hainan: South Ocean Press.
SHEN, J. L. (1988). (Talks about the three periods of Qiu Jins democratic ideas come
into being). , (2), 22-26.
Wollstonecraft, M. (2006). A vindication of the rights of woman (Y. WANG, Trans.). Beijing: Central Edition and Translation
Publishing House.
YU, X. Y. (2007). Discussion on the formation of Qiu Jins democratic thought (Masters thesis). Hunan Normal University,
Hunan Pronvince, China.
ZHAO, Y. B. (2007). (Mary Wollstonecrafts gender difference and equality
ideas). , (6), 105-110.
ZHOU, Y. S. (2009). (Qiu Jin and new-woman images in late Qing Dynasty literature).
, (11), 111-115.
doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.009
D DAVID PUBLISHING
The Miniature World in the Genealogy of Yoknapatawha

The Superficial View on Faulkners Novelettes
WANG Shuang, CHEN Qiang

Changchun University, Changchun, China

Some of William Faulkners works were backgrounded by the fictitious county of Yoknapatawha in northern
Mississippi, hence were called the genealogy of Yoknapatawha. His long novels were no doubt the main parts of
the genealogy of Yoknapatawha, while we cannot ignore his novelettes which had the same background. Focusing
on several aspects such as the Southern Spirit reflected from the works, the conflict between the South and the
North, and the images of southern personage, this paper comes to analyze Faulkners novelettes, thus revealing
their respective characteristics, abundant intensions, and the close relationship with the genealogy of Yoknapatawha.
I hope that we can have a more overall understanding and comprehension of Faulkners works through the
superficial analysis in this paper.
Keywords: the genealogy of Yoknapatawha, Southern Spirit, conflict between the South and the North, images of
southern personage
Introduction
William Faulkner (1897-1962) was one of the most important modern novelists in the United States. As
the main representative of American southern literature, he has got better and better comments in the American
world of literature and art since getting the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949. Up to now, he has been a major
focus being studied and commented upon in literary circles.
Faulkner created 19 long novels and 75 short stories, most of which have reflected the local conditions and
customs in the southern USA. Most of the backgrounds of the novels lie in the fictitious county of
Yoknapatawha in northern Mississippi. The characters are mostly the local residents. Faulkners works are
deeply rooted in the southern USA and the incarnation of the hometown in his mindYoknapatawha. His
novelettes do not merely intersect and coincide with the content in his long novels. The important factors of the
genealogy of Yoknapatawha, such as the Southern Spirit, the conflict between the South and the North, and the
distinct images of southern personage, which are represented in his novelettes, are enlisted in the whole
genealogy of Yoknapatawha as long works too. Therefore, in addition to Faulkners famous long works, his
short stories are worth our careful studying and summarizing as well.
The Southern Spirit

Faulkner has displayed southern peoples outstanding spiritual quality and moral sentiment known as
WANG Shuang, lecturer, master, Public Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Department, Changchun University.
CHEN Qiang, associate professor, Ph.D. candidate, Public Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Department, Changchun
University.

THE MINIATURE WORLD IN THE GENEALOGY OF YOKNAPATAWHA 303
Southern Spirit in the novel. Meanwhile, seen from another point of view, the display of Southern Spirit is
extolling the whole human spiritual wealth as well. So among the whole works in the genealogy of
Yoknapatawha, Southern Spirit is one important clue that penetrates from the beginning to the end, which is in
conformity with the writers original creation intention.
In their specific historical and geographical environment, southern people have cultivated a special
emotion about land and nature. As the pioneers of the borderland and the explorers of the wilderness, they
irrigate their own homeland with their industrious sweat. During long-term agricultural production and the
hunting activities, they come to learn the importance of land and nature by contacting with them. Nature and
land have determined the southerners mental outlook just as parents, so the most outstanding representation of
Southern Spirit is the respect and love of nature and land. Their valiant and industrious spirit to bear hardship is
shown during contact with nature and land.
Another important aspect of Southern Spirit is the love of hometown and homeland. This kind of affection
exists in the southerners deep soul and is constantly passed down from one generation to another. The
southerners are proud of this spirit which is flowing in their body like blood. It is because of the southerners
industry and bravery that they have irrigated the hometowns which they depend on for existence with their
sweat. The South, this stretch of land, is full of peoples ideals and faiths of many generations, which they are
willing to devote everything to defending without the fear of sacrifice. The southerners come to abide by and
pursue their outstanding qualities such as honor, pride, and principle out of their love of homeland. They pay
more attention to peoples moral character, the sterling value, and the meaning of peoples life. They also attach
importance to the position of the human emotion in ones life such as love, friendship, and kindred, which is an
important aspect of the outstanding morality in the South. The love of homeland is not only confined to the
South, but it can sometimes surmount the regional idea, becoming the love of the whole motherland. This is
also the concept of value that Faulkner affirmed when getting the Nobel Prize.
In Faulkners short stories, there are a lot of concerns on the excellent moral quality of the South. The
reverence for the nature and the land demonstrates the southern peoples valiant and industrious spirit to bear
hardship; and the love of the homeland demonstrates their pursuit of honor and the noble understanding of the
value of life. Meanwhile the writer also emphasizes that these outstanding moralities not only belong to the
South, they also belong to the entire United States as well as the whole mankind.
The Conflict Between the South and the North

A series of stories in the genealogy of Yoknapatawha mostly took place before or after the Civil War,
during which a series of incidents such as the breaking out of the Civil War, the failure of the South, the
establishment of the New South and the first and the second World War, etc. have had an enormous impact on
the South. With the original self-sufficient agricultural mode of production, the plantation economy and slavery
broken, the South was forced to enter the western modern society from the traditional society. During this
course, all respects of the southern production and life have changed unprecedentedly, integrating with
civilization in the North progressively. This has brought the problem of contradiction and conflict between
the South and the North: the conservation in the South and the progress in the North; the traditional morals in
the South and the industrial civilization in the North. All sorts of differences were rubbing and colliding
constantly. The South at that time was under a kind of special historical background, seeming to come to the
crossroads in the face of great turn. The inexorable declining trend of the southern economic and political

