Professor Yu Jianxing was Invited to Give a Lecture in the 14th Session of the “Erudition & Elegance” Forum

The “Erudition & Elegant Behavior” Reading Season of Classical Works was officially launched on Wensan Campus on Oct 29.
The Deputy Party Secretary Zhao Fa presided over the opening ceremony and pointed out that “Erudition & Elegant Behavior” Reading Season of Classical Works is an important measure to deepen the construction of campus culture, to conserve cultural connotation of ZISU, to create an elegant campus, and to cultivate ZISUers with international vision and patriotism. This reading season put “recommending, reading, creating and sharing” as the main line, put the recommended book list from General Secretary Xi Jinping as the main reading list, and put the “Erudition & Elegance” Forum as the main platform. This reading season advocated a three-dimensional reading of seif-reading, shared reading, morning reading, afternoon reading and evening reading by means of reading party, speech contest, debate, essay competition, new media share, reading rank, mobile shelves, collected papers of reading results. This reading season ask students and teachers to return to slow reading and deep reading, and made reading a lifestyle of all ZISUers. Zhao Fa stressed that there is only a beginning instead of ending of the reading season. Zhao Fa put forward two hopes for the young teachers and students, he hopes they could regard reading as a pursuit and a healthy lifestyle, and he hopes they could connect reading of classics with their daily life organically, and build their own value ideals.
“He Shan Lang Lang” recitation association, folk song team and calligraphy & seal cutting association all brought their wonderful traditional culture shows in the presence of teachers and students on the opening ceremony.
Subsequently, Prof.Yu Jianxing, the Yangtze River scholar of Ministry of Education and Dean of School of Public Administration of ZJU, and supervisor of doctor student, gave a lecture in the 14th session of “Elegance & Erudition” Forum with the title of “ Read for oneself—let’s go to the feast of human thought”, he shared his comprehension about reading while guiding the audiences how to read.
If you wake up in the middle of the night to find that you haven't read for a long time and without any guilt, you must know that you have degenerated. Book in itself is not great, but reading this behavior means that you do not completely agree with the earthly world and the reality, you still have your pursuit and dissatisfaction, you are still struggling and looking for another possibility, and another way of life.” “I ask you to study hard, not because I want you to compete with others in grades, but because I hope you will have the right to choose, to choose a work full of meaning and time, rather than being forced to make a living.” Yu Jianxing cited the understanding of reading of two scholars Chen Pingyuan and Long Yingtai respectively to explain the signifiance of reading.
He talked from Confucious to Hegel, from three brothers in Germany to American cultural soft power, from Russian literature to American Civil War, he shocked all the listeners with his tremendous information, humorous language and incisive insights.
Yu Jianxing put “study for oneself” “well-read” “critical reading” and “link books and outside world” as the outline of his lecture, he told audiences that reading does not mean showing off in front of others, it means meeting one’s own need and improve one’s personality and moral standard. One has to read more books, especially the classics, only through a wide range of reading can one find his/her interest in reading and research. He also encourages the audiences to learn to think and criticize in the process of reading, and cultivate the ability to raise questions and recognize problems. He said that we should love reading but we should not be limited to it, reading is a part of our response to the challenges of outside world, and the goal of reading is to understand and explain the external world.