Sinorama editors and staff, greetings!
I'm a ninth-grade music student.
I've never limited my intellectual field of vision only to textbooks, and with that in mind, I happened to come across one of the volumes in the Sinorama book series: When West Meets East.
To my shame, I never seem to have paid attention to the subject of overseas sinology before. The reason I decided to browse through the book in the first place was that I was attracted by its fine printing and binding. As I flipped through it, my eyes were caught by the article on the noted British sinologist Glen Dudbridge. His dedication to the study of Chinese classical fiction filled me with excitement and admiration. I have always felt that classical fiction fails to receive the respect it should in our high schools. Many students (female) may be swept away by love and romance in Chiung Yao's novels, but we never go on and explore the deeper significance of Journey to the West. Chinese though we are, we don't seem to grasp and understand our own culture completely ourselves. After all, in its breadth and depth Chinese culture requires a lifetime of effort to explore.
When West Meets East looks at Chinese culture through foreigners' eyes, which for me at least is a rather fresh approach. If all that foreigners knew about China were pigtails and bound feet, I'd feel angry--but saddened even more!
Most foreigners' knowledge of China may be superficial and stereotyped, but how much do we understand about Western culture? The China fever set off by The Last Emperor was due to the mass media, but let's think a bit whether our knowledge of the West comes mostly from Coca Cola and hit movies like Terminator Ⅱ.
We shouldn't be angry at foreigners for not understanding Li Po and Tu Fu, because we don't know much about Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley either. But when foreign scholars study Chinese culture with such dedication, we should reflect on how much we know about it ourselves. Today Taiwan has become famous around the globe as one of the Four Little Dragons of Asia, while the mainland has shocked the world with the bloody suppression at Tienanmen. China has entered an unprecedented historical period. In a rapidly changing international situation, with close economic and trade ties across the Taiwan Strait, we in Taiwan must squarely face the chaos and disorder appearing in society during a transitional period of democratic constitutional reform.
I have added When West Meets East to my collection, and it is one of my favorite books. I read around in it over and over and come away with something different each time. My main purpose is writing this letter is to tell you how grateful I am that you published this book because I have learned many, many things from it that can't be learned in a textbook.
In the book Professor Dudbridge states, "The greatest enjoyment I get out of doing research comes not from others but from dealing with the materials and making discoveries. I don't expect my books to have tens of thousands of readers. Just two or three are enough, and make it worthwhile." If possible, I hope you can pass on my expressions of support to Professor Dudbridge and thank him for his persistence in studying classical Chinese fiction.
Liu Ying-hsiu
Taipei
Editor's Reply: when West Meets East has received quite a warm response. Learning that readers (including even a junior high school student) have related to it and affirmed the message we tried to convey in it, for us, truly "is enough and makes it worthwhile."
Professor Dudbridge visited Taiwan at the end of April to participate in the international Conference on the history of European Sinology, sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, at which time we conveyed to him your regards.
