How much of traditional Chinese culture have the Communists managed to change?

[pecksniff]

For most of its history, Chinese society was all about the family -- family came first, before anything else. In the 20th Century, both the Kuomintang and the Communists sought to change that, to substitute national loyalty. Has the CCP succeeded in that, or do Chinese still think in predominately family terms? Do they still burn incense to ancestors' soul tablets, or otherwise practice the old Chinese folk religion? If you were to visit the PRC and Taiwan both, what cultural, as distinct from political or economic, differences would you notice between the two?

 

[pecksniff]

The same question applies to NK, which I've seen described as the only country in the world where there is no culture at all outside the state. Before the 20th Century, Korea was traditionally Confucian.

 

[Rightguide]

For most of its history, Chinese society was all about the family -- family came first, before anything else. In the 20th Century, both the Kuomintang and the Communists sought to change that, to substitute national loyalty. Has the CCP succeeded in that, or do Chinese still think in predominately family terms? Do they still burn incense to ancestors' soul tablets, or otherwise practice the old Chinese folk religion? If you were to visit the PRC and Taiwan both, what cultural, as distinct from political or economic, differences would you notice between the two?

Taiwan, like how much of Hong Kong was, is westernized to a distinct extent. The truth however is there is no such thing as a "traditional Chinese culture" China is a conglomeration of varying cultures resulting from the many regional cultures that are "China." This single Chinese culture stuff is a CCP construct to make the varying peoples of China into uniform conformity under communist rule. Those opposing this singular uniformity are extinguished, like the Uighurs. The Taiwanese, absent the politics and freedom, enjoy much the same cultural beliefs, foods, languages, and practices as their mainland brethren.

 

[Rightguide]

The same question applies to NK, which I've seen described as the only country in the world where there is no culture at all outside the state. Before the 20th Century, Korea was traditionally Confucian.

North Koreans are a damaged people. They truly are a hermit kingdom. A recent defector was amazed to find out that a man had been put on the moon or that other countries and religions actually exist.

 

[pecksniff]

The truth however is there is no such thing as a "traditional Chinese culture" China is a conglomeration of varying cultures resulting from the many regional cultures that are "China." This single Chinese culture stuff is a CCP construct to make the varying peoples of China into uniform conformity under communist rule.

I believe there were similar policies under the emperors.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

I believe there were similar policies under the emperors.

Hard to say, but given they have one of the oldest continuous civilisations in human history, it would be fair to say emperors shared similar policies.

 

[pecksniff]

Hard to say, but given they have one of the oldest continuous civilisations in human history, it would be fair to say emperors shared similar policies.

The first emperor, Qin Shih Huangdi, standardized the written characters nationwide. Later emperors had similar cultural-nationalizing tendencies -- not least, establishing Confucianism as the basis of government and society.

 

[pecksniff]

Here's something: The Tomb of the First Emperor was discovered in the 1970s -- National Geographic had a big cover story about the excavation of the Terracotta Army surrounding it. Thousands of life-sized clay statues of soldiers, with identical bodies but unique heads, apparently modeled from life.

But the tomb itself still has not been excavated. They give reasons of archaeological preservation for that, but I find myself wondering: Is it possible that, even after decades of rationalistic Communism, they are afraid of disturbing the emperor's spirit?

 

[Cubantripod]

Whether covid originated in a lab or in a wet market, it's the government's fault. Wet markets are the result of the great society as the people had to find other sources of food.

 

[pecksniff]

Whether covid originated in a lab or in a wet market, it's the government's fault. Wet markets are the result of the great society as the people had to find other sources of food.

I'm sure wet markets predate the Communist revolution.

 

[pecksniff]

BTW, this is as good a place as any to mention that I am the rightful Emperor of China. My regnal name is Dong Hang Lo. Of the Wang Dynasty. When the monarchists inevitably and soon come to power, then, by Our Vermilion Decree, the new national anthem of the most ancient and illustrious Middle Kingdom shall be, "Mister Wong Has the Biggest Tong in Chinatown." Let all men tremble, respect this, and obey without negligence.

 

[pecksniff]

Here's another way to look at the question: Is popular culture in Taiwan (uninfluenced by Communism) now significantly different than in the PRC?

