There are better ways to spend our resources, man . . . Re: Scholar urges Taiwan's co-sponsorship of Confucius Institutes
lo yeeOn
abia...@my-deja.com <abia...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>Scholar urges Taiwan's co-sponsorship of Confucius Institutes
>
>Central News Agency
>2009-11-19 07:18 PM
>
>Taipei, Nov. 19 (CNA) A scholar uged Taiwan on Thursday to co- sponsor
>the Confucius Institutes with China in a bid to increase its cultural
>influence in the Chinese mainland and around the world.
>National Taiwan University Professor Huang Guang-guo, who is also
>apresidential adviser, said at a Taipei seminar that China had
>experienced an "academic and cultural vacuum" as a result of the
>tumultuous period of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976.
If there is an exiting "academic and cultural vacuum" anywhere, it
should be filled by appropriate substance, not morphine. Chinese
should start reading more. There is so much to read and enrich one's
spirit with that one does not need to dig up the Doctrine of the Mean
or "the place of the husband" to be fulfilled. A modern Chinese
should fill his or her mind with logic and mathematics, physics and
biology, chemistry and material sciences, meteorology and earth
sciences, metaphysics and ethics, literature from Russia and Spain,
and poetry from all lanaguages and from all culture. Why Confucius?
There is so much to learn, so much to know out there! How can one
have any time to first learn archaic Chinese in order to read the
books about Confucian thoughts? If we want to learn archaic Chinese
(which I unfortunately had to), we should learn Greek and Latin first
so that we can better understanding the orgin of the Christian Bible
and the Koran. That would be a lot more relevant and would enable us
to talk to people in other parts of the world more intelligently and
find intelligent solutions to our mutual problems.
So Stop being provincial, abianchen!
lo yeeOn
========
>Huang said that on the other hand, a culture with Taiwanese
>characteristics -- which merges traditional Chinese and Western
>cultures -- was vibrant in Taiwan and has begun to penetrate into the
>mainland and produced enormous influence there.
>
>At the same time, China, after its economic clout has rapidly grown,
>has been trying vigorously to retrieve Chinese culture.
>
>With an aim to promote Chinese language and culture and support local
>Chinese teaching internationally, it has established the first
>Confucius Institute in Seoul, South Korea in 2005, and the number of
>such institutes has expanded to around 250 around the world.
>
>Taking advantage of the Confucius Institutes platform, Taiwan could
>join hands with China in tapping into the global Chinese-language
>cultural market while at the same time exercising its influence on the
>mainland.
>
>The seminar on the Taiwanese culture's influence on cross-straits
>relations, was sponsored by the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), a
>semi-official body commissioned by the government to handle exchanges
>with China in the absence of formal contacts.
>
>Professor Chu Yun-han of National Chengchi University said that as an
>immigration society, Taiwan has been more open to outside influence,
>making its culture a combination of Chinese tradition and
>modernization.
>
>He said that this kind of Taiwanese culture, under the great Chinese
>culture framework, has its niche in taking a very important position
>in the Chinese-language world in terms of cultural development.
>
>Chu said that Taiwan's unique culture has laid a solid foundation for
>Taiwan's "soft power", and the country should be more confident of
>itself in the face of increasing competition from China in the
>cultural arena.
>
>Pointing to the uniqueness of Taiwanese culture, Secretary General
>Yang Tu of the National Cultural Association said the performance art
>sector in Shanghai was surprised to find puppet shows of the Ming
>Dynasty (1368 -1644), which had disappeared in China, has been kept
>active in Taiwan when a Taiwanese hand puppet show troupe gave
>performances there.
>
>"This is just one of the advantages for the culture with Taiwanese
>characteristics," he added.
>
>SEF Deputy Secretary General Ma Shao-chang said Chinese culture could
>serve as an important pillar for the two sides of the Taiwan Straits
>to find consensus in future cross-straits negotiations.
>
>(By Liu Cheng-ching & Bear Lee)
>
>
>
lo yeeOn
And I have a suggestion in response to this professor's idea and that
is that since it is money that belong to the people in Taiwan, their
Parliament should put this to a vote by all the people. And this is
the proposal to vote on:
If we have the money, should we spend it on this thing called the
Confucius Institute, or should we spend it on a supercomputer which
run at at least a petaflop rate and which would be dedicated to make
better earthquake and weather prediction and therefore enable us to
avoid the deaths we recently suffer in South Taiwan.
(Now keep in mind that deaths and destruction due to earthquakes and
typhoons are the two biggest catastrophes the people of Taiwan face
year in and year out. And note that China has recently acquire one at
.6 petaflops. And except for one at Juelich, Germany at about 1
petaflops, the rest of some two hundred of the hundred teraflop range
supercomputers are all located in the US. And why would Taiwan not
need such a powerful machine to deal with its chronic earthquake and
typhoon problems?)
In this era of limitations, what say you, abianchen?