Global Chinese Craze in perspective

Shuimo   Fri Apr 17, 2009 12:15 am GMT
解析全球“汉语热”



王路江



近几年,尤其是跨入新世纪以来,在全球范围内出现了一股学习汉语的热潮。突出表现在以下几个方面:来华留学生人数急剧上升。中国从1950年开始接受来华留学生,当年只有33人。1996年接受的来华留学生为4.12万人,到2002年增加到8.58万人,6年翻了一番;国内外汉语教学机构数量快速增长。2002年全球有85个国家2100多所大学开设了汉语课程;参加汉语水平考试(HSK)的考生人数快速增长。1996年外国考生人数是2.1万人,2000年发展到4万人,到2004年外国考生人数已达到10万人,已在34个国家设立了151个考点。



为什么会出现汉语热?汉语热的背后有哪些值得注意的因素在起作用?这是很多人十分关注的问题。





首先,经济的力量。经济的全球化必然带来世界范围内各种文化的交流和融合,随着中国经济的持续发展,特别是中国加入世贸组织,越来越多的海外投资者看上中国这个巨大的市场,一些工商界人士也随着资本来到中国。可以说,中国经济的良性发展是汉语热最重要的催化剂。



其次,政治的力量。中国社会政治稳定,除了经济上的奇迹以外,社会主义的社会制度与世界上许多国家都不同,这对于一些汉语学习者来说也是一种吸引力。好奇是人类的天性。一些人出于希望了解中国社会的目的开始萌生学习汉语的愿望。



第三,文化的力量。中国是一个文明古国,有悠久的历史和灿烂文化。文化的力量也会吸引一些人希望到中国来,或者短期访问,或者长期居留,有些人甚至和中国人通婚并长期定居下来。在欧美的一些大学开始成立中国研究中心,对中国的历史、文化、政治、经济、哲学、文学艺术、语言进行专门的研究,汉语学习是一个必然的阶段。中国举办2008年奥运会,届时全世界的目光将会聚焦北京。来北京,既满足学习汉语的愿望,又能身临其境地观看奥运会,也是一种文化选择。



第四,血缘的力量。中华民族的子孙分布在世界的每一个角落,有华人生活的地方就会有华侨子弟学校,华人家长希望自己的孩子不忘祖宗,希望他们的后代能够与祖国保持血脉联系,因此许多华侨子女都在学习汉语,这对全球范围内的汉语热也起到了推波助澜的作用。



第五,教育的力量。为了满足全球范围内汉语学习的需求,中国政府于1962年成立了专门以对来华留学生进行汉语和中华文化教育为主要任务的北京语言学院(今更名为“北京语言大学”)。建校40多年来,已经为世界上160多个国家和地区培养了6万多名懂汉语、熟悉中华文化的外国留学生。现在每年有6000多名外国学生在这里学习。截止到2002年,我国对外汉语教育机构已经达到363个,他们通过组织教学活动和在海外办学,进一步推动了汉语学习向纵深发展。



第六,语言本身的力量。汉语是联合国五种工作语言之一,汉语又是世界上使用人数最多的语言之一。从语言类型上看,汉语不同于世界上许多语言,它是一种孤立语。汉语的书写系统汉字是世界上现存最古老的文字系统。汉语本身的特点对于语言学习者来说很有魅力。



第七,科学技术的力量。科学技术的发展也为人们语言交际活动打开了新的空间,尤其是因特网技术的发展,使得人们可以通过网络得到很多资讯。中国是因特网用户最多的国家,网上信息非常丰富。但是汉字对于很多外国人来说无疑就是天书。要想读懂天书必须学习汉语。



但是,对于目前出现的学习汉语的热潮,兴奋之余我们也必须清醒地认识到,离我们期望的目标还很远。跟中国人全民学英语的热情相比,外国人学习汉语的热情远远落后于我们。



我们面临的工作还很多。一是要继续搞好学科建设,深入做好国际汉语教学的基础研究工作。二是要把对外汉语师资队伍建设好。要适应全球化的汉语教学,必须制定各种标准,适合不同国家文化和语言背景的汉语教学模式。三是加大推广汉语的力度,并利用经济交流、文化交流、教育交流、汉语水平考试的机会进行全方位的宣传,使更多的人有机会学习汉语,了解中国社会和中国文化。