304 THE MINIATURE WORLD IN THE GENEALOGY OF YOKNAPATAWHA
system has not merely been represented in the long works, but in his short works, the representation of this kind
of theme is equally excellent. According to the three respects of economy, politics, and concept, we can analyze
the contradiction and conflict which the writer wants to display.
Firstly, the most radical difference between the South and the North lies in their different economic
systems. The mechanical industrial civilization in the North has already permeated through the land in the
South via extensive channels. In contrast, the original agricultural mode of production seems to lag behind. In
this case, it is bound to have a strong impact on the original notions of labor and the concepts of life.
Secondly, the political systems in the South and the North are two incompatible sides as fire and water
during the Civil War. As a vivid historical picture, Faulkners novelettes have a vivid description of it which
you can see clearly in the story My grandmother Millard, General Bedford Forrest and the Harry Gold River
War. The story fully demonstrated the southern plantation owners attitudes toward the Civil War. The
grandmother, General Forrest and others attitudes toward the northern army clearly illustrate the political
conflict of the South and the North. Another novelette, Immortality, also reflects the inconsistent political
ideas of the North and the South. The background of the story occurred during World War II, when the Civil
War has ended for a long time, and the North and the South have been unified. However, different political
concepts still exist in the depths of the peoples heart.
Thirdly, the contradiction and conflict between the South and the North can be briefly summarized as the
great difference in the concept of value. The contrast between northern mechanical industrial civilization and
the southern idyllic life has led to the situation that the people treated human beings, activities, and the attitudes
towards life in a great different way. What to pursue and how to live during ones life seem to be an important
respect that Faulkner wants to represent in his novels.
In the story Lofty People, Faulkner revealed the conflicting mode of thinking and concept of value.
Faced with the impact of industrial civilization, the author is more inclined to the old southern farmers honest
ideas and the concept of freedom.
Obviously, Faulkners storytelling country fellows believe that the last few lofty people who have the spirit of
endurance and who resist the forces of the outside corrosion, are able to teach us how to recover our conscience. Of course,
they do not mean tall stature, but to the moral level, which is a reflection of pride and dignity.
And this is the real meaning of the story.
The Distinct Images of Southern Personage

Faulkner has constructed the genealogy of Yoknapatawha which is in sharp contrast to the metropolitan
culture of the 20th century. Here is a kind of agricultural economy, a kind of life in farms, villages, and small
towns which has a set of old value standards, a kind of religion that still has vitality and has its etiquette,
religious doctrine, and basic behavioral norms. Having constructed such a kind of environment, Faulkner has
not only represented the local conditions and customs in the South, but also modelled a large number of typical
images of the southern personage, including the white feudal lords in the plantation, the black slaves, the
American Indians, and the white peasants in the countryside. In his long novels, Faulkner has created some
typical images such as the Compson family, The Sedpan family, Sam Fazesi and Walsh, etc.. As an
indispensable component of the Yoknapatawha, his series of novelettes still focused on these characters and
continued their stories. Several short stories concentrating on the description of Black and American Indians,

THE MINIATURE WORLD IN THE GENEALOGY OF YOKNAPATAWHA 305
not merely represent the living conditions of these kind of people, but also recovered the relationship among the
American Indians, the Blacks, and the Whites, which makes us possess a further understanding of the life in
Yoknapatawha. Hence, we may safely draw the conclusion that Faulkners novelettes concerning the Indians
and the Black are in no way inferior to his voluminous works when it comes to the depth of ideology. They are
short and pithy, concise and vivid when portraying characters, hence may better reflect the writers superb
artistic level. They are really the important and indispensable component in the whole genealogy of
Yoknapatawha.
Conclusion
Faulkners genealogy of Yoknapatawha is his abundant creative source. Having created it, giving it the
broadness and vigor of life, drawing nutriments constantly from it, that is exactly where his greatness lies.
Whether they are his long novels or his short stories, all of his works are rooted in this land deeply and are one
part of the genealogy of Yoknapatawha.
References
DONG, H. Z. (1987). On modern American novelists. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press.
Faulkner, W. (1985). The anthology of Faulkners novelettes. World Literature Editorial Department (Ed.). Beijing: Chinese
Federation of Literature Publishing Company.
Hoffman, D. (1984). Contemporary American literature. World Literature Editorial Department (Ed.). Beijing: Chinese
Federation of Literature Publishing Company.
LI, W. J. (1980). The anthology of the comments on Faulkner. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press.
Mint, D. (1991). The biography of William Faulkner (Y. ZHAO, Trans.). Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company.
Weinstein, P. M. (Ed.). (1995). The Cambridge companion to William Faulkner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

doi:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.010
D DAVID PUBLISHING
Music as a Tool for Self-Realization in Chinese Culture:

Based on the Practice of Playing the Guqin
Rafa Mazur
Jagiellonian University, Krakw, Poland

