Myth and National Spirit

This book is a significant historical document. Its first edition, Mythologies and National Ethos: A Comparative Study of Several Cultural Zones, published in 1986, immediately caught the attention of Beijing’s Central Television, serving as the intellectual foundation for the renowned TV commentary series River Elegy. It can be said that River Elegy’s core concepts and arguments—such as maritime versus inland civilizations, the spirit of the Great Wall, Yellow River civilization, and the shift toward azure blue—originate from this book. The current edition, printed in 2015 based on the 2005 electronic version, nearly doubles the original length, encapsulating the author’s continued reflections on these themes over the two decades since 1986. The content explores mythologies and national ethos in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greco-Roman, Hebrew, Persian, Nordic, Mayan, Japanese, and Naxi cultures, conducting an accessible yet profound comparative study with the mythologies and national ethos reflected in Chinese classical texts. The book exceeds 600,000 words. The English translation, published a decade later, reflects this historical continuity. To highlight this connection, the book includes, as appendices, the first draft of River Elegy, Overcoming the “Yellow River Mentality” (Yanan Spirit), authored solely by Xie Xuanjun, and the River Elegy TV Commentary Script, a collaborative work. The “River Elegy fever” of 1988, like a typhoon, fueled the 1989 Chinese democracy movement. The June Fourth massacre, suppressing the 1989 movement, in turn, directly toppled Eastern European communist regimes, ultimately leading to the Soviet Union’s collapse. From the writing and publication of Mythologies and National Ethos to the 1989 movement and Soviet dissolution, less than a decade passed—a demonstration of the “butterfly effect.”