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I ve been thinking about how to introduce Chinese culture and teach Chinese( I am an English teacher , but I love Chinese more) ,so I figured it would be a great idea to ask people what they are really interested in when it comes to traditional culture of china. I think It not only helps me to teach my foreign students Chinese,but also helps to clarify something.
1: My answers are not professional, but ” common” , I guess that’s the meaning of ” culture” , which is some things , some activities or some feelings shared by majority of people who live in a certain area.( in this case, Chinese people and china)
2: MY answers are not about modern Chinese culture or modern china, I will tell people what we Chinese think , in a traditional way. Modern china is simply a copy machine with tons of trashy habits (but we are learning fast) , it’s experiencing what other countries has experienced, and I am not interested in politics , as I believe more in 老子( Taoism) than in 孔子（ Confucius).
3:Chinese culture experienced huge changes over thousands of years, I will try my best to give a detailed answer, but I can’t promise it’s always like that. Like I said, just what people usually think.
4:i am doing this also for my Chinese learning students, I wanted to teach in a more interesting way. ( sometimes it is astounding to see how ignorant and arrogant one is about our culture, even though she or he speaks good Chinese, I want my students to speak Chinese and also know about our culture. One can never learn Chinese well without understand our culture. So if you like my way of teaching, you can also join my class.
5: you can ask any word or anything, but I don’t know every word and everything.apologize first if my answers are not satisfying. Also, I hope more Chinese teaching teachers will join me.
- Why do you believe in 老子( Taoism) more than in 孔子 (Confucius)?
- How do you feel about traditional Chinese culture in modern China? Do you think that traditional Chinese culture is well represented in modern China? If not, what do you think should be done to promote traditional Chinese culture in China?
I’m not trying to be rude, but can you explain a little bit more why you are an authority on this topic? I know you are Chinese, but I don’t assume every Chinese person is an authority on Chinese culture like I don’t expect every American to be an expert on American culture. I really like this idea, I’d just like some more context on where your knowledge comes from.
As for my question: What is the longest-standing, most consistent element of Chinese traditional culture that still exists today, and why do you think it has persisted?
How do you think modern china will evolve in the next 50 years or so and why? Which cultural aspects do you think it will retain and which will it lose? Will it be for the better or for worse? Would be interesting to hear a homegrown perspective.
When you mention that you want to “tell people what we Chinese think”, isn’t it too general? You may say that mostly Chinese culture is considered collectivism, then how is individuality of Chinese fulfilled in the past and nowadays ? Taoism also supports the idea of release and balance of natures. It is a good idea to introduce Chinese culture from “common thing”, but how to balance this commonness and uniqueness can be a good approach to look at Chinese culture.
When you mention that you want to “tell people what we Chinese think”, isn’t it too general?
Thank you, thank you. I always hear Chinese people say “we Chinese” or “you foreigners” as if all 1.4 billion Chinese people or 5.7 billion non-Chinese people can be described in any way together.
well, I say in all the cultures, more or less, there is a concept to distinguish the self from the others. Sometimes, using the whole to define individual may bring people illusion of sense of belonging. I say that the belief or social value rooted in Chinese history may cause this phenomenon. After all, there is still long way to go to realise the ideology of cosmopolitanism.
How do you draw a difference between traditional Chinese culture and modern Chinese culture? Examples from your daily life?
Where does the enduring love for Eminem ft. Rhianna – “Love the Way you Lie” come from?
Where does the enduring love for Eminem ft. Rhianna – “Love the Way you Lie” come from?
I really really would like to hear an answer to this one!
@Charlie: first apologize for my delayed answer, i was drunk when i posted this and it wasnt until today i realized there are actually people who are interested…
to answer your questions:
1 :Why do you believe in 老子( Taoism) more than in 孔子 (Confucius)?
Because Taoists firmly believe that people should live as naturally as they can, to live , to love , to accept who they are than force themselves to change. which also means, the main duty of a government is to help people achieve this state. not to interfere anything, economy or whatsoever because the economy itself will go well whithout any help fro the outside world. this is called ” 无为”， (meaning, not to do anything).which also means, as a person, you just live a life like an animal that can think, so you focus on food , clothes, your personal life and try to achieve balance within your heart rather than caring about politics or other people or anything else that are , according to taoists, irrelevant.
Confucius however, believed that we human beings should always work hard to improve ourselves and to get educated and to be someone useful to the society. Then as a government, it should always care about its people, making regulations to reulate everything , encourging people to be polite, to stick to traditional moral codes, to help to make a better society. This is called ” 有为“， Which means, you need to do something to make things better.
