Xing Lu takes us to an exquisite journey of the raw origins of Chinese rhetoric and the misperception of it in the Western world.  Although it was very interesting and informative to learn about the different schools of thoughts that existed in China (School of Ming, Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, etc) as well as differences and similarities between Western and Chinese rhetoric and the topics covered by Chinese rhetoricians, I must confess that I was most fascinated by Lu’s arguments and her own rhetoric on why there has been a misconceptions of the East in the West and vice versa, and why should multicultural hermeneutics be the new approach used in order to truly understand Chinese rhetoric.

From the beginning, Lu starts with a rather unique way of explaining that although there is not an equivalent word for rhetoric and logos in the Chinese alphabet, this does not translate into the western accepted “fact” that the Chinese did not have a well developed sense of rhetoric.  In fact, much like in Greece and Rome, ancient Chinese used persuasion, argumentation and debate in topics such as philosophy, religion, and politics meeting the social and cultural demands of the day.  Equally, schools of thoughts seem to have divided Chinese in that some rhetoricians joined what would be equivalent to the Sophists, while the school of Confucianism not only unapproved of it but also focused on the use of rhetoric with the ideas of Socratic dialogue (critical thinking, self-expression, and discernment).

Lu’s rightfully calls for a multicultural revolution that will appropriately study, judge, and interpret both Chinese rhetoric to the West and western rhetoric to the East.  She calls for us to let go of three myths that have poisoned the way Chinese truly held rhetoric (the Chinese characterization of being harmonious, the deprecation of speech in China, and the idea that Chinese did not care about logic).  Most importantly, she urges for a re-evaluation of the misconception that Chinese culture is more spiritual and that western culture is more scientifically oriented (41).  She further advocates for the end of a self-imposed cultural imperialism that has led Chinese scholars to borrow western terms for words such as “logic” instead of taking the time to study ancient Chinese rhetoric in order to critique it and participate in the creation of new theories.

Liu Hsieh takes us onto a more literally journey when analyzing Chinese rhetoric.  Thus, this author emphasizes the importance of not only giving form to emotions and ideas but also polishing them in order to achieve clarity and precision.  Furthermore, these ideas mflaust be expanded or reduced in a methodical way.  Clarity should not be sacrificed for condensation of the material nor should logic be overtaken by a weedy and vague rhetoric (180).   Unfortunately, Hsieh lost me as a reader when the analogy of music was introduced to represent that the organization in a literary piece should be like the sounds in a well put musical pattern.  Luckily, I did understand that, “The brilliance of a literary piece depends on the faultlessness of each paragraph; the clarity of the paragraph depends the flawlessness of each sentence; and the purity of the sentence depends on a happy choice of words.” (186).  In fact, I think there could not be a better way to emphasis the importance of word choice and clear paragraphs in order to create a great literary piece.