Music has always held an important place in Chinese culture and it has been deeply related to philosophy for ages.
In fact, one could say it played a key role in creating Chinese culture and civilisation. It could be assumed that one
of the most important concepts of this culturethe Harmonyhas its roots in music-making practice and musical
terminology. Music was very strongly related to the official social ideology/philosophy of the empire, the
Confucianism. As an integral part of the rituals, it became one of the elements ensuring social order. Besides its
social/global function, music was an issue of great importance in the practice of achieving ones personal
excellence. There is a strong correlation between music and the Chinese idea of a sage, which in the Middle
Kingdom is associated with the sense of hearing (not with sight, as it is in the Mediterranean tradition). The musical
instrument guqin became an inalienable attribute of a sage and the practice of playing this instrument became a way
to wisdom, allowing to improve ones cognition and action. This paper will present the relations between playing
the qin, philosophy, and learning wisdom.
Keywords: Chinese philosophy, Chinese aesthetics, philosophy of guqin, Chinese art, Chinese music
Introduction
Assumption that knowledge is a result of cognition is in fact a truism. In most of the cultures created by
humans, it is believed that if you want to know something, you need to cognize it first. Since the ancient times,
the Europeans have distinguished the knowledge gained through sensual observation from the one acquired by
a strictly intellectual process. According to some philosophers (starting from Plato), there is a reality that is not
sensual, that can be perceived only with mind. Objects of such reality are intelligible, i.e., accessible
exclusively to the intellect. One of the first (and the best) examples of this theory is the world of Platos ideas.
However, other ancient conception, expressed by the Aristotles phrase nihil est in intellectu quod non prius
fuerit in sensu and widely spread by St Thomas, regards the important role of the senses in the cognition
process. In other words, without the sensual cognition, any purely intellectual speculation may lead you astray.
Basically, most of intellectuals and philosophers in China, members of the wenren (see Appendix) circle,
i.e., educated social elite shared Aristotles point of view. But there is also one important feature of Chinese
philosophy worth focusing on. Namely, since the classic period, since the ancient times Chinese philosophers
of all schools, especially thinkers considered nowadays the representatives of Daoist school, clearly divided
knowledge understood as declarative, positive knowledge from wisdom, which is closely related to the Chinese
philosophical tradition. The latter was always highly appreciated in China. The former was not underestimated
Rafa Mazur, Ph.D. candidate, Philosophical Department, Jagiellonian University.

MUSIC AS A TOOL FOR SELF-REALIZATION IN CHINESE CULTURE 307
in any way, but it was not necessarily leading to the latter. In case of the Daoists, however, it is believed that
knowledge can be an obstacle in reaching wisdomand those believe can be found in the early classic books
such as Daodejing (see Appendix) (n.d.) and Nanhua Zhenjing (see Appendix) (n.d.).
According to the tradition of Chinese philosophy its function is not increase of positive knowledge (by positive
knowledge I mean informations regarding matters of fact), but the elevation of the minda reaching out for what is
beyond the present actual world, and for the values that are higher than the moral ones. [] In the tradition of Chinese
philosophy there is a distinction between working on learning and working on Tao (the Way). The purpose of the former is
what I call increase of positive knowledge, that of the latter is the elevation of the mind. (Fung, 1966, p.5)
Chinese Wisdom
Chinese wisdom zhi (see Appendix), described in the Daoist and Confucian texts, the main characteristic
of a sage, is not associated with theoretical knowledge, but with practice. This regards knowledge/wisdom
related to the most outstanding manifestations of Chinese philosophy. To give an example: the theory of
wisdom constructed by Feng Qi (1915-1995), which
he understood as knowledge of Dao as the fundamental principle of the universe and of human life. Wisdom found its
application in our cognitive and practical activities and in our moral cultivation. Philosophers had the task of transforming
knowledge, which requires an attachment to object and the self, into wisdom, which sees reality as a whole without such
attachments. This transformation came through the sudden enlightenment of intellectual intuition and moved from the
realm of nameable to the realm of unnameable. (Cheng & Bunnin, 2002, p. 10)
Also worth noting the statement of the eminent Confucianist Zhu Xi (1130-1200) advised his students to
check the knowledge they learn from books by using it in practice (Tu, 1989). Whereas Zhuangzi made a clear
evaluation, expressing explicitly (in numerous fragments of his work Nanhua Zhenjing) a belief that wisdom is
superior to knowledge. This opinion is stated very clearly in the parable of the prince Huan and the
wheelwright Bian (Zhuangzi, 13.9). However, referring to the questions raised in this fragment, the wisdom
also demanded cognition, particularly because, as Zhuangzi says, it was related to action and experience.
Exploring, observing the world with senses seems to be the key to gaining wisdom, according to Chinese
philosophers. According to contemporary researchers, such as Karyn L. Lai and Chung-yin Cheng the whole
Chinese philosophical tradition rooted in studying and commenting Yijing (see Appendix) emphasizes the
importance of being observant of the world around us (guan) (Lai, 2007, p. 83). Chung-yin even mentions
observational origins of the Yijing (Lai, 2007, p. 95). In other words, the Chinese cognitive schema,
culminating in wisdom, is based on sensory observation.
The Sage
It is important in context of this papers subject that the above-mentioned wisdom is a feature of a sage,
Chinese anthropological ideal. The Far Eastern wisdom is far from being a certain state that one strives for,
then reaches and remains blissfully wise. The wisdom of a Chinese sage consists in making an effort, a
continuous effort of self-cultivation; in practising a certain specific way of action, regardless of the nature of
that action. Zhuangzi describes this practice exemplified by different crafts. You can strive for wisdom being a
butcher, a cook, or a swimmer, producing chime stands, catching cicadas with a stick or dedicating yourself to
painting. Wisdom is an ability to follow, in accordance with Dao, the transformations of reality. In other words,
one who acts in the world in accordance with the transformations of this world is the real sage. Despite its
appearance, it is not a simple matter, for it requires a lot from the self-cultivated individual: deep perception

