Introduction

Having lived all over the globe, I have to say, Americans have made the word “easier” or the phrase “so much faster” into an art. Cooking is a great example. In the infomercial-based late-night TV in the US, there are endless gadgets to make cooking easier.  The grill allows for easier way of doing BBQ.  Americans, especially Texans, must have the biggest grills of all the people groups on this earth.  I’ve only been introduced to the usefulness of the grill from my recent church BBQ.  “We do it the old fashion way,” a few of the lovely members of my fellowship remarked.  Only one lady who had been educated in the US asked, “What kind of BBQ is this?  It takes so much effort just for one piece of meat.”  She observed while we each take a marshmallow grilling fork to our piece of meat to put over the fire, WITH NO GRILL.  Yes, we do it one piece at a time, WITH NO GRILL.  When I asked a lot of Chinese friends why they don’t use the grill, the answer is still the same, “We do it the old fashion way.  It’s better.”  Just to illustrate how it’s “better,” my poor wife had a tummy ache for two days from eating poorly cooked meat.  Right there and then is when I realize why many Chinese in general have such blind admiration for the West.  In my line of work, somehow anything published in the West is deemed more legitimate than indigenous work.  Why so?  There is no easy answer, but I think the solution goes back to something quite deep within the Chinese culture.  I also think there's no simple answer, but it's a question worth asking both culturally and "spiritually."

When Being First Makes Us Last

While teaching some Chinese students, especially back in North America, I’ve noticed the mantra that sounds like parts of the Fiddler on the Roof, “Tradition!”  Among the many cultures of the world, the adoration for tradition and the “old” is nearly unsurpassed in Chinese culture.  The kind of rhetoric about tradition hardly exists in the West, except among the dye-in-the-wool fundamentalists. The whole argumentation of “we can’t discard 5,000 years of ancient treasures” is very often taken for granted as the gospel truth.  In fact, many take the "5,000 years of tradition" rhetoric as a matter of fact and common sense.  Traditionalism is a virtue in Chinese culture.  Yet, this virtue will most certainly kill progress because academia is not merely a storehouse of antiquities.  It is a lab for continuous improvement on older models.  Old is not better or truer; old is just … old.  Calling something good just because it is old can lead to intellectual suicide.

If we look at Chinese history as one giant example, it is filled with lack of progress from many original inventions.  Chinese history is a history of irony.  How does a people who originally invented gun powder had eight nations pointing their guns down its throat to buy opium?  How does a nation that invented printing press much earlier than the West still does not produce the highest quality printed books in the present world?  The problem is not intelligence or technology.  The problem goes much deeper.

How did we end up here?  Like it or not, ancient Chinese philosophers have been emphasizing the via media and glorifying the ability to keep the boat steady without so much as making a ripple because  boat rockers usually end up on the gallows or torture chamber.  Partly through fear and partly through  manipulation, many see no point in using their critical faculty against those maintaining the oppressive status quo.  In the meantime, the philosophers’ teachings have been memorized, memorialized, and regurgitated, resulting in further deterioration of critical thinking.  At the end, everyone is satisfied with an idealized (and often misrepresented) past without trying harder to wrestle the status quo by the horns and to throw away the proverbial box.  The whole “emperor with his new clothes” parable would never work for the Chinese culture.  Instead, you may find a Chinese poet writing about the beauty of the non-existent outer garment of the emperor.  If someone by any chance actually comments on the missing clothes, instead of examining the facts, the knee-jerk reaction is to censor any criticism. I believe this traditionalist way of thinking is why many in the Chinese circle embrace fundamentalism with such a warm reception.  Even though fundamentalism is already dead and buried in Western Christianity, it fails to die a quick death among Chinese.  The worship of “good enough” has stopped the search for “excellence.”  Though there have been exceptions, but most are content to accept the party line, as long as “I” have food to eat, clothes to wear and cover over my head.  After all, we can't “eat” ideas, can we?

How the West Won

Let us now contrast the above scenario against the West.  By no means am I saying that the West has no flaws.  As humans, we all have flaws.  The West has lots of flaws but this is a topic for another day.  One outstanding feature of the West, as it grows into a great and powerful force, is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of information and most importantly, freedom of the individual to be who s/he is. 

These kinds of freedom are important for the dissemination of information.  Even if it is false information or even heresy, it is divulged for public consumption and critical examination. This respect for individual rights has developed in many a sense of self-confidence not found among non-Americans who live under the “don’t rock the boat.”  As one of my friends said once, “In America, even the homeless is confident.”  It is because we Americans love to rock boats and make waves. 