 

[Rightguide]

Here's something: The Tomb of the First Emperor was discovered in the 1970s -- National Geographic had a big cover story about the excavation of the Terracotta Army surrounding it. Thousands of life-sized clay statues of soldiers, with identical bodies but unique heads, apparently modeled from life.

But the tomb itself still has not been excavated. They give reasons of archaeological preservation for that, but I find myself wondering: Is it possible that, even after decades of rationalistic Communism, they are afraid of disturbing the emperor's spirit?

In China there are a variety of cultural superstitions. For instance this latest round of catastrophic weather events and historic floods, that are not being reported on here, are believed by many in China to foreshadow the demise of the CCP, as in the past when they did the same for ruling dynasties.

The only place I've seen video of these weather events which are catastrophic in nature is on Youtube, one can search "China floods" and "China Typhoons" to get an idea of the tremendous loss of life and property that has occurred this year. These events appear to be if such magnitude as to be a national security problem for Chinese authorities. They are big enough to shake belief in the CCP governance.

 

[Rightguide]

Here's another way to look at the question: Is popular culture in Taiwan (uninfluenced by Communism) now significantly different than in the PRC?

Actually in many ways they share the same cultures as I've already pointed out.

 

[pecksniff]

Actually in many ways they share the same cultures as I've already pointed out.

That's the point, it's a controlled experiment, showing us examples of Chinese culture with and without Communism.

 

[pecksniff]

In China there are a variety of cultural superstitions. For instance this latest round of catastrophic weather events and historic floods, that are not being reported on here, are believed by many in China to foreshadow the demise of the CCP, as in the past when they did the same for ruling dynasties.

The only place I've seen video of these weather events which are catastrophic in nature is on Youtube, one can search "China floods" and "China Typhoons" to get an idea of the tremendous loss of life and property that has occurred this year. These events appear to be if such magnitude as to be a national security problem for Chinese authorities. They are big enough to shake belief in the CCP governance.

Do people outside the affected provinces know these things are happening?

 

[Rightguide]

Do people outside the affected provinces know these things are happening?

According to the videos I've seen the police are going door to door telling people not to speak to foreign media about casualties, damage, or any information that would make China look bad. The damage is widespread however and way to huge to keep secret. In one city there was a four kilometer traffic tunnel that was full of hundreds of cars when in five minutes the entire tunnel was flooded to the roof, thirteen meters deep. The government claimed 14 people killed, despite hundreds upon hundreds of cars and buses being in the tunnel at the time. Locals are saying the death toll there alone was over six thousand people. In fact, people have left so many baskets of flowers by mourners the Communist authorities ordered a barrier wall around the memorial so it couldn't be photographed. Locals citizens tore it down that night and promised to tear it down again if it was replaced.

The area of the tunnel is now surrounded by troops and no one is allowed to get close enough to see what's in the vehicles being removed. The windows of cars and buses are being covered with black curtains to prevent anyone seeing what's inside. This kind of disaster is happening all over the country. Check it out on youtube. There are many videos available for viewing...for now.

 

[Rightguide]

That's the point, it's a controlled experiment, showing us examples of Chinese culture with and without Communism.

The difference between Taiwan and China are striking and immediately apparent to visitors of both countries.

 

[pecksniff]

The difference between Taiwan and China are striking and immediately apparent to visitors of both countries.

I suppose the Taiwanese are richer, but what else?

 

[Rightguide]

I suppose the Taiwanese are richer, but what else?

They are much more polite and they smile a lot. Mainland Chinese are rude and not as outgoing. In China, nobody helps people in trouble they don't know. Nobody wants to get involved. People have staged kidnappings of children in Cities in China in front of crowds of people, who just stand there and do nothing to help the child as he/she is picked up and ran away with.

Not too long ago I watched Russian exchange student being interviewed. She said the biggest thing she had to get used to here in America was that everyone smiled. She said in Russia strangers never smile at each other, or engage in small talk. Maybe it has something to do with their history as a people.

I think China is richer but at the individual level maybe not, and in Taiwan people are free, a big deal.

