Chinese reluctance to read deeply underlines the nation's recent departure from the era of subsistence and its current obsession with affluence.
On a flight from Frankfurt to Shanghai, an Indian engineer noticed row after row of Chinese passengers deep into their iPads, playing games or watching movies. None was doing any reading.
Meng Shamei, the Chinese name of this engineer, posted his or her observation online and got a tidal wave of responses, most of which corroborated his or her view.
I have to admit I have not done my due diligence to verify the identity of this person. There have been frequent stories of Chinese posing as foreigners to give a semblance of objectivity to their criticism of China. The title "Harvard professor" has been used or rather, abused, so often it has turned into something of a joke.
To even a casual observer, what Meng wrote was not surprising. Another posting a few years ago by a Chinese passenger noticed the difference between first class and regular class: Those sitting in first class tend to read while those in regular class play games.
For me, the biggest shock came when Han Han, the young writer with enormous influence on China's youth, was asked by a reporter about his reading habits and he answered that he read only magazines. As if to show some proof, the accompanying photo revealed very few books on his bookshelf.
Before we get to "Why Chinese do not read", I'll reveal the spoiler, which is the most frequent defense. "We read. We just do not read in the same way as the old generations do. We rely on modern gadgets for faster access."
It is true that you cannot claim that only content on a printed page is knowledge. Anything that's printed can be displayed digitally. There are millions of books available in digital form. And true electronic books can incorporate sound and video, thus enhancing the reading experience. Print is going the way of dinosaurs, many forecast. Even if they don't vanish completely, books will become a niche item a la long-playing records.
To those who believe they can get anything and everything from the Web, I'll hereby add my two cents' worth: Yes, you can, but you won't do it. I download thousands of books, but I use them for research, a sort of personal database for specific information. I've also noticed my friends and colleagues read fiction only on their tablets. Simply because a medium is capable of something does not mean people or a significant number of them will swarm to it for that purpose.
I believe reference books are most easily replaced by their digital versions and the kind of essay collections popular among China's literati are the most unlikely to make the transition.
Now, I'm not going to cite statistics about Chinese consumption of books. While they invariably paint a bleak picture compared with previous generations or advanced countries, the truth could be even bleaker. My publishers (I work with several publishing houses in China) told me that most of the best-sellers in China would not even make the popular list. The reason: They are textbooks or supplement reading material, in other words, books that students are forced to read, or rather, forced to buy.
So, let's compare China's best-seller list with that of the New York Times. While the latter has a mix of serious books, especially about history, and celebrity memoirs, the former is almost totally fluff. A walk through an airport bookstore will bring you more doom and gloom: mostly how-to-get-rich titles written by those who've done it or who claim to have the secret recipe.
On top of that, there are buyers of books in China who decorate their rooms with wall-to-wall tomes but never bother to open the pages. As a result, a cottage industry has appeared that churns out thick volumes that have nothing between the covers, perfect for decoration.
Yes, people do read in China to enrich their bank accounts, but not to enrich themselves holistically. Sure, this is a trend, which means it does not apply to everyone. The terms "fragmentary reading" or "light reading" are efforts to encapsulate this phenomenon of a nation whose people have only recently unfettered the shackles of poverty and have not found the need to elevate themselves onto a higher plane of enlightenment and enrichment. Not yet.
One reads classics such as Confucius' Analects or Shakespeare not to pass examinations or provide grist for the water-cooler mill, but to absorb nutrients from the wealth shared by humanity and to make ourselves better people.
However, it would be unfair to compare the current generation with their ancestors. In antiquity, the ability to read effectively divided people into haves and have-nots. It became a channel through which a few from the disenfranchised classes moved up the social ladder. As a whole, the vast majority remained illiterate. As the benefits of basic education envelop the entire Chinese population, the stumbling block for this most basic level of reading has been removed. Now, it's up to each individual to decide what kind of information or knowledge he or she is willing to pursue. A school or a teacher can demand that you read what is mandatory, but unless you design a comprehensive curriculum that incorporates the wealth-enriching and the soul-enriching, you'll probably push those "useless" books down to the bottom of your priority list.