308 MUSIC AS A TOOL FOR SELF-REALIZATION IN CHINESE CULTURE
and thorough observation guan (see Appendix) that is capable of overcoming the limitations emerging from the
culture-specific cognitive structures, structures that play an extremely important role from the operational point
of view after all. The Chinese called structuralized mind the cheng xin (see Appendix), and a sage was able to
get rid of those structures and had the access to wu xin (see Appendix), which is no-mind. Thanks to this state
of mind he could perceive the world in its continuously changing form, because he did not get attached to any
particular state of this world, as he did not distinguish any of them. For him the world was a process, not a state.
Zhuangzi describes it the following way:
When the perfect man employs his mind, it is a mirror. It conducts nothing and anticipates nothing; it responds to
(what is before it), but does not retain it. Thus he is able to deal successfully with all things, and injures none. (Zhuangzi,
7.6)
Music and Philosophy

And what is the role of music in the Chinese context, in relation to all the above-mentioned issues? One
could say with no doubts that music holds an extremely important place in Chinese culture. In fact, the way
music is treated in China is incomparable to any other culture. Obviously, this situation was also reflected in
philosophy. Music has been a subject of philosophical reflection since the very beginning of ancient
philosophical practice in China. It could even state that it has been given a very important and prominent place
in this practice.
Interestingly, music received more attention that other arts in ancient treatises such as Yue ji (Annotations on music),
Li ji (Annotations on rites), Lu shi chunqiu (The spring and autumn annals of Mr. Lu), and Fengsu tongyi (Popular
pervasive ways). Discussions of other arts also often involve music. Any discussion of ci (poetry) will not be complete
without music, since ci was actually written to music and to be sung. In painting, too, numerous of works through the ages
have featured the qin (7-string zither now often called guqin). Walter Paters famous dictum, All art constantly aspires
towards the condition of music, certainly holds true in many respects. (Ho, 1997, p. 36)
As Kenneth DeWoskin (1982) proved, aesthetic terminology of the Confucian cultural area emerges from
musical terminology. The author also pointed out that one of the most important concepts of Chinese
philosophy, i.e., Harmony, which is still considered one of the main culture-forming concepts in China, comes
from musical terminology and originally it meant harmony of tones (DeWoskin, 1982). The relations
between the music, ethics, and social philosophy are also of great importance. Confucius and his followers,
such as Xun Zi, considered music the best tool of governance and bringing about social order. It was also
believed that both music-making and listening to music have a remarkable impact on character formation;
therefore music was included by Confucius in the Six Arts that should be studied by each noble man. One who
entertained himself with Six Arts was resembling the stone as you cut and then file, as you carve and then
polish (The Analects, 1.15).
However, there is a much deeper relation between Chinese culture (including philosophy) and sound itself,
regarding the linguistic world view in Chinese culture and philosophy: It can be found by analyzing the
character shengSage (see Appendix). One of this characters components is the radical er (see Appendix),
that is ear. As DeWoskin (1982) demonstrates in his analysis, er is a component of many characters referring
to cognition, understanding, smartness, etc.. Moreover, the character signifying sage is a homonym for the
character meaning sound. One can find

the ear radical (erh no. 128) in both sheng: sage and sheng : sound. The same radical is found in tsung , a
word that evolved into the contemporary term for perspicacity from the original sense of good hearing or an acute ear.
(DeWoskin, 1982, p. 33)
According to DeWoskin, this indicates that the hierarchy of the senses in China was different than in
Europe. While in the Mediterranean cultural area cognition was based on the visual data coming from the
hegemony of vision (which is also indicated by the etymological analysis of the terms vision, wisdom, wise,
etc.), in China hearing was/is the sense playing the most important role in cognition. These differences in
prioritising sensory signals have influenced the formation of mental cognitive structures, hence the whole world
view and conceptual structures used to describe (and also perceive) reality. The recent philosophical and
aesthetic reflection on sound art explores these differences between the world view based on sight and the one
based on hearing. Basically, it refers to the idea that the world one sees consists of unalterable immobile objects.
And even if there are no such objects in the real world (which has been known for a relatively short time), the
true objects have to be so, because only then a man can be confident about his cognition. That world view is a
basis for the theory of Idea, substance and essence and hence the theory of Truthunchanging, therefore
always real.
Unlike the sight, human hearing instantly informs about fluid and changing nature of reality. One cannot
stop the sound; what people hear, they hear as existing in motion. The sound does not stand still, it keeps
attenuating, changing its form. Exploring the world with ones ears one get a direct information about its
processual nature. Christoph Cox (2014), an expert in sound art philosophy, says: Art is not the result but the
process, which is captured more fully through the temporality of audio than by the inert visual thing (p. 97),
and his opinion on art may be applicable to the whole reality. Contemporary science, particularly physical
chemistry and life sciences, perceives the world in processual and organicistic categories, paying attention to
continuous movement of reality and to its constant change. Sound [] negates stability through the force of
sensory experience. Listenings focus on the dynamic nature of things renders the perceptual object unstable,
fluid and ephemeral: unsettling what is through a world of sonic phenomena and audible spirits (Voegelin,
2011, p. 12).
The Sage and the Sound