此外,在推广汉语的同时,还应该深入地思考我们到底应该输出什么,怎样输出才能更好地向世界展示中国古老文化和现代文明的精髓,让更多的外国人关注中国,热爱中国,宣传中国,使汉语真正成为世界强势语言之一。(北京语言大学 王路江)

http://www.hsk.org.cn/news/%E8%A7%A3%E6%9E%90%E5%85%A8%E7%90%83%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%AD%E7%83%AD.htm
mortus   Fri Apr 17, 2009 7:53 am GMT
The seven Systems of Magic are:
1. Hermetic Era Magic
2. Dark Ages Era Magic
3. Medieval Era Magic
4. Renaissance Era Magic
5. Transition Era Magic
6. Gothic Revival Era Magic
7. Modern Era Magic

We will take each in turn and investigate the forces
involved in shaping magic in general, and evocation in
particular.

1. Hermetic Era Magic-332 B.C.E. to 500 c.e.
Hermetic Magic encompasses a complete system of
theoretical, theological, philosophical, and practical magic.
If magic can be said to truly have a starting point or an
origin in the classical sense of the word, then it lies here; in
the original magic derived from Graeco-Egyptian sources.
As Dr. Stephen Edred Flowers points out in his landmark
contribution, Hermetic Magic-The Postmodern Magical
Papyrus of Abaris, the magic given in the papyri is the first
known attempt to merge the then varied forms of magical
traditions from many different Mediterranean and Eastern
countries into one integrated system of magic. A rigorous
analysis of Dr. Flowers' book reveals that the resulting
Graeco-Egyptian eclectic system still retained significant
traces of its original component parts; keys used to extend
this magical system into yet other magical systems over
time. Not only are the ritual actions found in the Graeco~
Egyptian system strongly reflected in the later six magical
systems cited above, but their patterns of thought and
philosophy are more or less imaged in these latter day
schools of magic.
Dr. Flowers illustrates this point perfectly in his con-
struction and interpretation of a Hellenistic "Cosmo-
graphic Tree." This is a pagan version of the much later
Hebrew Qabalistic glyph of the Tree of Life so well know
in today's magical community, and upon which many of
the contemporary currents of magic are built. Yet this par-
ticular glyph has its origins in Nee-Platonic Cosmology.
Like its Hebrew counterpart which was used as a
template to construct it, it too has ten spheres of pure or
"Intelligible" qualities, and 22 Paths or "Sensible" projec-
tions of those qualities into the world of mind and matter.
Like the Western Qabalah which is based upon the original
Hebrew Kabbalah, this pagan glyph has Path attributions
and connections between its ten spheres or "Sephiroths."
More importantly, even a casual study of this early pagan
glyph reveals several different connections of Paths be-
tween the spheres than those used in the Western version.
This immediately suggests other forces or spirit-interac-
tions, thereby possibly extending the range of the Qabalis-
tic Tree of Life into new ritual and ceremonial construc-
tions beyond what is known today even in the most con-
temporary magical societies.
Another tract of vital importance in understanding the
practical side of Hermetic Magic is that entitled The Greek
Magical Papyri in Translation, by Professor Hans Dieter
Betz. It is mentioned in Flowers' book for all those who
seriously consider experimenting with Hermetic Magic.
This is a very scholarly work in the purest sense of the
word, being an in-depth presentation of a large number of
magical spells and formulae derived directly from original
Graeco-Egyptian papyri. As such, it is an invaluable work-
book for the Practitioner of magic today, even though it
was meant primarily to influence scholars working in the
field of the history of religions.
The hard and cold fact is that the magical currents of
today that append the word Hermetic to their name are,
for the most part, woefully lacking any substantial basis of
Hermeticism. The reason for this is the magical formulas
and spells given in the papyri, which were not discovered
and imported into Western Europe until the earliest years
of the 19th century, required extensive examination by
authorities in the field over the last eight or nine decades
before they yielded their fruit, as Flowers points out.
Hence their Hermetic influence on the developing magical
systems of the time were minimal at best.
In terms of the Golden Dawn material, this is men-
