Any generalization about national characters of any race tends to be stereotyping, good or bad, yet I admire the wealth of the author‘s knowledge in citing episodes after episodes, from the thousands of years of Chinese history, to drive his points. Since the texts were originally parts of a special lecture, the deliverance was very captivating even in written form.
What are the Chinese national characters from his historical perspective? It is the genry ethos 仕人 that presumably carries on the spiritual values that defiles self-interest. I was very impressed by his non-dualistic narrative of Chinese philosopy, literature, history, culture…even though his criticism on Christian theology is understandably medieval. As a true believer of Confuscianism which is perhaps better translated as Scholaticism 儒家思想, he nevertheless detected the fusion of Taoism and Buddhism with the classical Chinese thoughts, rather convincingly. In this brief lecture series, he asked many questions that can be researched further in the field of sociology, political science, religious study, in addition to history.