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When all human societies are divided into the genetically coded primary society and the man-made secondary society, it was found that Chinese civilization started with primary societies and Western civilization started with secondary societies. The Chinese rural areas remained in quasi-primary societies until in the late 1950s. The author here describes the lives his mother and grandmother had lived, and they lived their lives in a nearly primary society setting. It is most interesting and revealing to compare their lives with our modern lives, and there is a great lesson for all of us to learn.
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Serenity: The Lives my Mother and Grandmother Lived Part II
By You-Sheng Li
(From the book: The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary societies: Taoist Philosophy
for the 21st Century
http://taoism21cen.com/eng2.html)
(3) Afterword: Traditional vs. Modern Lifestyle
Western culture had assimilated numerous traditional cultures before it assumed the dominant
position in the world. When Western influence penetrated into China, it affected the cities first
and affected the men first. Western culture entered into my family by transforming my
grandfather from an ordinary young peasant into a city employee, and then a business man who
lived entirely in a highly commercialized large port city, Tianjin. He returned home only after
the Japanese invaded China as he thought it was safer to live in the countryside. My father
moved into the city as a child to have his Western education. I consider the 1950s as the
transition period when Chinese rural areas said goodbye to the traditional way of life that
Chinese peasants had lived for thousands of years. Under communist rule, the education my
generation had in the 1950s and 1960s was essentially Western except for the communist
ideology which was only an hour or so per week. In conclusion, my mother and grandmother
remained as the last two people in my family who lived their lives in the traditional way. My
mother and grandmother were in their forties and seventies respectively when Chinese peasants
started to live the modern life. They had no need to adapt to the new life, since my family
buffered a safe haven for them. My mother and grandmother lived in a typical Chinese
traditional lifestyle almost entirely in the primary society setting of family and relatives, and
were seldom in contact with friends from outside the family circle. Modern life is almost entirely
based in the secondary society, and family life exists as part of the panorama of social life on a
vast horizon.
In comparing their lives to ours, we wonder which is better, and which is more worth living? I
would say modern life is more attractive to young people who are about to start their own life.
For those who have lived the major part of their lives, the Chinese traditional life is more
rewarding.
As to one’s life achievement, both my mother and grandmother brought up several
children, and supported their husbands and children as they moved smoothly into the new
lifestyle. If we see this transition as the rocket that sent the first man to the moon, my mother and
grandmother were the ground workers who made it possible. Historians like to talk about
historical marks. If a Roman emperor expanded the empire’s territory by invading its neighbours,
historians would say this emperor left a historical mark. If a Roman emperor did nothing
particular except for the routines, the emperor was said to have left no marks. With such criteria,
both my mother and grandmother left historical marks. They contributed to some extraordinary
historical marks as one of the millions of people who made those marks possible. Their names
would not be mentioned in Chinese history or world history, but their contribution was a major
part of our family history. To a historian, there is only one super tree exists in an entire
mountain, and that is the one on the top even though thousands of trees cover the mountain
forming the dense vegetation. In such a view, my mother’s and grandmother’s achievements are
only meaningful to their family.
The dimensions of life experience may be quite different for those who live in primary
society and those who live in secondary society. My mother and grandmother, who lived in the
primary society, regarded the world outside the family circle as foreign lands to them. If
anything happened in those foreign lands that affected them, they simply adapted to those
changes the same way as they adapted to climate changes. They never bothered to fully
understand what happened to China during their lifetime. My grandmother had an artistic mind,
and she saw the musing and aesthetic side of her life experience. During the Boxer rebellion in
1900, my grandfather bought a sifter for half price when the possessions of the local Catholic
churches were put on sale. My grandfather had to pay a small fine soon after when foreign troops
invaded Beijing to protect their interests in China. My grandmother always chuckled a little
when she told the story to me, as she sensed a musing quality of those dramatic events, but she
knew nothing about the Boxer rebellion and foreign invasion. Those Boxers showed altered
states of mind, trance. My grandmother told me several times about those Boxers in trance. It
was apparently peculiar to her. To my observation, both my mother’s and grandmother’s
spiritual pursuit remained in the realm of serenity, and they never relied on mysticism or the
experience of an altered state of mind. I think they lived their lives almost entirely in serenity,
and they did not have much experience of uncertainty. The mystic pursuit or even altered state of
mind is, in my opinion, related somewhat to life experience of uncertainty.
When my grandfather was dying, my mother and grandmother knelt down in front of the kitchen
god, begging Heaven to allow them to donate some of their destined life years to my grandfather
in order to help him to heal. Whether my grandfather would die or not was an uncertainty to
them, but they called upon the emotional and psychological social bond with my grandfather
itself to deal with this experience of uncertainty. When people stick together emotionally and
psychologically, nothing including uncertainty will matter much to them. Considering the time
they lived was one of the most tumultuous and uncertain periods in Chinese history with one war
after another and one revolution after another, it was nothing short of a miracle that they lived
their lives so serenely and so productively in their own world. With the knowledge and mind we
have been brought up, we would have certainly fallen into deep depression or even committed
suicide if we had been in their position. We live a life of our own choice while they lived the life
they were born into. They made much fewer choices than we do today.
As to one's spiritual experience, they lived no doubt a much happier life than our modern men on
average, though they might have laughed less and experienced fewer emotional ups and downs.
My grandmother showed remarkable artistic talents that allowed her to spend some of her spare
time more aesthetically. Although my grandmother often painted flowers and birds from life, she
never painted anything to reflect her life, specifically like we would do if we were in her
position. Both my mother and grandmother enjoyed watching Chinese traditional opera. Those
operas, as were once criticized by the Communist government as being all about emperors,
ministers, scholars, and ladies, did not relate to their life specifically. Chinese women often sat
together and chatted for hours while each was doing her needlework to make clothes or shoes.
As a child, I listened to their chat a lot. Their chat was always about family life in their
neighbourhood, and they laughed a lot but much less than we do in similar situations. To be
precise, they only smiled and chuckled. They never talked nonsense or said anything obviously
untrue or against the moral standards. Again, their chat was like the opera they watched and the
paintings my grandmother created. They were related to their life only in a highly spiritual and
abstract way. In other words, they were parts of their serenity. If they had talked nonsense or
anything to denounce the moral requirement put on them as a woman by the Chinese patriarchal
society, we think it would have served them as a much desired spiritual experience of liberty. But
they never did, and it was beyond any doubt that they did not have such a spiritual need in their
serene minds.
In the book, A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy, I divide our life experience,
physical and spiritual, into six levels, namely the biological, social, cultural, intellectual,
spiritual, and cosmic levels. We are almost identical at the biological and cosmic levels whether
we live in a primary or a secondary society. The remaining four levels harbour the difference,
and the middle two levels, the cultural and intellectual levels, the most. I guess my mother and
grandmother lived their lives physically close to the biological level and spiritually close to the
cosmic level. They were born that way, and only with great efforts, we may be able to achieve
their serenity today.
To look back at my life, I moved away from serenity to a business mind. When I was a child, we
had only occasionally a dim lamp light for the whole family in the long winter evening when I
just started to work as a physician in the 1970s. I used to sit along with other roommates on the
balcony for hours in the early summer evening. We talked very little on those occasions. But
today, I have to listen to radio or watch TV to go to sleep. It is no easy job to go back to serenity.
Apparently, we have lost the ability to stay quietly within ourselves by doing and thinking
nothing.