And that is the world described in the crucial, in terms of culture forming, Chinese book, namely Yijing.
Its importance in China is comparable to the role that the Bible plays in Europe or the Vedas in India. In other
words, these books create the world view and the tools for understanding that world. The Yijing presents the
world as a continuous motion, motion of transformations. There are no stable, immobile objects of unchanging
nature, and thats why there has never been a theory of substance or essence in classical Chinese philosophy.
There is, however, a conception of qi (see Appendix): the most subtle, unformed, immeasurable, and sensually
imperceptible layer of reality that remains in perpetual motion, concentrating and attenuating all the time. The
qi movement was the basis for the conception of the yin-yang transformation, and consequently, for the
conception that the whole reality is undergoing continuous transformation. This cosmological/metaphysical
conception has a lot in common with the world view perceived with the sense of hearing. It is an image of
world-process that cannot be captured in a fixed framework, just the same way the sound cannot be. The qi
itself, on which the conception of world in transformation is based, seems to have characteristics similar to the
sound: It is in perpetual motion, it has no stable form, you cannot capture it and it keeps changing its state of

matter, just like a sound wave attenuating in space. In other words, the world view created by the Chinese
indicates the sense of hearing as a provider of perceived data. It is pointed out very clearly in the
above-mentioned conception of a sage exploring the world with his ears. As Xinzhong Yao (2000) says: The
sage listens to the calling of Heaven, listens to the demands of the people, and listens to the rhythm of
the natural world [] (p. 159). Two important fragments of The Analects, regarding cognition, also prove the
aural approach to exploring the world. In one of them Confucius, referring to his way as a way of a learning,
self-cultivating creature, as penultimate stage, describes what happened after he reached the age of 60:
At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth (The Analects, 2.4). The same
fragment was translated by Karyn L. Lai (2007) the following way: From sixty my ear was attuned (p. 87). In
the other one Confucius says about achieving complete understanding: The
Master said, If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret (The
Analects, 4.8). In both of these fragments, a strong emphasis is given on the ability to hear, to hear properly, to
get in tune with the world using ones ear (the first fragment). In the second one, it is in fact the
greatest/ultimate ability, allowing an early completion of the self-realization process. It is noteworthy that in the
second fragment there is a wen character, which can be translated either as hear or become aware of,
knowledge, experience. Also, the radical er is used in this character, in accordance with above-mentioned
DeWoskins conception.
In the early Chinese texts, there are numerous references to the importance of the sense of hearing for a sage.
In Pan Kus Comprehensive Discussions of Virtue in the White Tiger Hall (Pai-hu-tung te-lun), written circa A.D. 80,
his discussion of the sage (sheng-jen) begins with the following paragraph: What is meant by the term sheng in
sheng-jen? Sheng: sage is what connect things; it is the Tao; it is sheng: sound, There is nothing to which his Tao does not
connect and nothing on which his illumination does not shine. By listening to sounds, he knows the nature of things. []
And Ying Shaos collection of essays, Penetraiting Popular Ways (Feng-su tung-i), provides a functional explanation of
the link between the sage and sound: Sheng: sage is sheng: sound. It bespeaks the fact that the sage hears sounds and
understands the nature of things. (DeWoskin, 1982, pp. 32-33)
The fragments quoted above give a picture of a clear connection between the sage and the sounds. Even
more important, the subject at issue is the sound, not music. Such distinction has been already made in Western
culture. And in the second half of the 20th century, it resulted in the emergence of sound artan artistic sound
statement that broke most of the existing rules of creating music, especially in terms of musical material. A
thorough analysis of the difference between music and sound does not fall within the scope of this essay,
however, due to the essence of the subject, it should be explained what this difference is about. Music, not only
in the European tradition, is an art of choosing sounds and assembling them into certain structures. As a result,
those structures, consisting of such elements as melody, harmony, rhythm, phrase, motivic development, etc.
are the actual object of interest of musicians and listeners. A person receives those structures in the act of
musical perception, observes and evaluates them. This situation is parallel to the Confucian use of music,
which was a tool for influencing the society. In this context, music is expected to affect emotions, in this
particular case by soothing anger and bringing peace: firstly to individual minds, and then into interpersonal
relations. It acts as a tranquilliser, in accordance with the well-known Western proverb saying that music has
charms to soothe a savage breast. Chinese philosophers were also aware of the fact that music can be used as a
stimulant, however, stimulating music was socially undesirable and the effects of listening to it were judged
negatively.

Sound, the material people create music with, established autonomy in Western culture as an art object
only in the second half of the 20th century, and it is thanks to John Cage, whose work suggested a new
approach to listening: One should listen carefully to the sounds themselves, not only to the structure made of
them. Moreover, he suggested listening to the sounds not associated with music: rustles, cracks, ambient noises.
He never called himself a composer, but an organizer of sounds to distinguish his art from the work of
existing music creators. Sound art, having developed dynamically since the Cages revolution, focuses
particularly on sounds, vibrations, and acoustic resonance in space (due to the subject of this paper, the author
refers only to the acoustic aspect of sound art, although the whole phenomenon goes beyond the sound). It
embraces the sounds from beyond the narrow group of tones (sounds with definite pitch that were the only
musical material used until the early 20th century): sounds created synthetically and the natural ambient sounds,
sounds of the sounds cape surrounding human beings.
The Lore of the Guqin

The author mentioned sound art in order to introduce another aspect of working with sound in the Chinese
philosophers activity. Because, apart from involving music into social issues, working with sound was an
element of the sage-philosophers way. The musical instrument guqin (see Appendix) was one of Confucian
scholars attributes, and the skill of playing it was obligatory for any member of wenren class. Qin (see
Appendix) is a phenomenon in itself, it is the oldest solo instrument in the world that has been used
continuously for about three thousand years, and, according to the Confucian sources, its invention is imputed
to the divine sages, the creators of Chinese civilisation. The construction of this instrument, technical details
and number of strings have a deep symbolic meaning, its particular elements have plenty of magical and
cosmological references. Qin has been already described in many books and scientific articles. Its history,
development, playing techniques, notation, and traditional melodies included in its repertoire have been
thoroughly analyzed. To all persons interested in the subject, the author shall allow himself to recommend one
of the first books in English that is still a great source of knowledge about the qin and its role in the Chinese
intellectual and philosophical community, namely The Lore of the Chinese Lute (2011) of Robert van Gulik.
Art in China
This paper will focus on the philosophical practice related to the qin, because this issue needs to be
clarified. At first sight, the situation seems similar to the one existing in Western culture (which is
understandable, for one always tries to match the behavioral strategies observed in the investigated civilization
with familiar aspects of ones own civilization). In the European cultural area musical participation was also
highly valued, both listening to music and performing. Even in the 19th century, it was believed that an
educated, truly cultured person should play some musical instrument at least at an amateur level (usually it was
the piano). It was often associated with the assumption that educated social elite ought to develop their
sensitivity to be able to perceive beauty, which was considered the aim of art and any creative activity until
almost the 20th century. Research suggests, however, that Chinese approach to art, deals with another paradigm
of action.
It is related mainly to the difference in understanding what art is what it is for. As the research in the field
of comparative aesthetics shows, in traditional Chinese thought on art [] the category beauty did not play a
significant role (Pohl, 2006, p. 127). As it is emphasized by Zehou Li, Chinese philosophers were convinced
about the isomorphism between art and nature [] which is consistent with old Chinese saying that art is for

