Jin Yong: Cultural Nationalism
Whenever we talked about Qing Dynasty, the first thing comes up on our mind should be the secret society that aims to overthrow the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty and to restore the Han Chinese rule in China. In 1955, Jin Yong published his first Wuxia novel in Hong Kong; it called “The Book and the Sword”. Which talks about during the rule of Qianlong Emperor, a secret society called The Red Flower Society which was trying to overthrow the Dynasty (The Book and the Swords, 2010). Jin Yong used a method called cultural nationalism to write this novel; in this story, Jin Yong expresses the cultural nationalism in four ways: Martial Arts, Imperial Chinese History, Confucianism, and religious aspects.
First, we have to understand what is cultural nationalism; cultural nationalism is actually a small part of nationalism, which we can simply understand as culture plus nationalism. Culture is a term that has various meanings (Culture, 2010), which most commonly used in three basic senses: excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities; integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior; and set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. Nationalism involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms (Nationalism, 2010). It is generally describe either as an attitude of you when you care about your national identity or the action when you are seeking for the self-determination of your nation. It simply describe as people look at the importance of their state above everything. In addition, nationalism expresses when people are identifying their national culture with a negative view of other races or cultures. Cultural nationalism can be explained as what unites individuals together, it could be common language and ethnic identity; for example: two different nations which share the same language and same type of music.
In “The book and The
First, we have to understand what is cultural nationalism; cultural nationalism is actually a small part of nationalism, which we can simply understand as culture plus nationalism. Culture is a term that has various meanings (Culture, 2010), which most commonly used in three basic senses: excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities; integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior; and set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. Nationalism involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms (Nationalism, 2010). It is generally describe either as an attitude of you when you care about your national identity or the action when you are seeking for the self-determination of your nation. It simply describe as people look at the importance of their state above everything. In addition, nationalism expresses when people are identifying their national culture with a negative view of other races or cultures. Cultural nationalism can be explained as what unites individuals together, it could be common language and ethnic identity; for example: two different nations which share the same language and same type of music.
In “The book and The