Reason Number 13 - Culture’s Price Point
Selasa, 05 Agustus 2008
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‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 25
"You cannot see the Great Wall from space. Yang Liwei, China’s first man in space, said he was unable to see the Wall while orbiting the globe in October 2003.
But in today’s China it’s getting even harder to see it from the ground. Photos taken of the Great Wall a century ago show one that is very different to what the world knows today. One such picture of a section of the Great Wall known as the Sister Towers shows two mighty stone guard towers built into a hillside dotted with trees and shrubs. Strong and imposing, they overlook a broad river. They are a sign of strength, confidence and glory, a symbol that all China could be proud of.
A photo showing the condition of the towers today is deeply shocking. All that remains is a few layers of base stones of one of the towers. The other is wholly gone – a phantom. The two photographic images placed side by side play tricks with your mind. First the shock, then comes the wonder, then comes sadness as you realize that in this case ‘gone’ means forever.
Even the river has gone, sucked up by China’s overuse of water and neglect, both based on the fallacy that economic development should take precedence over historical preservation. The hillside shows a few straggly trees and an expanse of bare soil and rock.
William Lindesay, a British activist dedicated to protecting the wall, spoke to a local dweller, 82-year-old Lu Wencai. 'The Towers aren’t here anymore, they’re gone' said Lu. Lu told Lindesay that the towers were first damaged by Japanese bombers in the Second World War. But, says Lu, the real damage came in the 1970s when the People’s Liberation Army built a railway into the area. They dismantled the towers and used their stones to build temporary shelters. Once the soldiers had gone the locals used the bricks themselves.
Lu’s story can be found repeated all along the Great Wall as decades of neglect and active abuse have destroyed one of the greatest feats of construction completed by mankind. Often China cries ‘We are the victim of foreign intervention,’ which in many cases has caused big difficulties for the country. However, the destruction of the Great Wall and the present lack of attention it receives is entirely caused by the neglect of the Chinese people. It is as if the words ‘Chinese’ and ‘culture’ are at war with each other."
ChinaBounder comments:
Another question I like to ask in class: ‘What do you do that is Chinese?’
‘Huh?’
‘I mean… what do you do that makes you Chinese.. what do you do that is a part of your culture, that is unique to China, that is traditional?’
Perhaps it’s an unwise question to ask. After all, the point of the class is to get people talking, and this question pretty much shuts down conversation. Few students have an answer.
Calligraphy’s the obvious reply, and indeed a few students will offer this answer, for calligraphy is still quite widely practiced (though often I get the sense that most students only do calligraphy because their more-traditional parents force them to.)
But after calligraphy the well is pretty much dry. Sometimes a student will offer ‘table tennis’ as an answer. And – having done this so many times before -- I have my response ready. ‘So table tennis is a Chinese tradition, is it?’
‘It is.’
‘Really? How long has it been a tradition?’
‘Well.. I don’t know exactly.. but for a very long time…’
Then I tell the student in question that the sport was invented in England in 1880 or so.
In the larger classes, at least one student will play a traditional Chinese instrument, a guqin, an erhu, the pipa or what-have–you. But for the most part it’s piano, violin – the standards of the Western orchestra.
Where is China’s culture? Where, when the nation’s most-loved sports are basketball and football, when its favorite festivals are increasingly Christmas and Valentine’s Day? I have found that more students know the date of those festivals than, say, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival or the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Even the strongest part of Chinese culture, its greatest claim to world fame, its cuisine, is sapping strength, evaporating into a mere simulacrum of what once it was. McDonalds and KFC and Pizza Hut are making inroads into the Chinese palate, and expanding Chinese waistlines accordingly. And indeed maybe that’s a synecdoche for where Chinese culture as a whole is heading -- at weekends, for example, there are long queues outside the Pizza Hut branch in Xujiahui, a central area of Shanghai. It’s a bizarre sight to see, and indeed I often shout out to the queue of assembled simpletons that they are lining up to eat high-fat low-nutrition high-cost low-taste shit. Why would anyone choose to eat Pizza Hut’s foul offerings? If it’s pizza you want the city has dozens of fine pizza places (JimiX on Beijing Xi Lu for example). But no – it’s Pizza Hut that takes the custom.
And that’s Chinese culture today – the victory of show over substance, tinsel over taste, glib over great. Sure, Chinese food remains strong and right now Western junk food is only a part-time choice. When Chinese tourists travel abroad, the majority of them only eat Chinese style food. It’s very rare for them to show much interest in the foods of other cultures – and while that’s no more than good sense in the case of eating British food, ranking rightly low in the global scale as it does, the rot has begun, it’s clear. China’s educated young largely do not know how to cook. Too much used to being cosseted by Mum and Dad, they have never learned basic kitchen skills. And along with this, many of the most glorious dishes of the Ming and Qing have been all but forgotten.
