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.
How to learn Japanese
This is a no-nonsense post on how to learn Japanese.
In this post, I lay out a basic description of how I attained intermediate competency in the Japanese language with a focus on reading comprehension. I describe the fundamental tools and sources I used as well as the rationale behind the design of my study plan.
Many gaps are left to the reader. I do not link every single resource, explain how to set up your flashcard software, etc. Instead, my goal is to give you the fundamental context behind what I did and why I did it, which should equip you with the ability to design your own course of attack.