In addition to trade negotiations, land swaps and international students, cultural exchanges between East China** and Germany are also taking place as scheduled. Moreover, Gu Hongming soon turned this cultural exchange into his personal one-man show, and let the other scholars who participated in the cultural exchange in the delegation become his foils.

On December 26th, when the cultural group of the East China ** delegation communicated with German scholars at the University of Berlin, Gu Hongming gave a speech entitled "The Similarities and Differences between Eastern and Western Civilizations", and gave a speech in all German, in which Gu Hongming on the one hand counted the differences between Eastern and Western cultures and civilizations, and on the other hand, he emphasized the shortcomings in Western culture and civilization, and how to make up for these shortcomings, and the answer given by Gu Hongming was Confucianism in the East. The content of this lecture also aroused great interest among German scholars.

And although the University of Berlin has been on vacation at this time, because this is the first cultural exchange activity between China and Europe, and the public opinion report of Germany on East China in recent years is also relatively positive, and the victory of the Far East War has also added a lot of weight to this cultural exchange activity, Germany is a martial country, and most of the people also advocate force and respect the strong, so it finally attracted more than 500 students to listen to Gu Hongming's speech.

In fact, the culture and civilization of the East and the West have their own strengths, and they have their own essence and disadvantages, but now the level of scientific and technological and social development in the West is higher than that of the East, so in the direction of culture and civilization, the West's discourse power is also greater than that of the East, but this does not mean that the shortcomings in Western culture and civilization have disappeared.

Of course, politicians like to flaunt their own culture and civilization as the most perfect and flawless, so as to increase the cohesion of the country and boost the morale and confidence of the people, but as scholars, they have seen the crisis in the prosperous era of the West. The solution to the crisis, some start from the system, some look for it in religion, some hope to improve the moral level of society through education, and some pin their hopes on a strong ****.

The answer given by Gu Hongming may not all agree with German scholars, but it does provide these scholars with a new idea, at least as a reference. Of course, some scholars and students who listened to the lecture were in a rather serious nationalist ideological mood, and not only could not agree with the answer given by Gu Hongming, but also thought that Gu Hongming's answer was meaningless, and that the thinking of an inferior nation could solve the shortcomings and crises in Western culture and civilization! Therefore, in the question-and-answer session after Gu Hongming's speech, one after another spoke to question, and some of them spoke quite fiercely.

However, Gu Hongming has long been prepared for this, and refuted these people's questions one by one, and said it in a reasonable and restrained manner, neither humble nor arrogant, after all, academic exchanges are not about scolding the street, paying attention to reasoning and presenting facts, not whoever has the loudest voice is reasonable, so Gu Hongming's rebuttal not only made the questioner speechless, but also took the opportunity of rebuttal to further prove that his answer was correct, at least to a certain extent. There are also some scholars and students who have a more objective attitude and admire Gu Hongming's knowledge, wit, and knowledge.

In fact, whether it is Oriental culture or Confucian civilization, they all have their own shortcomings and shortcomings, but the German scholars here basically do not know much about Oriental culture and Confucian civilization. In fact, in this era, there were basically no scholars who had an in-depth understanding and study of Oriental culture and Confucian civilization in the entire Western society, and in the old time and space, it was actually not until the 30s of the 20th century that there were people in Western society and academia to systematically study Eastern culture, and a group of relatively well-known sinologists emerged, Fairbank (English name John King Fairbank) is the most typical representative.

However, Eastern culture is too broad and complex, far more than Western culture, and many people may not be able to get a glimpse of it all, and Western scholars are often preconceived by Western civilization, so it is inevitable that there will be some deviations in their research, and even scholars like Fairbank will have many erroneous views in their works.

Gu Hongming had studied in Europe for 14 years, and he was one of the few scholars in this era who had studied both the East and the West, which also gave Gu Hongming an advantage in the debate with German scholars, because German scholars knew very little about Eastern culture and Confucian civilization, and they did not know the shortcomings of Oriental culture and Confucian civilization at all, and sometimes quoted some erroneous views; The erroneous views of civilization were also explained and clarified one by one, which also made most of the scholars and students present feel that they had only learned about so many oriental cultures and civilizations, and this time it was worthwhile to listen to the lecture.

