The Sage’s New Clothes Popular Images of Confucius

in Contemporary China

Julia K. Murray

A mere thirty-five years after the Cultural Revolution, which targeted Confucius as an arch-villain of the feudal past, positive images of the ancient sage now seem to be everywhere in China. Many have been created with governmental support and reflect the striking reversal of its judgment on Confucius’s role in Chinese history. Instead of a “reactionary element working for restoration all his life” (yisheng gao fupi de fandong fenzi ??????????), as he was branded in the Cultural Revolution, the formulaic phrase identifying him nowadays is “China’s great thinker, educator, and statesman” (Zhongguo de weida de sixiang jia, jiaoyu jia, zhengzhi jia ?????????? ????? ??).1 Confucius has become the symbol of Chinese civilization and the theorist of the harmonious society (hexie shehui ????).

Along with his political rehabilitation, visual representations of Confucius have proliferated in a variety of media. From monumental public statues to paintings, movies, and animated cartoons, his images serve new purposes and address a much wider audience than ever before. In ways that would have been unimaginable even half a century ago, Confucius has become part of contemporary popular culture. This chapter explores several of these new representations and the responses they have evoked. To provide perspective, some comparisons are made with images of Confucius that circulated in the late imperial period and with depictions that emerged in the twentieth century under the Republic and the People’s Republic.Read Julia Murray’s The Sages New Clothes: Popular Images of Confucius in Contemporary China from Hammond and Richey’s The Sage Returns: Confucian Revival in Contemporary China.
Watching the video clip of a modern depiction of Confucius or Confucianism. Referring to at least some of the ideas in Murray’s “Sage’s New Clothes,” citing appropriately, and describe how the depiction you choose compares with early (pre-Qin) Confucianism. How does this depiction express modern notions of the importance and meaning of Confucius’s teachings?