05.12.23

Translation of 告全党全军全国各族人民书 (Notice to the Entire Party, Entire Army, Entire Country, and All Ethnic Groups) on the death of Deng Xiaoping in 1997

This is an amateur translation of 告全党全军全国各族人民书, “Notice to the Entire Party, Entire Army, Entire Country, and All Ethnic Groups,” published in 1997 in the People’s Republic of China by the Central Committee of the CCP (中国共产党中央委员会). This notice announces the death of Deng Xiaoping.

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10.3.22

A translation of Hu Shih’s 1926 essay, “Our Attitude toward Modern Civilization”

Hu Shih (胡適) was an influential Chinese essayist who was known for, among other achievements, his harsh criticisms of traditional Chinese culture and proposals to adopt valorous aspects of modern Western culture.
Hu Shih 1960 color.jpg

He was a promoter of the use of the vernacular language an ardent critic of filial piety; all-in-all, he was a highly controversial but influential figure whose writings served as the basis of China’s New Culture Movement (新文化運動) in the 1920s.

What follows below is a translation of Hu Shih’s 1926 essay, Our Attitude toward Modern Western Civilization (我們對於西洋近代文明的態度), as it appears in The Hu Shi Reader published by Yale University’s Far Eastern Publications. This essay’s foreign perspective on Western and American culture in the early 20th century, as well as its contrasting illumination of classical Chinese thought, should prove interesting to any person curious about the course of radical transformation that Chinese society underwent throughout the 1900s.

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