 

[pecksniff]

BTW, an excellent introduction to (pre-Communist) Chinese culture is The Problem of China, by Bertrand Russell, 1922.

China has an ancient civilization which is now undergoing a very rapid process of change. The traditional civilization of China had developed in almost complete independence of Europe, and had merits and demerits quite different from those of the West. It would be futile to attempt to strike a balance; whether our present culture is better or worse, on the whole, than that which seventeenth-century missionaries found in the Celestial Empire is a question as to which no prudent person would venture to pronounce. But it is easy to point to certain respects in which we are better than old China, and to other respects in which we are worse. If intercourse between Western nations and China is to be fruitful, we must cease to regard ourselves as missionaries of a superior civilization, or, worse still, as men who have a right to exploit, oppress, and swindle the Chinese because they are an "inferior" race. I do not see any reason to believe that the Chinese are inferior to ourselves; and I think most Europeans, who have any intimate knowledge of China, would take the same view.

In comparing an alien culture with one's own, one is forced to ask oneself questions more fundamental than any that usually arise in regard to home affairs. One is forced to ask: What are the things that I ultimately value? What would make me judge one sort of society more desirable than another sort? What sort of ends should I most wish to see realized in the world? Different people will answer these questions differently, and I do not know of any argument by which I could persuade a man who gave an answer different from my own. I must therefore be content merely to state the answer which appeals to me, in the hope that the reader may feel likewise.

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are: knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection. When I speak of knowledge, I do not mean all knowledge; there is much in the way of dry lists of facts that is merely useful, and still more that has no appreciable value of any kind. But the understanding of Nature, incomplete as it is, which is to be derived from science, I hold to be a thing which is good and delightful on its own account. The same may be said, I think, of some biographies and parts of history. To enlarge on this topic would, however, take me too far from my theme. When I speak of art as one of the things that have value on their own account, I do not mean only the deliberate productions of trained artists, though of course these, at their best, deserve the highest place. I mean also the almost unconscious effort after beauty which one finds among Russian peasants and Chinese coolies, the sort of impulse that creates folk-songs, that existed among ourselves before the time of the Puritans, and survives in cottage gardens. Instinctive happiness, or joy of life, is one of the most important widespread popular goods that we have lost through industrialism and the high pressure at which most of us live; its commonness in China is a strong reason for thinking well of Chinese civilization.

 

[pecksniff]

The Cuban people adored Castro because he was the first Cuban leader to stand up to the U.S. and make it stick.

I think something similar supports the prestige of the CCP. Remember, before it came to power, China was helpless before the Western and Japanese imperialists, who had large extraterritorial enclaves in the port cities, and forced the government to do things their way. There were even British officials in the Chinese tax-collection system. In the decades after the revolution, there were no more foreigners, and China was as isolated from the larger world as NK is now -- and most Chinese probably welcomed that.

 

[pecksniff]

One old cliche about Chinese culture is that any young woman is a slave to her mother-in-law -- because when she gets married, she leaves her own extended family and joins her husband's, in which she is now a junior member, and her husband's mother gets to boss her around.

I wonder if that has changed? Has China's shortage of women, caused by the PRC's one-child population-control policy (under which many couples murdered newborn daughters because nothing was more valuable than a son), made any difference in that regard?

 

[pecksniff]

BTW, an excellent introduction to (pre-Communist) Chinese culture is The Problem of China, by Bertrand Russell, 1922.

This passage in particular is worth quoting at length:

So far, I have spoken chiefly of the good sides of the Chinese character; but of course China, like every other nation, has its bad sides also. It is disagreeable to me to speak of these, as I experienced so much courtesy and real kindness from the Chinese, that I should prefer to say only nice things about them. But for the sake of China, as well as for the sake of truth, it would be a mistake to conceal what is less admirable. I will only ask the reader to remember that, on the balance, I think the Chinese one of the best nations I have come across, and am prepared to draw up a graver indictment against every one of the Great Powers. Shortly before I left China, an eminent Chinese writer pressed me to say what I considered the chief defects of the Chinese. With some reluctance, I mentioned three: avarice, cowardice and callousness. Strange to say, my interlocutor, instead of getting angry, admitted the justice of my criticism, and proceeded to discuss possible remedies. This is a sample of the intellectual integrity which is one of China's greatest virtues.