tioned by the brilliant esoteric scholar, R.A. Gilbert, in his
1997 introduction to the important work Collectanea
Hermetica. In this single volume of ten papers, compiled
from a series of classic alchemical, Gnostic, and other
related texts by none other than W.W. Westcott, the co-
founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
Gilbert writes of one of these papers: "Similarly we can,
with hindsight, see the weaknesses of Florence Farr's
Egyptian Magic, but in 1896 it was a pioneering study.
There was nothing at all then available to the general pub-
lic on Gnostic Magic, and little enough of any value on the
Egyptian Book of the Dead. "1
Yet Farr's paper, and the other nine of the Collectanea,
laid down the intellectual basis for that system of magic, as
Gilbert goes on to explain. Surely Westcott, a medical doc-
tor, scholar, and thorough researcher, was aware of the
discovery of the Graeco-Egyptian papyri. He must also
have been aware that this discovery was less than a hun-
dred years old at the time of the formation of the Golden
Dawn, and realized that their content would require gen-
erations for translation and study.
This comes through in studying Westcott's several
Prefaces to different sections of the Hermetica. In them, one
gets the feeling of hesitancy in his writings; that he sus-
pected the incompleteness of the Collectanea because of this
missing material. Yet he had the courage to intimate this
shortcoming in the very documents that served as the
intellectual underpinnings of the magical order he created.
But his caution, as with his famous foundational tome, was
and still remains largely ignored, when one examines a
number of the ritual and ceremonial documents of the
Golden Dawn or any other current society that bears the
word Hermetic in its name.
From ritual construction to the names of the Gods and
their hermetic pronunciation, many are either skewed,
contain errors to varying degrees, or are simply incorrect.
It only takes the most casual study of Flowers' and Betz's
texts to see this clearly. The question remains. What forces
were brought to bear upon the Egyptians and their magic
that eventually produced the synthesis we call Hermetic?
Remember, this is a system of magic which would indi-
rectly influence the creation and development of the other
six different systems of magic previously listed.
The magic of the original papyri is, arguably, com-
pletely Egyptian in composition, content, and structure.
This is extremely important to remember because it is from
this point onward that we find the beginnings of the syn-
thesis of Hermetic Magic-that body of work which would
covertly inspire and serve as base material for the other six
systems. As early as the 7th century B.C.E., war between
Egypt and Greece brought about one of the earliest and
most pronounced Greek influences on Egyptian culture, its
magic included.
But this influence did not escalate until 332 B.C.E,
when Alexander the Great conquered this magically-based
country. It was from that time forward that Egyptian
thought, theology, and philosophy provided the raw mate-
rial for the Greeks, who then applied their logic and ana-
lytical rigor to create the magic we call Hermetic today. In
fact, an examination of early Greek writings will show that
Greek philosophers credited the Egyptians for much of
their own magic, theology, and philosophy, and this influ-
ence can be found within the writings of Plotinus, Por-
phyry, Pythagoras, and Ptolemy.
Over the ensuing centuries, the magical papyri that
resulted from this synthesis of Egyptian Magic with Greek
self discipline and analytical thinking were produced. In
fact, the papyri manuscripts that serve as the foundation
and structure of Hermetic Magic is actually dated from
circa 100-400 c.E., although their contents date back to a
much earlier time.
An example of how Hermetic Magic influenced the
development of these other systems can be seen when we
look at the use of magical "tools." In and of itself, the use
of tools or "instruments" in rituals and ceremonies of other
cultures was a matter of course, and so was not unique.
For example, the earlier flourishing civilizations of the
Babylon, Persian, Syria and Phoenicia used various devices
in their formal public religious ceremonies, and in their
individual private devotional practices.