Liu Suli: As a non-professional, I think the reason why he devoted so much energy to the history of China is directly related to his nine years in prison. In other words, it is hard to imagine that everyone can get such personal feelings just by reading such words. Personally, I know history, read history and like it, including poplar things. It is such a process. The unfolding of our life itself can be consistent with a certain feeling in history. Whether you are watching a play outside the door or empathizing with others, this feeling will arise spontaneously.
Bai Yang's efforts in history are directly related to his desire to explore China culture. We are reading and writing history today. How many people are as passionate about history as Mr. Bai Yang? This work contains Mr. Bai Yang's experience close to life and his experience close to life of China culture. We like history and read it. What do we want from it? Mr. Bai inspires us.
The relationship between The Ugly China and The Chronicle can be referred to two points. On the one hand, that is to say, chronicles began to show the ugly side of China people in more detail. The stories I read at the beginning of the whole chronicle are almost all stories of intrigue, intrigue, killing each other, occupying territory and uniting with Lian Heng. This ugliness is true not only in the history of China, but also in the history of the West.
Another inspiration is that although the history of our ancestors is bloody, you can see the development of history. Today, mankind is making progress, including China people. Even today, we can discuss freedom, democracy and free constitutionalism in the media.
I wonder if Mr. Bai Yang has such an intention, so that we can see from the bloody history that we humans, we China people, used to be such virtues, but we should not lose heart at the same time. 1000 years later, because Mr. Bai Yang wrote this book 1000 years ago, is it still possible for us to come over from the struggle of conquest and establish a relatively clear system? These are some of my feelings after reading these two books.
Ray: I remember the first time I knew Bai Yang's The Ugly China was more than 20 years ago. It is very popular and has been published by several publishing houses. After it was filmed, the social response was great, which also caused great political pressure. It is hard for people who have not experienced that era to imagine.
Two years ago, a publisher asked me to recommend some books. I said that Bai Yang's History of the People of China is very good, but it may not sell well after a long time of publication. They asked me to write a preface, which turned out to be surprisingly good. Bai Yang's book is actually trying to dig out the negative things in our traditional culture in China, which is called inferiority complex or sauce jar culture. In the 1980s, our opposition to traditional culture was fierce, even fiercer than his, but why didn't it play a bigger role than his? Because it is not as thick as his historical accumulation.
Mr. Bai Yang studied history with his life in prison, which was a test of life and death. The history read in this place is different from that read by pure scholars, which is why I think that to some extent, his experience and understanding of history is deeper than that of scholars, who often write many terms, but he condenses the experience of life.
Mr. Bai Yang's book is not an academic work, but it does not mean that academic works have profound opinions. There are many novels, and even the views on history are more thorough than academic works. Mr. Bai Yang's works belong to this category, which are historical works written with his own life experience.