Taoists are pessimistic , and say they dont care. Confuciounism believed that if we work hard , we d achieve something eventually. i guess i am too lazy to care. hence i go with the taoism.
- How do you feel about traditional Chinese culture in modern China? Do you think that traditional Chinese culture is well represented in modern China? If not, what do you think should be done to promote traditional Chinese culture in China?
traditional Chinese culture is , well , in many ways heavily impacted by American culture, where people yell about freedom, money , dreams ,adventures and excitment. Modern China is the same thing, you d be amazed to see how such a big country with such a profound history can change so quickly..
However, though certain things might be on the way of disaapearing, but you can still feel it in many ways. like how much we care about our family, as my foreign friends say, we only care about money, but thats because we need money to support our family. every chinese man believes that with enough money, he can make his children and wife live a better life.
Also, like guanxi , that s because we got used to the idea that rich and powerful people are special ( history and now) hence they can help you to become one of them, and most importantly, you dont want to mess up with them. it is seem in companies where subordinated are always busy in kissing their boss’ ass and never doubt or question his orders, and even more so, not to be able to speak his or her voice.( hence not creative and innovative, we say, the first bullet is always for the first shower off.)
I guess in many ways, it is still there in modern China, but lie i said, it is also disappearing quickly. China has always been good at taking in other culture’s elements, and there is actually no way to stop it, it is unavoidable to see this country to be more and more America like. As a teacher, i see children and teenagers everyday, and they are no longer what we used to be, not to mention any likeness of my parents’ and my grandparents’ generation.
@Dan: thanks.. again sorry for the delay..
I’m not trying to be rude, but can you explain a little bit more why you are an authority on this topic? I know you are Chinese, but I don’t assume every Chinese person is an authority on Chinese culture like I don’t expect every American to be an expert on American culture. I really like this idea, I’d just like some more context on where your knowledge comes from.
As for my question: What is the longest-standing, most consistent element of Chinese traditional culture that still exists today, and why do you think it has persisted?
Did i actually say I am an “authority”? ok , that’s the alcohole talking. i was pretty drunk when i posted this and i didnt remember it.. However, to answer your question, first, i am a chinese, i observe, i see , i hear, i care, and i read(this one is particularly important, reading..). Secondly, i grew up in a traditional family, my grandparents, though died when i was little, were well educated, （all their siblings were well educated and came from big families, and they grew up in big big traditional chinese families and received traditional chinese education, we call” 私塾” ）, and my parents suffered from the” cultural revolution” but my grandparents raised them well, all their behaviors speak for traditional Chinese culture.( except being super tolerant with me being stubborn and strong minded.) my uncle , granduncle, grandaunts talk about things, so i know some.
however, you are right , i am not an authority. too many things to talk about traditional culture, i can only talk about the things i know.
As for my question: What is the longest-standing, most consistent element of Chinese traditional culture that still exists today, and why do you think it has persisted?
to answer the question shortly, the spirit to sacrifice self interest for the interest of close related people, especially , family, friends, coworkers（especially bosses). So be ready to drink spirit and do whatever your wife or her family tell to do, give money to children, be super hyper ultra polite and generous in front of your future father-in-law, and treat your wife’s friends like your own(, nah, better than your own). maintaining the relationships needs so much more than love, money and care.
reason to persist, that is an interesting question. to be honest, we dont love our family or friends or coworkers(especially coworkers) that much.but chinese people are always cautious, and constantly feel insecure, having this relationships make us feel like we are not alone, and if any unfortunate things happen, we have someone to care about us.( it is till recently that i realized what a wonderful way it is to deal with whatever shit in our life, it is called a group surviving strategy..)
say.actually i guess in every culture it is the same, that people sacrifice for their love, but chinese people sacrifice so much , and in order to show we are sacrificing, we become heroes, showers off, and super hypocriptics….
