The revival of Confucianism in China may not be a new story, but give the Washington Post points for nuance:
“With the fast economic growth, many people have become selfish and have no morality,” said Ren Xiaolin, founder of the Zhengzhou Young Pioneers school… “This has created a need for Confucianism. . . . The change is overwhelming and many Chinese can’t get used to it. It’s created a clash of values.”
Because Confucianism has only recently regained its popularity — it was seen as an obstacle to modernization during the anti-intellectual Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 — many Chinese today are hard-pressed to fully describe the philosophy. It has become a grab bag of ideas that people are tailoring to their own needs as they search for a new belief system. [Full Text]
Much of the current craze can be attributed to Beijing Normal Professor Yu Dan, whose pop-philosophy text Yu Dan’s Insights on the Analects, has been making waves amongst the masses for months. For more on her, see this post from Danwei, and this L.A. Times profile.
