/lit/ - Literature

>>6235611
China

>>6235611
The Ting Shao by Wo Lang

Analects
Tao Te Ching

tao lin

>>6235692
Go to bed.

汉语 禪

>李白 葡萄酒 李白 葡萄酒 李白葡萄酒 李白葡萄酒 李白 葡萄酒

月下獨酌

花間一壺酒
獨酌無相親
舉杯邀明月
對影成三人
月既不解飲
影徒隨我身
暫伴月將影
行樂須及春
我歌月徘徊
我舞影零亂
醒時同交歡
醉後各分散
永結無情游
相期邈雲漢

>>6235611
Rape and/or Nanking followed by shitting in the streets.

>>6235611
With the Greeks

>>6235611
Sweet and sour pork.

>>6235611
The Journey to the west sounds pretty sweet.
So does the romance of the three kingdoms.

I haven't gotten to reading them yet, sadly, so I can't tell you much.

>>6235734
jesus. what happened to them? is their bizarre behavior and complete lack of manners a result of the cultural revolution? anyone got any good books on the genesis of modern chinese culture?

I'm curious because i work in a very large, very famous cultural institution that attracts a lot of tourism and chinese people, while hilarious and occasionally pleasant, are really fucking weird

>>6236595
Maybe its a combination of the government not giving a fuck for the lower classes and the influx of poor farmers migrating to the cities

>>6236595
it's a country of plebs because of Mao, at least the ussr card for intellectualism

>>6236607
>>6236612
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fJRSb8QdGg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wang_Yue

>>6236595
I try to see it the same way in Russians with their typical aloofness. When you go through decades of your country ravaged by war and bloodthirsty governments, you start to value things in life differently.

The Art of War
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Outlaws of the Marsh
Journey to the West
A Dream of Red Mansions

These are the only Chinese works worth reading, after you finish these feel free to go back to reading superior western literature.

>reading chinese literature in translation

Waste of time

>>6236708
How true is this statement?

>>6236871

Wholly true. Unless you think that simply reading for plot is a good thing.

>>6236708
Good luck trying to become fluent in Ancient Chinese

>>6236595

No Christianity.

>>6237286
Japan kind of disproves that theory.

>>6237286
they used to be all about respect and morality, the cultural revolution caused their current state

>>6237290

Japan has had far more contact with Christianity.

>>6237296
Yep, China sure was moral and respectful in the 20's when warlords ran around killing everyone.

>>6237302
than China? allow to laugh: ha-ha

China has had direct contact with the west way longer than Japan, I'd guess Christianity arrived about a thousand years earlier

>>6237302
and they are still weird as fuck, whihc was anon's point

>>6237332
no, he was saying that the japanese are very respectful and orderly without being christian. japan is very westernized though in terms of cultural philosophy and ideology, and western culture is christian culture, the actual ceremony is beside the point

>>6237346
That's.. stretching it. While western culture is partly influenced by Christianity it is in by no way reducible to it.

If the first statement would have been the lack of influence from modern western culture in China then I might have been inclined to agree.

>itt: White people yet again offering their amazing insights about people and places they don't have the first clue about

>>6237385
thanks dipshit! good contribution!

Christianity is not the cause

You see this kind of weird shit in some countries in south america, like in bolivia or peru. Those countries are very christian and they still are weird as fuck

>>6236642
Mo yan

Sandlewood death
Red sorghum

Both great

>>6237440
Sandlewood death is one of my top 10 books

>>6236871
>How true is this statement?
Very true. Translators simply don't know Chinese. The translations that exist are either abridged spark-notes-style retellings or tonedeaf heavily academic works.

>>6237319
This. Islam is probably a more influential religion in China than Buddhism.

Start with the gooks.

>>6236595
>bizarre behavior and complete lack of manners
Simply due to the influx of first-generation urban dwellers. You see the same everywhere that experienced rapid urbanization.

>>6236595
I imagine letting children shit in the streets (or, more relevantly for most of the population, in the fields) was pretty standard for most of the world's population until pretty recently. That would mean it's not so much 'what happened' but what didn't happen- and what didn't happen was widespread inculcation of urban non-shitting-in-the-streets habits.

It's also worth pointing out that in a rural setting it has big advantages. No enormous piles of nappy waste produced by every single child, for one.

>>6236899
>implying it can't be done

>>6237524
It can be done with immense dedication and study, but unless you want to make it your life goal then you should probably just read translations.

>>6237440
>>6237444

Mo Yan is great. I loved pic related and The Garlic Ballads.

>>6237529
No, you don't need a lifetime to learn Chinese. Five years of studying it for 30 minutes a day is enough.

>>6237498
>>6237514
ok, but how does that explain this?:
>>6236625

Read wuxia novels

>>6237582
It doesn't. The latter is the product of capitalist social relations.

>>6237590
so why isn't stuff like that happening in the west?
>inb4 genovese

>>6237678
>>6237678
This happened in a Dickensian urban ghetto. China is not that far behind morally from the west and is readily catching up

>>6236595
The manners and hierarchy in chinese society are such that they grow to become self-awarely hypocritical about everything to a stupid extent

The comparison with Japan which cultivates a different flavor of hypocrisy is most telling

>>6237577
To be fair, >>6236899 was talking about classical Chinese, which unless you're completely weird and backwards you won't study until you've already got a good grasp of modern Chinese.

Mind you, plenty of Chinese literature (including pretty much all the 20th century stuff) isn't actually written in classical Chinese anyway.

>>6237678
The West is generally richer and less openly cutthroat (although horrible shit happens here, too, of course).

Arguably China does have some specific cultural hangups regarding giving a flying shit about strangers, though. You could possibly trace it back to Confucian regard for the family above all, or the social collapses, civil wars, famines and general bullshit of the twentieth century.