traditional Chinese culture is , well , in many ways heavily impacted by American culture, where people yell about freedom, money , dreams ,adventures and excitment. Modern China is the same thing, you d be amazed to see how such a big country with such a profound history can change so quickly.. However, though certain things might be on the way of disaapearing, but you can still feel it in many ways. like how much we care about our family, as my foreign friends say, we only care about money, but thats because we need money to support our family. every chinese man believes that with enough money, he can make his children and wife live a better life. Also, like guanxi , that s because we got used to the idea that rich and powerful people are special ( history and now) hence they can help you to become one of them, and most importantly, you dont want to mess up with them. it is seem in companies where subordinated are always busy in kissing their boss’ ass and never doubt or question his orders, and even more so, not to be able to speak his or her voice.( hence not creative and innovative, we say, the first bullet is always for the first shower off.) I guess in many ways, it is still there in modern China, but lie i said, it is also disappearing quickly. China has always been good at taking in other culture’s elements, and there is actually no way to stop it, it is unavoidable to see this country to be more and more America like. As a teacher, i see children and teenagers everyday, and they are no longer what we used to be, not to mention any likeness of my parents’ and my grandparents’ generation.
Absolutely. Thank you for posting this. I was recently watching the Vice episode about Renting a Foreigner and there was a Chinese professor talking about why China’s culture idolized foreigners. His explanation made a lot of sense to me, about how the mid-20th century in China created a cultural vacuum which China didn’t emerge out of until the late 1980’s. But by that time, China had lost so much of its own culture that it was desperate to fill that gap with foreign culture since it had lost its own. It’s tragic.
@ kerong chen: hey, i think your name sounds really familiar..
When you mention that you want to “tell people what we Chinese think”, isn’t it too general? You may say that mostly Chinese culture is considered collectivism, then how is individuality of Chinese fulfilled in the past and nowadays ? Taoism also supports the idea of release and balance of natures. It is a good idea to introduce Chinese culture from “common thing”, but how to balance this commonness and uniqueness can be a good approach to look at Chinese culture.
it is definitely general. like i said, chinese culture is such big a topic, hence what i say is just what i know and what i ve observed.
it is great question to ask about the ” collectivism” and ” individualism”. guess this can be the boundary of traditional culture and modern culture. As for how, it goes back too long, to answer the question quickly, China has been influenced by other cultures for over hundreds of years and our mighty country is really good at taking in other cultural elements.
The society actually started to change from those privileged and people who belonged to the upper class, their parents sent them abroad, it was about time (The first batch started from 1872 including Zhantianyou from yale university ) when in europe / america, everyone was shouting for freedom, liberty and equality . the first batch learned about these things and started to realize, ok, i actually CAN have my own opinions and i CAN talk with my dad about it. This is the awakening period for these people.
after that, there were more and more oversea students coming back, there was the end of qing dynasty, there was the new government trying to free women from their tiny tiny shoes, here were numerous people ( the booming of modern chinese writers and thinkers) trying to wake the general public up,(failed obviously, but they did wake more educated people since most of them were armed with pens and taugh in schools.). also, there was war and invasion from all other countries, ( that’s why every student who is good at history in someway is patriotic….) westerm preachers started to flow in china and spread christian, foreign governments started to talk about controlling china’s economy and exploiting Chinese people, a lot of people startes to flee to other countries……in conlcusion, more people have access to or at least know about foreign culture where, again, people yell for freedom , and money.
then the foundation of republic of China, and then the cultural revolution where the government told the people, your are the real owner of this country and of this land, so farmers tried to kill the landlords, and the well educated got banished, schools stopped to teach traditional culture, buddhism/taoism died , divorce started to be ok, parents/teachers are no longer authorities of the family /schools. in a word, traditional culture started to die , quickly. you can do whatever you like as long as you like chairman mao and our new country.
and after that ended, dengxiaoping and some other leaders started the ” reform and open up” policy, till today. so we have shenzhen, shanghai and so on….
with the death of most part of traditional culture, now we people are headless flies and i guess that is part of the reason we can take in other cultural elements so quickly… and as you can see, this whole individualism occures in a top-down approach, but i really think within this social context, chinese people will never embrace individualism as many other cultures do. As history has taught us, by forming a group we survive better, so collectivism will still be there , and maybe, forever.
@charlie: oh , thanks … ps, i just finished a long one to answer a girl’s question , also mentioned about ” the gap” and reason…. anyway, thanks for caring….got to run before i get busted by my boss saying i am late again..
Tina… awesome responses! In the age of the internet, when we don’t know who is giving us information, it’s good to share a bit about who you are and why we should listen to you… and it sounds like you’re certainly more qualified to talk on this topic than many others. Thanks for taking the time to respond!
Your comment about self-sacrifice reminded me of my favorite Chengdu Living piece, which is Eli’s piece about living with his mother-in-law. He touched on this and while I haven’t dealt with the phenomenon personally it was illustrated very well and echoes many of the points you made in your response, particularly
the spirit to sacrifice self interest for the interest of close related people,
I have yet to read through your other answers, but thanks for doing this!
