Most of us are familiar with Western philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Bertrand Russell. We know very little about Eastern philosophers. Confucius is the dominant figure among Chinese philosophers. China has produced several others philosophers in recent times. Lin Yutang is one of the great Chinese philosophers who lived in recent times.
Lin Yutang was born in an obscure mountain village in China. He has become China’s cultural ambassador to the Western world and a man for all seasons. He is well known not only as a philosopher but also as a social critic, inventor, best-selling author and a man who led a happy family life.
The hallmark of his philosophy is that he has blended the best of Western and Eastern values in his own brand of philosophy. According to his daughter – Lin Tai-yi – former editor of the Chinese edition of Reader’s Digest, Lin Yutang embroiled the Yang – the brilliant, intellectual, masculine force in the universe – and her mother Tsuifeng was his feminine Yin that kept him tied to the simple pleasures of life. Even a cursory glance at Lin’s life will immeasurably enrich your own.
At the age of 16 Lin left his mountain hamlet to attend a college in Shanghai. His elder sister – Mei-kung – who did not have a college education got married when she was 20. On her wedding day, an important even took place in Lin’s life. His sister gave him 40 cents and asked his little brother to become a good and famous man. However, she did not live to see her brother’s phenomenal success in life.
Tribute
In his 80-year life span Lin wrote and translated over 50 books. When he died the New York Times paying a tribute said, “Lin Yutang had no peer as an interpreter to Western minds of the customs, aspirations, fears and thoughts of his people. He remained very much active as an essayist, philosopher, philologist and lexicographer.
His greatest invention was the Chinese typewriter. Prof. Nelson I. Wu of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri said, “He was a total man stubbornly going his own way through the criticism of lesser minds to become a universal genius.”
Even when he was an eight-year-old boy, Lin wanted to be a writer. When he wrote a composition, his primary teacher laughed at it and said it was like a snake crossing a paddy field. Lin told his teacher it was an earthworm crossing the desert.
The teacher probably did not know that the little boy was a humble creature in search of knowledge. Lin’s father who was a pastor had instilled in him a zest for acquiring knowledge. Whenever Lin passed a bookshop, he was excited and wondered whether he could read all the volumes displayed there.
When he gained admission to St. John’s University in Shanghai, he had to learn English. He also had to study theology because he wanted to be a pastor like his father.
However, after studying science he realised the futility of Christian dogma. Then he changed his major from theology to philology.
His father was not very happy about the change taking place in his son’s life.
Vivacious young man
Young Lin fell in love with a beautiful girl, but her father who was a doctor did not wish to give his daughter in marriage to a poor pastor’s son. When he told his sister that he wanted to marry the doctor’s daughter, she said, “Are you crazy? How would you support her? You’re a toad lusting after swan’s flesh!”
The doctor, however, tried to marry off Lin to the daughter of the Liao family. Lin visited her house and the girl named Hong looked at him through a curtain. She was impressed by the vivacious young man. Lin’s sister also recommended the girl. Then he agreed to marry her after his studies.
After graduation Lin accepted a teaching post. He studied Chinese history and started visiting temples and old palaces. He started reading voraciously. He felt that he should introduce a better method for looking up characters in a Chinese dictionary than what was available. He was only 23 when he published ‘An Index system for Chinese Characters.’ It attracted the attention of scholars. Finally, he published his monumental ‘Chinese-English Dictionary’ at the age of 77.
When he received a scholarship to study at the prestigious Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Lin wanted to marry Hong and take her to America. When they settled down in Cambridge, their differences began to surface. Lin was an active man but his wife loved to lead a quiet life. He was eloquent but she remained silent most of the time. He relished meat but she liked fish. When he said he no longer believed in the Bible, she was mortified.
Be curious
Lin started criticising the government and participating in demonstrations and his wife was concerned about his safety. He told her that it was the duty of a scholar to criticise people who were wrong. After the massacre of demonstrating students, many people who criticised the government were arrested.
Sensing danger, he fled with his family for a safe place. After some time, he moved to Shanghai and began to write ‘Kaiming English Book,’ a series for middle schools. One day his daughter expressed her desire to become a writer. He said, “To be a writer, you must be curious about everything around you, feel more deeply and have more understanding of things than other people.”
Soon Lin became an enfant terrible. He published two more magazines and wrote an English column called “The Little Critic” in “China Critic” magazine. He read all about Greek, Chinese, French and English philosophers. While engrossed in such pursuits he was not worried about having a shave or haircut. Once he said, “I am like a balloon.” If it weren’t for his wife holding on to him tightly he did not know where he would drift to.
He had three daughters. The absence of a son to carry on the family name did not bother him. He said, “Life is really like a dream, and we human beings are like travellers floating down the eternal river of time.” His philosophy of life is quite different. According to him, the greatest ideal that a man can aspire to is not to be a showcase of virtues but just a genial, likable and reasonable human being.” One day he showed a spider spinning its web among rose bushes to his daughter and said, “Look at that, isn’t it amazing that a spider should know how to spin such a wonderful web and snare its food on it?”
Biological view
His philosophy of life is quite simple. He said, “No one can say that life with childhood, adulthood and old age is not a beautiful arrangement. The day has its morning, noon and sunset, and the year has its seasons. If we take this biological view of life and try to live according to the seasons, no one but a conceited boor or an impossible idealist can deny that human life can be lived like a poem.”
Lin Yutang, the great Chinese philosopher, breathed his last on March 26, 1976. Prof. Anderson said, “He is an example of that beautiful and rare phenomenon – a civilised human being.” Reader’s Digest founder, De Witt Wallace dedicated his memorial booklet of his father’s writing to the memory of “an evocative spirit of vast range and accomplishment – this man for all cultures who so enriched our lives.”