the molding of the human mind (Li & Cauvel, 2006, p. 2). Art in China was a human action that imitated
nature, or, putting it more Chinese way, it was an ability to act as nature. It was not about mimesis at all, as
opposed to the ancient European theory of art. In other words, it was not about imitating phenomena that
existed in nature, but about the creative principle (fa), according to which those phenomena were created. The
ability to act in accordance with nature, in accordance with the principle of nature, was art. Chinese
philosophers found this principle in Yijing, where the essence of creative action is described in the first two
hexagrams: Qien (the creative) and Kun (the receptive). Therefore, cognition, allowing to perceive the world in
its motion and transformations, must be an important element of this kind of action.
The Qin
Playing the qin has been attributed to the philosophers since the beginnings of Chinese philosophy. This
paper will not describe the instruments history and its role in ritual music, that is in social ethics-related
practices (the work of van Gulik and many other studies concerning this issue are highly recommended for
anyone interested in the subject). The attention will focused on the place that playing the qin and the instrument
itself held in the philosophers personal practice, on the link between musical practice and self-realisation, the
way of the sage. It is noteworthy, that however social aspect of music is related to Confucian philosophy sensu
stricto (i.e., the reflections of Confucius and his outstanding disciples regarding social order), the issues of
music-making with the aim of self-realisation, according to van Gulik, have deep roots in Daoism. Daoist
philosophy, both Laozi and Zhuangzi, lies at the basis of so-called qin philosophy.
According to the sources of the wenren circle, the qin (van Gulik uses the term lute) is the oldest truly
Chinese instrument.
Literary tradition asserts that original function of the lute was as a solo instrument; as such it was played by its
inventor, one of the ancient Chinese mythical Emperors, said to have ruled in or about the third millennium B. C. Some
sources say it was the Emperor Fu Hsi, others Shen-nung, others Shun. [] Fu Hsi made a lute, whereby to restrain
falsehood, to guard the heart against low desires, that man might be cultivated and his nature regulated, to make man return
to what is truly heavenly in him. [] Lute means restraining. With this instrument licentiousness and falsehood are
restrained, and the human heart is rectified. (van Gulik, 2011, p. 6)
It worth mentioning here, that the Chinese use the same character for heart and mind, namely xin (see
Appendix), that in the present day is translated as heart-mind. Xin is an emotive-cognitive organ responsible
for both cognition and emotions. Chad Hansen (2003) describes it the following way:
The core Chinese concept is xin (the heart-mind). As the translation suggests, Chinese folk psychology lacked a
contrast between cognitive and affective states ([representative ideas, cognition, reason, beliefs] versus [desires, motives,
emotions, feelings]). The xin guides action, but not via beliefs and desires. It takes input from the world and guides action
in light of it. Most thinkers share those core beliefs. (p. 581)
Therefore, the qin has been an emblem of the sage-philosopher since the beginnings of Chinese
civilization. As a result, after the wenren class had been established (the times of Han Dynasty), when
Confucianism became an official state ideology and the Four Books of Confucius were required reading for
civil service examinations, the qin became (together with painting, calligraphy, and Chinese chess wei qi) one
of the Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar, occasionally known as the Four Attainments of Pleasure. The
Superior man does not suffer the lute to be separated from him during one single moment (van Gulik, 2011, p.
43). The instruments became collectors items, they were exposed in the scholars workrooms; there were

special editions of poetry about them. And obviously, music was made with them. This musical practice,
however, was different from those that are known from Europe or other social classes of the Far East.
Musical Practice as a Self-Realization

