The deep structure of Chinese culture

Author: Sun Longji
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: About 17 or 18 years ago, there was a book quietly circulating in universities. It was more like a photocopied manuscript than a book, titled "The Deep Structure of Chinese Culture." The author was named Sun Longji, reportedly a Hong Kong native who studied in the United States. That was precisely when the "culture craze" was in full swing. When cultural figures met, they had to talk about culture. The book was no different—once it bore the label "culture," it immediately became a sensation, with 40,000 to 50,000 copies printed as a matter of course. In this book, Sun not only discussed culture but also its deep structure, which inevitably piqued everyone's curiosity. The late 1980s cultural movement, now officially known as the "New Enlightenment Movement," had two hot topics: the Chinese culture craze and the deep structure craze. At that time, reform faced heavy resistance, and intellectuals believed the problem lay in the Chinese national character and Chinese culture, in short, the people's lack of enlightenment. Therefore, intellectuals rekindled the banner of the May Fourth Movement, continuing the predecessors' mission of enlightenment by deeply exposing and critiquing traditional Chinese culture. Coincidentally, during the culture craze, two Western scholars became extremely popular in China: one was Freud, and the other was Lévi-Strauss. Freud told everyone not to judge by appearances—human consciousness has both a superficial and a deep layer, and the deep subconscious harbors countless Oedipus complexes, which are quite frightening. Lévi-Strauss extended this superficial and deep concept to culture, desperately excavating its deep structure. Thus, people believed that both human nature and culture had their own hidden deep structures, and enlightenment was about uncovering them, awakening the common people, who had been mesmerized by two thousand years of autocratic brainwashing, to sudden realization. Like Liu Xinwu's famous novel back then: Wake Up, Brother!