Dear Dan, dear Kerong,
I think that all of us get from time to time involved in ‘culture topics’ and I assume we all are actually ‘authorized’ to discuss that. What of course does not necessarily mean we are correct. Generally I assume there is no ultimate authority to dictate us their point of view on certain issues. But there are of course people who know more and those who know less.
I also agree that being a member of certain nation is relatively inadequate qualification to be a ‘judge’ but on the other hand every human being is entitled of own opinion (sometimes correct and sometimes wrong one).
Dear Tina,
I would disagree that personal willingness to scarify in favor of society is that much typically Chinese approach. I would more tend to consider it generally ‘Asian’ approach (to certain extent in contrary to the Western ones even though there are a lot of overlaps here).
This brings us more to individualism and collectivism. But the topic is too broad as there is a lot of individualism in Chinese overall collectivism, a lot of wishful thinking contradicting (sometimes even fighting?) the different ‘raw’ reality etc.
But coming back to the original Dan’s question.
I am of the opinion that one of the most typical and lasting feature of Chinese traditional culture in the current China is ‘superiority of the morality over the law’. That’s basically based on traditional Confucius teaching/believe that in ‘right’ society the law enforcement shall come only as a last (and in proper society unnecessary) resort as the people shall abide the ‘moral principles’ – the problems are then at best settled from the moral principle aspect rather than by implementing the law.
Such approaches are clearly visible in current China as well.
Dear Tina, dear Charlie,
What concerns of Taoism and Confucianism so I am a bit afraid that these are only hardly comparable. Taoism is sort of religion what Confucianism certainly is not.
Of course every religion sets up certain desired ethical principles but they still differ a lot.
In that sense I could understand if someone asks why he/she believes in Taoism rather than Buddhism but I am not really sure if this can be mixed up with Confucianism (still questioning if such a question even makes sense as there can be very ‘ridiculous’ reasons for someones belief which may have nothing in common with the logic as understood by Greek philosophers) .
Further I would then tend to disagree that Traditional Chinese Culture is anyhow influenced by American culture (of course just if by Traditional Culture you do not mean couple of decades only).
In the 19th century, in the time of more or less total collapse of Manchu dynasty, it was more the European (mainly British) impact. In the 20th century then it was a mixture of all cultures, but I would again dare to say with predominant impact of European countries (including USSR). But I still do not think that the 19th and 20th century is that what is usually referred as ‘Traditional culture’.
Mixing then topics of current and Traditional Chinese culture may not be easy. Due to the 20th century happenings (good as well as bad ones) the situation really created certain demand for ‘returning back to the good and healthy culture roots’ – I would a bit disagree with the term of ‘culture vacuum’ as vacuum indicates lack/non existence of culture what in my opinion is not possible for any living society – just from the definition of culture.
But I will stay with Traditional Chinese culture as that was the topic of the comment – even though it somehow pretty quickly came to the topic of current culture 🙂
Do you feel that a lot of traditional Chinese culture has been destroyed or forgotten? Example: I’ve had multiple people tell me or friends that chopsticks, and using chopsticks correctly, is a huge part of traditional Chinese culture. For me, this is pretty tragic. For a country that has thousands of years of history, having chopsticks as a primary representation of those traditions seems unfortunate.
From what I’ve seen, this exists because a lot of the traditional, physical representations of Chinese culture are being eliminated. Every day there’s new shopping malls being built where “traditional” buildings used to exist, and the few ancient places that do remain (like Jing Li in Chengdu for example) are being turned into tourist attractions.
This isn’t a rant or anything, I’m just curious to hear your opinion on this type of development, and if you feel China has, in a way, given up it’s history and culture for the sake of development and modernization
Dear Deven,
From my perspective I would not see anything tragic on the fact that chopsticks are considered one(!) of China culture aspects.
If we like it or not so our eating habits influence also our behavior. Chopsticks are pretty unique to Asia and certainly formed/influenced part of Asian people life.
Nevertheless I would not see it in a way that this is the primary-the most important – traditional culture element 🙂
In China the problem is that the society is highly structured. Different people have different level of education (and by education I do not mean only university degree but the overall knowledge – may be general knowledge …) – it has nothing in common with the fact how smart the person is. A lot of people simply have no interest in history, sociology etc. and therefore they have also limited knowledge in this area.