The philosophers were not musicians in a professional sense, however, according to the writings quoted by
van Gulik, many of them reached mastery in playing the qin. Nevertheless, most of them were satisfied with
ability to play easy traditional tunes, often in simplified versions. Moreover, they did not perform in public,
usually they played alone in their studies or in the wildernessoutside the town, in the mountains or in the
special private gardens of their own design, arranged to resemble wild nature. There was a meticulous set of
rules regarding this instrument: A person from beyond the wenren circle was not allowed even to touch the qin,
and participation of non-scholars in musical performances was prohibited too. In other words, it was not a
public activity, and the philosophers deepened its significance, in order to remove it further from ordinary
music and to consolidate its position as the treasure house of true music and the only officially recognized
musical instrument of the literary class (van Gulik, 2011, p. 43). They used to play qin music among
themselves, claiming that the rest of society was not prepared for reception of this music.
Then who and what was the philosophers music for, if it was not performed in public? In this regard, to
paraphrase a Chinese saying that has been already quoted in this article, music if for the molding of the human
mind. Chinese philosophers used the music as a kind of vehicle circulating on the way of the sages. The way
that led to harmony with Heaven and Earth, that is with the whole world (the combination of earth character
and heaven character, tiandi means world in Chinese). As Zai Yung says in one of his in passage:
The tone of the chin is the true tone of heaven and earth. If the right materials are found, they will provide a true
instrument for harmonizing heaven and earth. If the right person is found, it can provide him the correct Way for
harmonizing heaven and earth. If the exact pitch is found, it will make correct tones for harmonizing heaven and earth. Fu
Hsi made the chin in order to make perceptible the system of heaven and earth and to harmonize the powers of the
spiritual forces. (DeWoskin, 1982, p. 111)
Chinese philosophers believed that the unique sound of the qin (soft, quiet, and attenuating easily, thanks
to the strings made of boiled silk threads) is a sound that clears the mind (makes the mind become a
mirrorZhuangzi) and then changes the perception level from differentiated phenomena to undifferentiated
unity. Laozi called this unitybringing to light all the individualised things, but not determined in any
waythe Mother of all things, The Great Carpenter or simply Dao. The musical metaphor for Dao in the
Daodejing is the Great Tone has no Sound, Da yin xi sheng, the tone that all the sounding tones emerge from,
but that itself has no sound. If it did, it would become just another distinguished, particular tone, whereas it is
the source of all tones, hence it cannot sound. This is an attempt to describe with tones the undifferentiated
source of phenomena that manifest themselves in the sensually accessible world. Anyone can see the forms of
beings in the surrounding reality, but only few can perceive their sourceundifferentiated, shapeless an
undetermined. The ability to perceive the source and the whole process of determined forms emerging from the
source and then going back to it was an exclusive characteristic of a sage. Only he could perceive the world in
its shapeless nature, resulting from the eternal motion of transformations. The practice of playing the qin made
the sages mind (directly, by the unusual sound of the instrument and by the way of playing it) capable of
meeting the Ultimate Tone that has no sound. In other words, the sages cognition embraced the whole world,
not only its differentiated level. It could also be said that the sage heard the whole worldnot only the

proverbial five sounds, but also the source they came from. As one can read in the Spring and Autumn Annals
of Mr. Lu: The sage hears the soundless (DeWoskin, 1982, p. 32).
The very act of playing the qin had a specific form. The melodies chosen by philosophers from the
repertoire of this instrument, had exceptionally simple, uncomplicated construction, compared to e.g., pipa
music. Qin repertoire was rarely enriched with new piecesphilosophers contented themselves with
performing old melodies, in many cases fabricating their ancient origin. Van Gulik (2011) described the
uniqueness of qin music compared to other instruments repertoire in the following way:
It is easier to describe this music in negative than in positive terms. It may be stated at once that it is not like that of
any of the better known stringed instruments to be found in present-day China, as, for instance, the two-stringed violin or
erh-hu, the four-stringed mandolin or pi-pa, or the moon guitar or yueh-chin. The music of these instruments being
highly melodic, it can be appreciated by anyone who possesses some capacity for musical adaptation. At first hearing their
music may seem a little strange, but the ear soon adjusts itself to be quaint chords and unusual movements, and this music
is easily understood. The lute, on the contrary, is not too easy to appreciate, chiefly because its music is not primarily
melodic. Its beauty lies not so much in the succession of notes as in each separate note in itself. Painting with sounds
might be a way to describe its essential quality. Each note is an entity in itself, calculated to evoke in the mind of the hearer
a special reaction. The timbre being thus of the most utmost importance, there are very great possibilities of modifying the
colouring of one and the same tone. (p. 1)
Reading the above-mentioned text, someone used to the European music tradition might find it strange
that qin music is not primarily melodic and that its beauty lies not so much in the succession of notes as in
each separate note in itself. But taking into consideration the development of sound art, these phrases do not
sound strange any more. The author believes that in case of Chinese philosophers musical practice one deals
with abandoning work with sound structures in favor of work with sound-in-itself. (Incidentally, it should be
pointed out that contemporary music activities related to qin do not necessarily have much in common with the
tradition of described practice. But that is a subject that should be discussed separately). Such operation seems
necessary, when one wants not to stimulate the mind with emotions included in the melodies, but rather to free
it from emotions. Obviously, the sound works of wenren circle music were not the same as the ones emerging
from sound art, but the way philosophers worked with the available sound material, i.e., traditional melodies,
consisted not in accurate reproduction of those melodies, but in working with sound and its impact on the mind.
It is quite clear that experiencing music in the wenren circle was far from contemplation of Beauty, for, as it
was said before, that was not the aim of Chinese art. Consequently, it should be assumed that musical practice
was one of the philosophical meditation practices of Chinese philosophers, allowing to reach the wu xin state of
mind, thoroughly described by Zhuangzi (mirror-mind, see above), that enabled perceiving the world in the
motion of changes and thus joining this motion of changes, that is uniting in harmony with the whole world;
uniting with Dao. That ability was a characteristic feature of a sage.
The fact that the profession of music composer had not existed in the Chinese tradition until the early 20th
century, i.e., the moment of intensive inter-cultural exchange between East and West, can be an argument for
the hypothesis suggested above.
In literati music, qin playing was the all-important activity: it epitomised the essence of Chinese philosophy and
aesthetics. People rarely asked who wrote the music, but rather who played it and how it was played. The name of the
composer was of secondary importance, while that of performer become more and more important. (Ho, 1997, p. 36)
This indicates an attitude towards music that is quite different from the one of the Western tradition, where