The callousness of the Chinese is bound to strike every Anglo-Saxon. They have none of that humanitarian impulse which leads us to devote one per cent. of our energy to mitigating the evils wrought by the other ninety-nine per cent. For instance, we have been forbidding the Austrians to join with Germany, to emigrate, or to obtain the raw materials of industry. Therefore the Viennese have starved, except those whom it has pleased us to keep alive from philanthropy. The Chinese would not have had the energy to starve the Viennese, or the philanthropy to keep some of them alive. While I was in China, millions were dying of famine; men sold their children into slavery for a few dollars, and killed them if this sum was unobtainable. Much was done by white men to relieve the famine, but very little by the Chinese, and that little vitiated by corruption. It must be said, however, that the efforts of the white men were more effective in soothing their own consciences than in helping the Chinese. So long as the present birth-rate and the present methods of agriculture persist, famines are bound to occur periodically; and those whom philanthropy keeps alive through one famine are only too likely to perish in the next.

Famines in China can be permanently cured only by better methods of agriculture combined with emigration or birth-control on a large scale. Educated Chinese realize this, and it makes them indifferent to efforts to keep the present victims alive. A great deal of Chinese callousness has a similar explanation, and is due to perception of the vastness of the problems involved. But there remains a residue which cannot be so explained. If a dog is run over by an automobile and seriously hurt, nine out of ten passers-by will stop to laugh at the poor brute's howls. The spectacle of suffering does not of itself rouse any sympathetic pain in the average Chinaman; in fact, he seems to find it mildly agreeable. Their history, and their penal code before the revolution of 1911, show that they are by no means destitute of the impulse of active cruelty; but of this I did not myself come across any instances. And it must be said that active cruelty is practised by all the great nations, to an extent concealed from us only by our hypocrisy.

Cowardice is prima facie a fault of the Chinese; but I am not sure that they are really lacking in courage. It is true that, in battles between rival tuchuns, both sides run away, and victory rests with the side that first discovers the flight of the other. But this proves only that the Chinese soldier is a rational man. No cause of any importance is involved, and the armies consist of mere mercenaries. When there is a serious issue, as, for instance, in the Tai-Ping rebellion, the Chinese are said to fight well, particularly if they have good officers. Nevertheless, I do not think that, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Germans, the Chinese can be considered a courageous people, except in the matter of passive endurance. They will endure torture, and even death, for motives which men of more pugnacious races would find insufficient—for example, to conceal the hiding-place of stolen plunder. In spite of their comparative lack of active courage, they have less fear of death than we have, as is shown by their readiness to commit suicide.

Avarice is, I should say, the gravest defect of the Chinese. Life is hard, and money is not easily obtained. For the sake of money, all except a very few foreign-educated Chinese will be guilty of corruption. For the sake of a few pence, almost any coolie will run an imminent risk of death. The difficulty of combating Japan has arisen mainly from the fact that hardly any Chinese politician can resist Japanese bribes. I think this defect is probably due to the fact that, for many ages, an honest living has been hard to get; in which case it will be lessened as economic conditions improve. I doubt if it is any worse now in China than it was in Europe in the eighteenth century. I have not heard of any Chinese general more corrupt than Marlborough, or of any politician more corrupt than Cardinal Dubois. It is, therefore, quite likely that changed industrial conditions will make the Chinese as honest as we are—which is not saying much.

I have been speaking of the Chinese as they are in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.

To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws of perspective.

The obvious charm which the tourist finds in China cannot be preserved; it must perish at the touch of industrialism. But perhaps something may be preserved, something of the ethical qualities in which China is supreme, and which the modern world most desperately needs. Among these qualities I place first the pacific temper, which seeks to settle disputes on grounds of justice rather than by force. It remains to be seen whether the West will allow this temper to persist, or will force it to give place, in self-defence, to a frantic militarism like that to which Japan has been driven.

Has any of that changed under the Commies, I wonder? Probably the "pacific temper" has.

 

[KeithD]

As one who was doing analysis during the Cultural Revolution, I've been surprised at how much and how quickly capitalism has made inroads into doctrinaire communism in China.