On The Cross-Cultural Construction Of Fran(?)ois Cheng’s "Order Of Life" Thought

From the perspective of "cultural China",Chinese writers’ creation in foreign languages has gradually attracted the attention of Chinese new literature researchers.The Chinese academia has witnessed much English creation by the Chinese since the20 th century,while the large-scale French creation by them was hardly noticed.Fran(?)ois Cheng,the first Chinese writer elected to the French Academy,became a unique and prominent figure among the Chinese authors,with his distinctive cross-cultural experience,unprecedented French writing experience,solid academic training in Sinology and a strong sense of mission to promote Sino-French cultural exchange.Fran(?)ois Cheng’s academic and translation activities,poetry as well as novel creation all indicate his aesthetic perception of "Chinese thought" and his interest in constructing a complete system based on concepts.This paper fully respects the individuality and interculturalism conveyed by Fran(?)ois Cheng’s thought.Taking the "Order of Life" thought constructed by him as the starting point,this paper presents an overall structure of his thought,reveals mutual influence of the thought and novel creation on each other,investigates the bilingualism behind this thought and his attitude towards cultural exchange,so as to show the complexity of his cultural practices within the thought.The first chapter takes the formation background,expression and cross-cultural intepretation of Fran(?)ois Cheng’s “Chinese Cosmology” as the main line,summarizing his ideology macroscopically.Fran(?)ois Cheng’s cosmology theory based on Confucian and Taoist terminology as well as French structuralism is constructed with a two-axis configuration.It is essentially a "Qi theory" constructed with the three axes of virtual-real,yin-yang,and heaven-earth-human.According to the endless three-fold movement of "Qi"-transformation between being and no-being,universal staggering and return to the original,Fran(?)ois Cheng put forward the Qi aesthetics-Ethics with the "Order of Life" as the core.Having a dialectic logical starting point of uniqueness and integrity,Qi aesthetics-Ethics aims at promoting a transcendental attitude towards "open life".This emphasis on the "Order of Life" also contributed to his new understanding of the relationship between man and god in the context of Western Christian culture: advocating equality and transcendence in the mutual love between man and god.The second chapter examines how Fran(?)ois Cheng’s novels and his thoughts intertwine to reveal his transcendental pursuit of artistic creation.His three novels-Le Dit de Tianyi(1998),L’Eternité n’est pas de trop(2002),and Quand Reviennent les?mes Errantes(2012)show the connection of the "Order of Life" idea from the narrative technique,the motif to the inner meaning.First of all,the narratives of the novels all contain "retelling" behaviors,and thus a nested structure is generated.This technique is the reappearance of the relationship between the material and the self in the spirit of Chinese art,and implies human’s “recreation” behavior of art creation.This behavior has the effect of attracting people to go beyond their own destiny to openness.Secondly,the novel relies on the motif of the “spiritual love" of three or two people,so as to introduce intentionally the Christian faith that “love makes people live forever” into the “Order of Life”,endowing the latter with the transcendental dimension beyond the dialectical logic between uniqueness and unity of “Qi theory”.Finally,Fran(?)ois Cheng turned the desires of the characters written in the novel into the internal driving force of plot development and drew an analogy between the desires with the endless operation of “Qi”,highlighting that the existence of desires is not influenced by whether they will be realized or not.If Fran(?)ois Cheng’s "Order of Life" is to bring out an ideal China that value "life" from the theoretical level,then his novel transforms the "Qi" that dominates cosmology into the desires inside the characters’ hearts,through the formulation of the concrete life styles of the Chinese from ancient times to the present,providing an inherent and eternal dimension of transcendence.Chapters 1 and 2 outline the overall structure of Fran(?)ois Cheng’s"Order of Life" via the mutual confirmation of the dual perspectives of theoretical construction and artistic expression.The third chapter reveals the influence of Fran(?)ois Cheng’s bilingual ability and the "Order of Life" on his cross-cultural communication activities.Fran(?)ois Cheng’sFrench expression suggests his dedication to the expressiveness of Chinese character and his emphasis on its self-sufficient vitality,which is the result of his conscious integration of Chinese thinking into French expressions.This recreated language provides a powerful tool for Fran(?)ois Cheng’s integrated interpretation of Chinese and Western ideas,and his confidence in the universal interaction of "Qi" in the "Order of Life" ideology determines his advocating complementary cultural exchanges between China and the West.