The computer age, with its unlimited data-crunching capability, has unleashed a treasure trove of information. For someone long shielded from data and information, the rawness and liveliness can be spellbinding. But it takes tons of information to be distilled into knowledge.
In our society there is an undercurrent of skepticism and aversion toward knowledge, which in the old days was spoon-fed with little room left for questioning. People, therefore, want to be closer to the source and conduct their own little investigation or analysis, which sometimes leads to new revelations. As a result, the pendulum has swung from the end of blind acceptance of everything printed to the other end of DIY scrutiny of every piece of data. I have to say this correction was needed and will eventually balance out the weight of both information and knowledge, which tend to be embodied in digital and print respectively.
The road from knowledge to wisdom has equally been subverted by the digital revolution. The epiphanies derived from reading Hamlet or Li Bai's poems have been displaced by 12-step programs and morsels of wisdom that zap through cyberspace. On a positive note, they can be seen as CliffsNotes to the real thing; but this quasi-sagacity serves to lull its readership into a false sense of enlightenment. Wisdom cannot be drummed into you through rote learning, nor can it always be boiled down to 140 characters. It has to come from learning through personal experiences or through books, which are essentially those aspects of others' experiences that can be imparted and shared.
Serious reading, on whatever platform or in whatever form, has its place in the advance of human civilization. All technological breakthroughs, such as the audio-visual revolution of the previous generation and now the digital revolution, all serve to complement it. Words as the all-powerful embodiment of human knowledge are never overrated and will never be totally replaced. More Chinese will realize their importance as the nation grows into middle-class comfort. The younger generations can afford to read books that are not utilitarian, at least the segment not addicted to Korean soap operas and their face-lifted idols. As Francis Bacon famously said, studies can be "for delight, for ornament, and for ability", and "delight" should rightly include the joy of elevating oneself to a level with a higher vista, which, unlike a high-rise apartment, money alone cannot buy.
