Your Opinion about French Revolution

You might want to check out this book, written by Chinese and for Chinese: http://www.douban.com/subject/1001885/

Although I agreed that the Spanish's Civil War, French's Revolution and China's culture revolution all share some similar traits, it's only part of human's nature when constraints or balances are broken. Every country has some moments like that.

Btw, one of my personal favorite is the french movie festival in China every year in mid of Apr. Based on my limited knowledge gleaned here and there, French people tends to be more lay-back and hard-to-'manage' than Chinese people.

Just my $0.02.
Alex

@Alex Dong, I am reading the book by Lin Da. It is the pretty calmed and "negative" reflection of the event. I love it a lot. That is the starting point of my research about the French Revolution.

You may want to read "On Revolution" by Hannah Arendt. I think some of her books were translated and published in China... not sure about this one though.

I'm not going to comment about the possible similarities between the French revolution and the Chinese cultural revolution. This topic is way too complex for me and I don't know much about the Chinese one anyway.

In fact I just wanted to say how admirable I think it is to react the way you do ("seek first to understand before seek to be understood")... Clearly you're a wise person Jian Shuo Wang.

And since I'm here I'd like to share something I'd like more people to remember of; In 2004, special celebrations of the Chinese New Year occured in Paris... During 5 days, even the Eiffel tower was illuminated in red to remind everybody of China! See this page about most of the special illuminations of the tower :
http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/fr/documentation/dossiers/page/illuminations.html
This one is less "official" but shows bigger pics:
http://www.broguiere.com/rouge/
A last one:
http://photoenligne.free.fr/ParisVII/TourEiffel/N4486.jpg

It reminds me of the time I was studying and dreaming of coming in China someday... I thought I could enjoy this friendly relationship between our countries, and 4 years later, this is still what I was thinking as I was flying to Shanghai, so excited but so scared about being about to begin my first real job in China.

A few months after, I feel very uncomfortable when people ask me where I'm from and I don't even know if our young company will survive these "troubles"... Sad.

If you want to have a glimpse of the French spirit before the Revolution, watch "Ridicule", a quite enjoyable French movie, which depicts some of our (good and also bad) features. But if you want to understand this country's present state, May 68 is more important than the Revolution, for its effects on our society are more important . Then you will discover many of the Leaders of May 68 were inspired by Mao! Therefore it is easier to understand why some French are more uncomfortable with present China than other Europeans: the Cultural Revolution was then seen as a revolutionnary model, but 40 years later we know the truth about maoism. It is quite stunning to see that some of the most vehement China contempters in France were former maoists. In the sixties they had a idealized image of China. Now it is just the opposite, as if they tried to make up for their past blindness. Still, despite what is said on the internet, France is the European country where China has most assets, with the largest Chinese community (450,000 or 500, 000) and Chinese is the fastest expanding foreign language (with several Confucius Institutes being set up), and it has a very strong cultural impact.

I'm not going to comment about the possible similarities between the French revolution and the Chinese cultural revolution. This topic is way too complex for me and I don't know much about the Chinese one anyway.

In fact I just wanted to say how admirable I think it is to react the way you do ("seek first to understand before seek to be understood")... Clearly you're a wise person Jian Shuo Wang.

Now since I'm here I'd like to share something I'd like more people to remember of; In 2004, special celebrations of the Chinese New Year occured in Paris... During 5 days, even the Eiffel tower was illuminated in red to remind everybody of China! See this page about most of the special illuminations of the tower :
http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/fr/documentation/dossiers/page/illuminations.html
This one is less "official" but shows bigger pics:
http://www.broguiere.com/rouge/
A last one:
http://photoenligne.free.fr/ParisVII/TourEiffel/N4486.jpg

It reminds me of the time I was studying and dreaming of coming in China someday... I thought I could enjoy this friendly relationship between our countries, and 4 years later, this is still what I was thinking as I was flying to Shanghai, so excited about being about to begin my first real job in China.

A few months after, I feel very uncomfortable when people ask me where I'm from and I don't even know if our young company will survive these "troubles"... Sad.

I totally agree with Damien about french revolution and may 68. French revolution is a classes revolution where poor people are opposed to rich.

But may 68 is considered as an intellectual revolution. It's a revolution where french people share some mind liberty aspirations. The moto was something like "it 's not allowed to prohibit".
These events are some kind of what happened during tian anmen square protests in 1989.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

I'm very disappointed to see so many Chinese trying to dig up something dirty from the French history in the last 1-2 weeks.
I am NOT saying you are such a case.
But it did make an impression to me, slogans like "Jeanne d'Arc is a filthy whore" or "Napoléon is a pervert" which have been in the Chinese cyber-space or even on the streets.
And now you dig around French history too.

I can't understand this hatred towards the French. Yes, they had several protests against the Chinese policy. Yes, they had a security breach which lead to a big embarrassment.
This made the French more despised than the Japanese who have robbed, murdered and raped the Chinese so many times.

Does that make any sense?

At least to me - no. Sarkozi made an official apology to China. The president of the French olympic committee went to China and officially apologised to Jin Jing herself. French business high-ranking managers claimed they had nothing to do with those protesters. The President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso went to China shortly afterwards to ensure the Chinese president for the umptienth time that the EU regards Tibet as a part of China and that they would not support any change of the current boundaries.

And yet, the Chinese public opinion was not changed and little was done to soften the tone. It became a matter of pride and patriotism in China to resent the nasty French that "want to see China divided".
It seems to me that some Chinese just need to hate someone for the sake of it.

I was in France last summer; there're quite a lot of Chinese in Paris. They seemed pretty happy. Of course I haven't spoken to a hundred people, I'm just talking about those who I met. They faced no racial prejudice, at least not more than in the rest of Europe. In many parts of France Chinese language is taught in schools and well-respected. (Well, if you ask my opinion about it, French don't speak good Chinese, but it's another story...) And, as a whole, there's much interest about the culture of China, the medicine and the people.

However all that simply didn't matter. Most French people don't even have any idea of how much their "rating" has fallen in China. Simply because they feel as if they haven't done anything wrong.
Yes, there was an accident and they apologised.
So, why bring the old story again?

I'm sorry, maybe I was off-topic... I hope you don't boycott Bulgarian products because of it (I just made you look at the map didn't I?)