the composer was/is considered the most important person in regards to creating music. The essence of music is
a musical piece you can experience even in its non-sounding form, i.e., through score music reading. You can
discuss and evaluate music using the score. It is significant that studying European musical encyclopaedias,
textbooks in music history or musical forms, there is plenty of information regarding composers and
compositions, details of musical material organization, but nothing about specific performances, that is the
sounding realization of musical works. As shown in the quotation above, in China the most important thing was
working with sound; composition-related issues were relegated to a secondary position.
In context of the discussed subject, it is equally important to give some thought to the phenomenon of
Chinese philosophers playing the one-stringed qin or instruments with no strings at all. As one can see in
Chinese writings, such practices were associated with cultivating the way of sage, the way of self-realisation:
Sun Teng, a sage intimately associated with chin, refuses to speak with or even acknowledge the presence of a young
aspirant who come to study the Way with him. Suns biography notes that he loved to read the Changes and play the
one-string chin and would only play the one-string chin as his guest looked on. In his portraits, the single string of the
chin is carefully illustrated. The best-known example of a sage who played a non-sounding chin is Tao Yuan-ming, who
is reported to have said, Knowing the significance of what is the chin, why labor to bring sound up from its strings? []
Tao is described as owing one very plane chin, without any strings at all []. (DeWoskin, 1982, p. 144)
The examples above clearly indicate a link between the practice of playing the qin and the philosophical
practice of following the way of sage. Of course, described behavior is unusualmost philosophers made
music with their regular five-stringed instruments. However, regardless the number of strings and the question
if the instrument actually produced any sound or not, the musical practice of Chinese philosophers was an
embodiment of their philosophy. It was a continuous effort of following the way of self-realization.
Playing the lute purifies ones nature by banishing low passions, therefore it is a sort of meditation, a
means for communicating directly with tao. Its rarefied notes reproduce the sounds of emptiness, and so the
music of the lute tunes the soul of the player in harmony with tao (van Gulik, 2011).
Conclusion
This paper is an attempt to point out that the music of Confucian philosophers circle (wenren yinyue)
requires not only musicological research on repertoire or notation, but also a research in the field of cognition
and action. Research on music as a cognitive practice anticipating certain sage-specific way of action, described
in e.g., Daoist classics; practice that allows to reach the wuxin state of mind which permits perception of the
world in its transformations, in perpetual motion and therefore allows to act in accordance with the changes, to
join this motion of the world, to unite with Dao. In classical Daoist writings, such model of action is called wei
wu wei, that is action through non-action, abstinence from action, claimed to be the model of action of the
very Dao. The Dao in its regular course does nothing (for the sake of doing it), and so there is nothing which it
does not do (Laozi, 3). In regard to this subject, it would be undoubtedly interesting to investigate the impact
of sound/music on the brain and mind in the practice of mindful meditation that seems to lead to the state of
wuxin (mind as a mirror, described by Zhuangzi). Also, it is worth making researches on the link between
Asian shamanic practices and Daoist practices. Certainly, the research on the wenren circle musical practice is
very difficult, mainly because of the fact that this social group ceased to exist in 1911. The tradition of
Confucian scholars, together with their education model, philosophy, aesthetics, and art practice has
disappeared. Nevertheless, the culture that was being formed by educated Confucian scholars for such a long

time has preserved some thinking structures and action strategies (e.g., in martial arts). Investigating them and
combining the results of that investigation with interpretation of Chinese philosophical writings can remarkably
expand ones knowledge on the way of sages and will probably enrich ones own culture.
References
Cheng, C. (2001). On human consciousness in classical Chinese philosophy: Developing onto-hermeneutics of the human person.
In New interdisciplinary perspectives in Chinese philosophy (pp. 9-32). Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Cheng, C., & Bunnin, N. (Ed). (2002). Contemporary Chinese philosophy. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd..
Cox, C. (2014). Seeing is not hearing: Synaesthesia, anaesthesia and the audio-visual. In G. Celant (Ed.), Art or sound (pp. 93-98).
Venice: Fondazione Prada.
DeWoskin, K. (1982). A song for one or two. Music and the concept of art in early China. Center for Chinese Studies, The
Univesity of Michigan.
Fung, Y. (1966). A short history of Chinese philosophy. New York: The Free Press.
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Chinese philosophy (pp. 81-99). Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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Pohl, K. H. (2006). Chinese aesthetic and Kant. In The pursuit of comparative aesthetics (pp. 127-136). Aldershot: Ashgate
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Tu, W. (1989). Centrality and commonality. An essay on Confucian religiousness. In SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and
culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Van Gulik, R. H. (2011). The lore of the Chinese lute. Bangkok: Orchid Press.
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Appendix: Chinese Glossary
cong (tsung) Nanhua Zhenjing wenren

cheng xin qi wenren yinyue
Dao qin wu xin
Daodejing sheng <sage> , trd. xin
da yin xi sheng sheng <sound> , trd. zhi
guan tiandi Zhuangzi
Laozi wei wu wei

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Affinity of Mindscape and Landscape in Tao Qian and Emerson

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Taoist Impact on the Reclusive and Transcendentalist Appreciation of Nature

Correspondence Between Topos and Ethos

Our lives are short and our ambitions many

Ploughing is done and also I have sown

A bed of straw was always warm enough

As such, everything about a natural landscape educates:

Divergent Ideas About Nature, Selfhood, and Solitude

Renouncing my cap of office I will return to my old home

Relationship Between Self and Society

] (Journals VI: 403; quoted in Christy 126)

Nature, Spirit, and Writing

Where there is life there also must be death

I set up my cottage in the world of men ,

The Same Free Soul Under Different SkyA Comparative

SHI Shao-hua, ZHAO Guo-dong

Keywords: Qiu Jin, Mary Wollstonecraft, feminism, comparative study

word, Qiu Jin was a great female revolutionist.

Great Women of the Era

The Miniature World in the Genealogy of Yoknapatawha

WANG Shuang, CHEN Qiang

The Southern Spirit

The Conflict Between the South and the North

And this is the real meaning of the story.

The Distinct Images of Southern Personage