The next day, almost all the major newspapers in Germany published the full text of Gu Hongming's speech, and since Gu Hongming was speaking in German, there was basically no deviation in the content, and all the meanings that Gu Hongming wanted to express were clearly expressed, and there was no deviation in translation. At this time, a newspaper reported that Gu Hongming graduated from the University of Leipzig, a well-known German university, and obtained two doctorates in literature and philosophy here. The education community felt that there was a light on his face, and before that, Gu Hongming's experience of studying at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom was ignored by the German media.

Later, on the 29th and 31st, Gu Hongming gave two lectures at the University of Berlin on the topics of "Chinese Temperament" and "China is a Civilized Country", and there were many scholars, students, and celebrities who came to listen to Gu Hongming's speech, almost to the point that it was difficult to get a vote, and nearly half of the people listened to the third speech standing up.

At the same time, well-known universities in other parts of Germany have also sent telegrams to the German Foreign Office, inviting the cultural group of the East China Mission to conduct academic exchanges, and of course they all asked Gu Hongming to be present in person, so for a while, Gu Hongming became the hottest figure in the delegation, and the light completely overshadowed others.

However, with the advent of New Year's Day, the whole country of Germany has to rest for three days, so the delegation has temporarily stopped its activities, staying in the apartment to celebrate the New Year spent in a foreign country, East China ** is to adopt the Gregorian calendar, taking into account the lunar calendar, according to the rules of the old time and space, the Gregorian calendar January 1 is set as the beginning of the new year, called New Year's Day, the Lunar New Year is called the Spring Festival, and the first month of the lunar calendar is set on the 15th day of the Lantern Festival. This set of calendar rules has been implemented since the beginning of the establishment of East China, and the staff and students of the visiting group have also been accustomed to regard January 1 of the Gregorian calendar as the beginning of the new year, and when he was in China, Gu Hongming had complained about this calendar system, thinking that the Western calendar is the mainstay, which is putting the cart before the horse, but at this time there is no dissatisfaction, and he is happy to celebrate the arrival of the New Year with everyone.

Of course, during the New Year's Day holiday, the delegation did not relax completely, and reported the results of the previous stage of the visit to the country, and at the same time made a plan for the visit after the holiday, in fact, not only the cultural group received a large number of invitations, but also the delegation received invitations from Austria-Hungary, Austria, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and other countries, hoping that the delegation could visit their countries after the end of the visit to Germany.

Although the traffic of this era has been greatly improved compared with the past, but it is not easy to come to Europe from China, and it is very rare to have a visiting delegation from China, when Li Hongzhang visited Europe 10 years ago, a total of five countries visited Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and now East China has just won the victory in the Far East War, which is when the limelight is in full swing, far better than Li Hongzhang of the year, so European countries have invited the visiting delegation of East China to visit their own country, which is also a grand event.

However, Britain and France did not send an invitation to the visiting delegation of East China, after all, the two countries had just finished fighting with East China, and they were defeated, and they could not pull their faces for a while, and the other two countries accused Japan of improving relations with East China, and used this as an excuse to sanction Japan. After all, the distance is too far away, and the strength of East China is not easy to defeat, not to mention that the two countries now have a large number of colonies in Southeast Asia, in case they really provoke East China, these colonies will be greatly threatened, so it is actually beneficial to the two countries to appropriately improve the relationship with East China. At present, Britain and France are evaluating the pros and cons of inviting a visiting delegation from East China.

The Netherlands, another participant in the Far East War, has sent an invitation to the East China delegation, after all, the Netherlands' strength is too weak to compete with East China, so it is better to improve relations with East China as soon as possible, anyway, for European countries, it is the norm to fight today and make peace tomorrow.

The current situation is what the delegation did not expect, but this is not a situation that the delegation can decide, so it can only send a message back to Qingdao for instructions, but the cultural group has already made a list of the first batch of visiting universities, Gu Hongming has studied in Germany for 5 years, of course, those universities are real famous brands, those are pheasant universities, the first batch of visits to a total of 6 universities, namely the University of Leipzig, the University of Munich, the University of Heidelberg, RWTH Aachen University, the University of Tübingen, and the first stop is of course Gu Hongming's alma mater, the University of Leipzig.