So what makes the West something of an object of admiration for many blind Chinese followers?  Is the West better?  It certainly is better in one way, creativity.  Most Chinese, however, do not understand where that creativity came from.  Due to the respect for individual rights, the West allows dissenting opinions to be voiced freely.  It is in the mixture of disagreement and discourse that people find new and improved ways to solve problems.  People in the West are not necessarily brighter but they certainly are more creative.  It has to do with the system under which they operate, not the brain they possess.  If the system is looking to cut cookies, then it cannot expect the dough to rise into a glorious cake.  Cookie cutter only makes cookies.  So, the many blind Chinese worshippers of the West do see something of value in the “product” of the West, but fail to see the “process” by which the West comes to that good product.  Chinese had been brilliant throughout their glorious history, from invention of gun powder to the printing press, but who truly develop those technologies?  The West!  Why so?  It is because the Chinese often sit on their invention and keep it as tradition. Instead of seeing an invention as the “first” step, the Chinese often see it as the “final” step.  The West moved on … That is how the West won.

Eastern Flaws in a Nutshell: Work Harder Still

In thinking about the academia, I have come to realize that there is no easy solution.  Both the Western and Eastern models have flaws, but I think the Western model has a slight advantage in that it respects creativity and human rights.

Quite often, when faced with the lack of great productivity, the Chinese answer is to “work harder.”  The educational system is best described, “The more the better.”  There is hardly any single people group that has consistently worked harder in human history.  The Chinese proverb “Hard work makes up for stupidity” consistently touts this virtue.  If this proverb is true, how in fact, how does a small country like Norway having a higher GDP per capita while working on average around thirty-eight-hour work week than Hong Kong which has a much higher average hour per work week?  When I first read this in Joe Chung's radical but often true book I Don't Want to Be Chinese Again, I was shocked.  Working harder and longer does not equal to working smarter or better. Stupid is stupid no matter how hard one works.  And traditionalism only enforces stupidity and stupid practices.  In the case of Norway GDP, the Chinese must be extra stupid because they work so much harder to make up for their stupidity but their GDP is still lower.  At least if we look at statistics with the above Chinese proverb about hard work, it appears that the Chinese intellect is far below that of the Norwegian.  Imagine if they don’t work so hard?  Yet, I believe stupidity is not the problem because the students I have taught thus far are quite bright.  Traditionalism, accompanied by utter disrespect for human rights, is the real problem which slows down progress.

The Christian Solution: Creativity Comes from Apostle Paul’s Gospel of Freedom

What is the problem of the East?  People have been faulting the communists for violating human rights forever, but I think this is simplistic thinking.  As a people, the Chinese had never been great lover for human rights, but in order for individuals to progress and get better, human rights must be respected.  The overemphasis for the Chinese tradition has all but killed off any individual expression as something to be admired rather than a rebellion to be put down.  True progress can only be done in a democracy where tolerance, individuality, education, and morality coexist happily.

From my personal experience, my Chinese scholar friends who value free speech and radical reform of academia often fare better in their own publication as well.  I find this to be true also among my fellow Chinese PhD students when I did my doctorate in England years ago.  Those who broke the mold early in their childhood (though often suffered for it) have done very well in their studies.  Those who did not, could hardly finish.  This is not to say that those who did not exercise critcial thinking outside the proverbial box were not well-prepared for their doctoral studies.  In fact, I knew one case where an OT student did so many ancient languages before he came to England that I thought I would never catch  up to him.  He graduated many years after me, even though he he came in a few years before.

As a student of Paul, I always think about how Paul speaks to my ethnic culture, for good or for bad.  Why in fact does the West value creativity and freedom?  We must boil it down to one fact; Paul came from the West.  Even though he was a Jew (of Eastern origin), his gospel of freedom was preached to the gentile West.  Paul emphasized freedom.  The preaching of freedom which eventually resulted in greater human rights came out of the Reformation, as many Reformers made great strides in recovering Paul’s concept of freedom.  Paul’s sense of freedom is not merely unrestrained freedom (which has since eroded Western morality), but is a guided freedom within godly ethics with the realized eschatology of a just society.  The practitioner of such a freedom is free to do much for the greater good, even if it means being creative with all the tools and rocking the boat.  Right now, China had been under 5,000 years of bondage. It is hard to tell a group of people who have sat comfortably under a condition for so many centuries that such freedom is available.  I think Paul spoke loudest to this 5,000-year history.  I'm afraid, the only person who can save China is Paul, only if China listens to him carefully.