The Citizen of the World: Or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London

The Citizen of the World: Or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London

One of my favourites is Oliver Goldsmith, and Goldsmith wrote an entire two-volume novel called 'Citizen of the World' - a beautiful title, 'Citizen of the World' - in which he wrote the entire novel through the eyes of a Chinese man visiting London. And so it was a kind of double joke in a way: he created a Chinese fictional visitor to a very real city and had him write home letters and had the responses coming from Chinese back home. He added one phrase - I'll just throw this into the lecture, it just came into my head - that may have resonance with those Chinese visiting us now from China. Goldsmith wrote in this novel, has a character say in this novel: 史景遷先生

我喜愛的作家之一為奧利弗戈德史密斯，而他寫出一套兩卷本的小說的'世界公民' ---書名取得美， '世界公民'整本書都採某中國人訪問倫敦時的觀點。這辦法可以說是種雙重笑話的故事：他創造了一位虛構的中國遊客到貨真價實的城市來，他還寫家書並接獲中國回傳的信件。主角補充一句話---我臨時想起它，就拿來此講座獻寶—這對目前來訪我們的中國客人可能會心有戚戚焉。Goldsmith在該小說書中說道：

'You know, I think these British people are trying to reason me out of my own country. They're trying to push their pressure on me to get me to lose my sense of what it is to be Chinese.'

'你說邪不邪，我覺得這些英國佬千方百計要說服我忘掉大清帝國。他們正試圖對我施壓，好讓我我麻木不仁，忘記我身為大清子民。 “
hc: 這句話在The Citizen of the World: Or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher Residing in London 似乎找不到

And I thought if I had more research time, I'd like to know if people in the 18th century read that sentence and saw that it had the power that I think it does now. How often do we try to reason people out of their own cultures because of our analytical stance or our feeling of superiority or our sense that we have a different kind of skill than they do.

我要是有更多時間來研究的話，倒想知道18世紀的人在讀了上述這句話，是否讓我以為吾道不孤，也能看出它對現在讀者的震憾力道。我們可不是往往試著要菜別人的文化根源，只因為我們採取的分析的立場，或我們自覺立於優勢，或感覺我們遠比對方多一種不同的技能。

Wikipedia article "Oliver Goldsmith".