And so it seems to me that Chinese culture, once the greatest in the world, the most inventive, creative, energetic and daring, is today just a mummified husk. A few more taps and it will turn to dust.
‘Huh?’
‘I mean… what do you do that makes you Chinese.. what do you do that is a part of your culture, that is unique to China, that is traditional?’
Perhaps it’s an unwise question to ask. After all, the point of the class is to get people talking, and this question pretty much shuts down conversation. Few students have an answer.
Calligraphy’s the obvious reply, and indeed a few students will offer this answer, for calligraphy is still quite widely practiced (though often I get the sense that most students only do calligraphy because their more-traditional parents force them to.)
But after calligraphy the well is pretty much dry. Sometimes a student will offer ‘table tennis’ as an answer. And – having done this so many times before -- I have my response ready. ‘So table tennis is a Chinese tradition, is it?’
‘It is.’
‘Really? How long has it been a tradition?’
‘Well.. I don’t know exactly.. but for a very long time…’
Then I tell the student in question that the sport was invented in England in 1880 or so.
In the larger classes, at least one student will play a traditional Chinese instrument, a guqin, an erhu, the pipa or what-have–you. But for the most part it’s piano, violin – the standards of the Western orchestra.
Where is China’s culture? Where, when the nation’s most-loved sports are basketball and football, when its favorite festivals are increasingly Christmas and Valentine’s Day? I have found that more students know the date of those festivals than, say, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival or the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Even the strongest part of Chinese culture, its greatest claim to world fame, its cuisine, is sapping strength, evaporating into a mere simulacrum of what once it was. McDonalds and KFC and Pizza Hut are making inroads into the Chinese palate, and expanding Chinese waistlines accordingly. And indeed maybe that’s a synecdoche for where Chinese culture as a whole is heading -- at weekends, for example, there are long queues outside the Pizza Hut branch in Xujiahui, a central area of Shanghai. It’s a bizarre sight to see, and indeed I often shout out to the queue of assembled simpletons that they are lining up to eat high-fat low-nutrition high-cost low-taste shit. Why would anyone choose to eat Pizza Hut’s foul offerings? If it’s pizza you want the city has dozens of fine pizza places (JimiX on Beijing Xi Lu for example). But no – it’s Pizza Hut that takes the custom.
And that’s Chinese culture today – the victory of show over substance, tinsel over taste, glib over great. Sure, Chinese food remains strong and right now Western junk food is only a part-time choice. When Chinese tourists travel abroad, the majority of them only eat Chinese style food. It’s very rare for them to show much interest in the foods of other cultures – and while that’s no more than good sense in the case of eating British food, ranking rightly low in the global scale as it does, the rot has begun, it’s clear. China’s educated young largely do not know how to cook. Too much used to being cosseted by Mum and Dad, they have never learned basic kitchen skills. And along with this, many of the most glorious dishes of the Ming and Qing have been all but forgotten.
And so it seems to me that Chinese culture, once the greatest in the world, the most inventive, creative, energetic and daring, is today just a mummified husk. A few more taps and it will turn to dust.
Keep the symbol in mind and in the public eye -- make a 'T' for Tibet and an 'X' for Xinjiang if you're visiting China for the Olympic games.‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 26
"But one part of China’s cultural history does get a lot of attention – the Yuanmingyuan, or ‘Garden of Perfection and Delight.’ This garden, painstakingly built by six generations of Qing Dynasty emperors, was burned and looted by British and French forces in 1860 as a ‘lesson’ to China.
Since that time, it has remained a ruin. But in 2004 a meeting was held to discuss whether it should be restored. The consensus was that it should not be restored.
'The ruins are the most concrete evidence of Western atrocities and should be reserved as the scene of a crime. The lonely, desolated site is a silent accusation of the aggressive acts of foreign invaders, serving as an ideal place for a ‘patriotic education' said Ye Yanfang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Another commentator said 'Without rehabilitation, the Yuanmingyuan displays explicitly the crimes committed by the Western allied forces. As time goes by the new Yuanmingyuan may obliterate the painful history in the minds of Chinese people.'
The victim mentality again.
But as so often, China is as much the victim of its own people as of external powers. Many cultural relics did in fact survive the looting by the British and French, but they were lost over the succeeding decades as the Chinese people themselves slowly took away objects from the garden. And, in the Cultural Revolution, there was extreme destruction as 800 meters of garden wall were knocked down, 1,000 ancient trees cut down, and numerous other objects looted or destroyed.
Who is calling for a memorial to the destruction China has visited upon itself? No-one. For China, as a victim, the aggressor must always be someone beyond its borders."
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Judul: Reason Number 13 - Culture’s Price Point
Ditulis oleh Unknown
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