Every Chinese knows Wu Ze Tian (my favorite, the only female, Chinese emperor) but absolute majority bases their knowledge just on TV series and movies … From perspective of history it’s ridiculous but there is nothing wrong with it as these people have simply little to no interest in history – you shall just understand (and at best they should as well 🙂 ) that their knowledge about her is basically …non existent …
I would dare to say that current China system is to the big extent the continuation of traditional system. As you certainly know in historical China the ruling part of society was not aristocracy like in Europe but the civil officers.
Even though many of them accumulated the property and became rich it was usually not wealth which helped them but participation in examination system (in Song dynasty about 30% of all civil officers were selected through examination system only – that’s absolutely unique ‘democratic’ principle in that time world [the rest however by family background …but still pretty unique in Medieval world]).
One could dare to say that modification of this system is applied in current China. May be therefore China also shows much healthier economical model than Western world (pls do not forget that China generally collapsed in the 19th century as a result of the whole Western world ‘attack’ on China and especially British drug trade which not only ruined the big part of especially South China population but also the whole China economy – all silver was sucked out of China – to be fair to this preceded almost collapse of British empire as the China emperor agreed to trade tea and silk only for silver, but unlike when Brits used drugs, Brits had always the choice to limit their purchases …).
Many people in China show very classical ‘Traditional Culture’ behavior pattern without realizing it’s Traditional Culture behavior.
Culture is not anything what you can wipe out so easily as it’s reflected in natural behavior of people in the families.
Culture also are not only the feast celebration habits.
In that sense current China shows a lot of continuation with its history.
But this shall not be mixed up that Traditional Culture is mimicking the procedures which were applied in the past …
Oh, Damn! guess me getting drunk is not that bad after all!!!
@Miro630:well , about your answers, there are so many and i feel like i have to read them carefully before i jump to answer any of them, so save yours for the last and thanks very much for offering a different opinion, i am open to all of them.
@Dan: thank you too, it is nice to know how other people think about china/chinese culture!
@ Deven: definitely agree with you. you can’t imagine when i was young, how big a deal it was just to Eat properly…it is NOT tragic about using chopstics as primary representation of those traditions. when i was young, we all had to wait our greatparents and parents before we could eat, and the younger we are, we sit the futher away from those delicious dishes. Before we eat, we even had to pay respect to our ancesters. also,eating should be quiet,we were not allowed to smack mouth, and all people used right hand so we wouldnt cause trouble for co-eaters, and i couldnt remember how many times my daddy tried to correct my posture of holding the chopsticks,or how i got scolded for wasting food and kneeled down for 2 hours……
and there were so much more…this represents the “order” of the family, and the idea that we should always respect old people and our ancesters, as well as the respect towards the nature.i don’t know what rituals mean to you, but they are , according to me, certainly part of the culture. the ideas within these rituals are actually the essential part of traditional culture. using chopsticks are just part of the Eating culture. There are so much more i can tell but my student will be here in 3 minutes.. …
“Do you feel that a lot of traditional Chinese culture has been destroyed or forgotten? Example: I’ve had multiple people tell me or friends that chopsticks, and using chopsticks correctly, is a huge part of traditional Chinese culture. For me, this is pretty tragic. For a country that has thousands of years of history, having chopsticks as a primary representation of those traditions seems unfortunate.”
About below question, yeah i feel sorry but i am numb now. But I also want you to know culture is more about symbolic architecture you see in chengdu, and jinli is definitely NOT the symbol of traditional culture. if you are interested, traditional culture is more in Qingyanggong, wenshuyuan and those parks where old people who practice taiji or Calligranphy everyday in the morning. ( this is called ” 修身养性“ by the way, influenced by Taoism.) As for Chengdu where you currently live in, it’s unique culture is in those ” hotpot” restaurants , teahouses and parks where people talk, chat, play majiang and rest all the time…(chengdu is famouse for its” 市民文化” ， which means the culture of the middle class.)
Got to run now, if you are interested , i will continue about this topic, in a word , yeah , traditional culture is dying. but part of them is still there.“From what I’ve seen, this exists because a lot of the traditional, physical representations of Chinese culture are being eliminated. Every day there’s new shopping malls being built where “traditional” buildings used to exist, and the few ancient places that do remain (like Jing Li in Chengdu for example) are being turned into tourist attractions.
This isn’t a rant or anything, I’m just curious to hear your opinion on this type of development, and if you feel China has, in a way, given up it’s history and culture for the sake of development and modernization”
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