Inside Peking University

Inside Peking University - Four Essays

by Dr. Thorsten Pattberg

‘Inside Peking University’ is a collection of four critical and timeless essays by German cultural master and Confucian scholar Dr. Thorsten Pattberg of Peking University on the Chinese concepts of daxue, shengren, junzi, boshi, wenming, the Qingming Festival, and long (the Chinese dragon).

Dr. Pattberg argues for example that the shengren of East-Asia are largely overlooked: They are a class of their own, like the buddhas. To translate them as “philosophers” or “saints” seems imperialistic and all-too-convenient. The shengren are above philosophy and beyond religion –they are quite un-European, and so are the other Chinese concepts advocated in this book.

The cases presented in here are emblematic of the widespread abuses of translations in ‘Cultural Studies’ which, so argues Dr. Pattberg, have distorted the reality of cultural China and subsequently have helped the West to tilt ‘World History’ toward European sovereignty over definition and classification of thought.

The first essay, Language Imperialism, is one of the most thought-provoking and widely read texts in East-Asia Studies today. It has been syndicated thus far throughout several media outlets such as China Daily, Global Times, Global Research, China Today, Xinhua, Asia Times, Japan Times, and the German Times (Die Zeit), among others.