By Raymond Zhou ( China Daily )
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在一架從法蘭克福飛往上海的航班上，一名印度工程師發現一排又一排的中國乘客都在埋頭用蘋果平板電腦玩游戲或者看電影，沒有人在讀書。
工程師的中文名叫孟莎美，他/她把所見所想發布到網上，收到無數回復，大都印證了他/她的看法。
我得承認自己沒有盡職調查這個人的身份。為了能更客觀地批判中國，曾出現很多中國人冒充老外的故事。人們濫用“哈佛教授”的頭銜，以致于它成了笑話一般。
其實稍微觀察下，孟莎美寫的現象也見怪不怪。幾年前，有個中國乘客留意到頭等艙和經濟艙的區別，并放到了網上：那些坐頭等艙的乘客往往在閱讀，而經濟艙乘客在玩游戲。
就我而言，最大的震驚是，對中國年輕一代影響深遠的年輕作家韓寒被記者問及其閱讀習慣時，他說他只看雜志。還附上了一張顯示他書架上很少書的圖片作證明。
在我們問“為什么中國人不閱讀”前，還是我來揭曉吧，這是最常見的回擊“我們閱讀啊，只是不像老一代那樣閱讀而已。我們可以通過現代玩意來更方便地閱讀。”
我們不能說只有紙質書上的內容才是知識。任何紙質內容都可以數字化地顯示出來，無數紙質書都有電子版本。電子書還可以配上聲音和視頻，從而更享受閱讀過程，這都沒錯。很多人都預測印刷業和恐龍走在同一條道上——都會逐漸消失。即使紙質書籍不會完全消失，也會隨著時間變成小眾產品。
對于那些認為可以從互聯網獲取任何信息的人，我想說：是的，你可以，但是你不會的。我下載了成千上萬本電子書作為個人資料庫用于搜索特定信息。我也發現我的朋友和同事們都只用平板電腦看小說。一個媒介具備某種功能并不代表大家會為這個功能蜂擁而來。
我認為紙質工具書更易被其電子版取代，而受中國文人喜愛的散文集是最不可能被代替的。
現在我不會引用關于中國人閱讀量的數據。當這個的數據與前幾代人或者發達國家相比顯得蒼白時，事實可能更悲劇。我的出版商（我和中國幾家出版商有合作）告訴我中國的暢銷書大多數還不足以上暢銷清單。原因是：它們是教科書或者補充閱讀材料，換句話說，這些書都是學生不得不讀或者買的書。
那我們來對比下中國和紐約時報發布的暢銷書清單吧。紐約時報的清單中包含一些嚴肅的書籍，尤其是關于歷史、名人自傳，而中國的清單意義不大。在機場的書店轉一圈，你會發現更加無望：幾乎都是那些富人或者聲稱有致富秘訣的人關于如何致富的書。
最重要的是，中國有很多人都用滿墻的書架將家里裝飾得像個書香世家，但是卻很少翻幾頁書。所以，制作磚頭書的家庭手工業出現了，磚頭書只有封面，沒有內容，最合適裝飾。
是的，中國人會通過讀書來使銀行賬戶充實，但是卻沒有讓自己全面地豐盈起來。當然，這只是一種趨勢，并不適用于任何一個人。“碎片閱讀”或者“輕閱讀”這樣的詞濃縮了中國這樣一種現象——剛脫離貧困走上小康的人們覺得沒必要把自己提升到一個更具啟蒙性的階段。還沒必要。
讀孔子的《論語》或者莎士比亞的著作不是為了通過考試或者任何實際用途，而是為了從人文財富中吸收營養，使自己變得更好。
然而，把現代人與先人對比是不公平的。在古代，讀書的能力把人們分成了貧富兩個階級。被剝削者中的少數人通過讀書爬上更高的社會階級。總體上，大多數人還是目不識丁。隨著整個中華民族都可以享受到基礎教育，讀書認字最基本的絆腳石已經不存在了。而現在取決于每個人愿意獲得什么信息或者知識。學校或者老師可以要求你閱讀必須讀的材料，但是除非課程結合了物質財富和精神財富兩方面，否則你很有可能會忽視那些“沒用”的書。
計算機時代擁有無窮無盡的數據和寶貴的信息。對于長期信息封閉的人來說，計算機時代的新鮮感和活力充滿誘惑。但是要無數的信息才能提煉成知識。
如今的社會充斥著一種對知識的厭惡和懷疑論，然而在過去，人們毫不猶豫地汲取知識。大家都想跟接近知識的源頭，再加上自己一些小調查或者分析，有時能有新的啟示。因此，社會出現兩種極化現象，一種是盡信書，一種是親自核查每一個數據。我想說，我們需要糾正，并最終在無論是數據化還是紙質的信息與知識間平衡。
知識轉化到智慧的道路同樣被數字化革命顛覆了。閱讀哈姆雷特或者李白詩集的頓悟被充斥網絡的12步獲得智慧課程代替。好的一面是，它們可以作為貨真價實書籍的導讀，但這種類智慧誤導讀者進入一種錯誤的啟發感。智慧是不可以通過機械閱讀來灌輸的，也不總是可以歸結成140個字。它必須通過個人經歷或者書籍獲得，也就是他人那些“可以借鑒和分享的經歷”。
深入閱讀，無論是通過哪種平臺或者形式，都在人類文明發展史上扮演著不可或缺的地位。所有的技術突破，例如上一代的視聽革命和當代的數字革命，都是為了起到補充的作用。作為人類知識一個全能的體現——文字的作用永遠不會被夸大，也永遠不會被完全代替。隨著中國發展到中產階級階段，越來越多的中國人會意識到文字的重要性，年輕一代也會讀那些非功利性的書籍，至少那部分沒有沉迷韓劇和整容偶像的人會讀。正如弗蘭西斯·培根的名言，讀書“足以怡情，足以博采，足以長才”，“怡情”應該包含提升自我至一個更高視野的喜悅，而這是僅用金錢就可以買到的高層公寓遠遠不及的。 |
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