一位外國友人問我的問題，下面是我的回答：
1. Its culture is the longest living one. The Chinese culture is the biggest treasure of the world.
2. Its old, terribly old. It had thought that it is the center of the universe for thousands of years. That makes it really hard to keep the pace to the current world now.
3. Since it is too old, it corrupts. The government corrupts, the society corrupts and the people corrupts. They advocate virtues of their culture because there is almost none now.
4. It is unbelievable it is still one piece. It should had been split up to hundred of pieces. Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang… are all trying to be independent and they are not allowed to even they already are.
5. The reason of No. 4 is one idea that is hard to understand by western culture. In Chinese, we named it, “面子”, some translated it into “Face”. It is an idea about counting points of respects from others.
I believe its the main gap between Chinese culture from the others. You guys just do not know how important it is. It just matters. My “Face” is my life. Period.
6. Family. There is no “me” but “my family”(or “my country as my family”) in their people’s thinking. This idea is fading way now, but it is still a very important part in Chinese culture. Combining with “Face”, it could explains most of behavior of China/Chinese people.
7, The root of number 6 is not only from the long-existed agricultural society but also from the Confucius philosophy. It believes that the stability of the society is based on every one acting as their roles. In Chinese, we said, “君臣父子”, you have to behave as the role you are born to be.
8. One more thing about Confucius philosophy. As my opinion, it is one of the greatest philosophizes of the world. It is easy to understand and approved to be workable for thousands of years. But, sadly, it is used as political tools in China and Chinese history most of time, including now.
9. Obviously, using Confucius as moral standard/political tools to manipulate others only works for Chinese. That’s why China/Chinese could not take advantages of Western countries/cultures. They could only fight against each other, pessimistically.
10. Somehow, after all points above, the Chinese people in China have their unique characters. They are simple but strong. They always stands up for their families.
They believes in moralities and virtues of people. They play their roles as who they think they should be and manage to survive day after day.
The most precious thing about China is their culture. The culture is from their people. Although not every one still live what they believes, but some of them still believe and live like a true Chinese man.
In our words, we say they “雞鳴不已於風雨，松柏後凋於歲寒” and we call them “君子”, which is the last thing and the most important thing of the this list.
