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We all have heard about the culture of the East. Especially about Asian culture, that is such a strange and incomprehensible to us. One of the brightest representatives of Asian culture is China. China is a vast economically developed country, ranking third in the world in size and first in population. It has beautiful natural landscapes, many attractions, and ancient cultural traditions, which roots lie in the distant past. China is a country of mountains and plains, lakes and the sea, rivers and dense forests. Also, it has well-known ancient monuments such as sacred Tibet, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China, the famous "Terracotta army", and so on. Moreover, numerous palaces, temples and churches, Chinese tea ceremony and many other beautiful customs are performing China to the world. This country has a very ancient and unique history of thousands of years.
Is Chinese culture besieged by outside influence? |
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We all have heard about the culture of the East. Especially about Asian culture, that is such a strange and incomprehensible to us. One of the brightest representatives of Asian culture is China. China is a vast economically developed country, ranking third in the world in size and first in population. It has beautiful natural landscapes, many attractions, and ancient cultural traditions, which roots lie in the distant past. China is a country of mountains and plains, lakes and the sea, rivers and dense forests. Also, it has well-known ancient monuments such as sacred Tibet, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China, the famous "Terracotta army", and so on. Moreover, numerous palaces, temples and churches, Chinese tea ceremony and many other beautiful customs are performing China to the world. This country has a very ancient and unique history of thousands of years. It was closed and isolated for a long time. Chinese habits and traditions were formed inside of the country and had no influence from outside. In 1949, when the communist party came to power and People Republic of China was established, the rulers began to transform common perspectives of people. However, during the period of 1966-1976 China went through the Cultural Revolution, which has destroyed many ancient traditions and changed the way of living. In spite of this, the country has saved some of the customs and more than 30 years ago opened its territory and cultural heritage to the rest of the world. China has implemented “going global” policy, which had to move the country toward globalization. Today we see China as a modern and aggressively developing country, which has already started to dictate its terms on the geopolitical arena. Chinese people are now not so closed and not so “strange” as it was before. They are free in some aspects of life, fancy, especially the youth, and westernized. Westernized, in this context, means that people accept some parts of western cultures and integrate them into their lives. We can see a lot of western influence in people’s behavior. That is why many researchers have risen very sensitive for Chinese traditional culture question: Is Chinese culture besieged by outside influence? In this paper, we will try to discuss some parts of western impact on Chinese culture.
What is culture? Culture is a mix of different aspects and values of human life. For example, culture includes philosophy, politics, history, art, linguistics, and so on. In order to consider the influence of western culture on Chinese culture, we will pick out some characteristics of culture such as food, language, clothes and appearance, entertainments, and habits.
Food
From the very ancient time China had its own cuisine with plenty of aromas and tastes. Until the end of XX century, Chinese people did not know about any foreign restaurants in this country. Moreover, they did not know about the western fast food industry right until November 1987 when the first KFC restaurant was launched in Beijing. Nowadays, we can see very famous food chains as McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, etc. almost everywhere in China. According to the report Q2 2015 of Yum! Brands, the total number of KFCs in China are 4,889, and Pizza Hut has 1,664 restaurants. These numbers prove that Chinese people love to eat the food of western style. Although all these chains adapt their products for local markets (China is not an exception), they still keep the main idea of western food.
Language
The Chinese language can be ranked in the top of the most difficult languages for studying. It is not so easy to speak Chinese and definitely not easy to write Chinese hieroglyphs. Due to the rapid development of China, a lot of people around the world started to learn the Chinese language. At the same time, local people in China do not want to be behind others and learn English in order to communicate with foreigners freely. They want to be a part of world English community. However, this aspiration has led to a pollution of Chinese traditional language. Especially this feature can be seen among young generation. They combine words from different languages, particularly Chinese and English, and use such new words to contact with each other. Such a mix is commonly called Chinglish. It refers to one of the cultural interactions and dynamics in modern China: penetration of another vocabulary into Chinese traditional language (Artashkina, Hu, 2015). From the one hand, it is much easier for young people to communicate and express their emotions. Also, it is better for them to talk to foreigners, who study the Chinese language because they use Chinglish to communicate with locals as well. From the other hand, the clearance of the native language, among the young generation in China, started to disappear.
Clothes and appearance
Chinese dandies and fashionable women are very loyal to foreign brands of apparel. H&M, Zara, Guess, Calvin Klein, American Eagle, Lacoste and other well-known companies have gained an extremely good reputation in China. Western style of living has a significant impact on the Chinese people, especially youth (Li, 2008). They started to follow western fashionable trends and wear western designs. For example, they prefer to buy a T-shirt with label or name as Nike or Adidas instead of Chinese Anta and Li-Ning. Also, they think that quality of international brands is much higher, even if all those companies have their factories in China. In addition, Chinese consumers tend to buy luxury products because they show the status of the owner. It is already a matter of decision process of buying rather than the product itself or brand (Guo, 2005).
Entertainments
Cinemas, discos and clubs, bowling, billiard, and amusement parks are all belong to a western culture. They are so common nowadays that we do not even think where they exactly came from. Chinese people, as well as Europeans and Americans, like to spend their free time in such areas. They enjoy the possibility to see and feel what other countries see. They learn from movies and games such as bowling and billiard; they get an unforgettable experience in amusement parks. They get to know behavior and habits of western people through different kinds of entertainments. Interestingly, due to increasing demand from China, American filmmakers started to invite Chinese celebrities in their shootings of films. It is happening because China has a huge consumer power and influence on the markets. Thus, directors, and not only directors, try to satisfy Chinese consumers’ ego by giving them what they wish. From the one hand, it can be considered as the influence of China on western culture. From the other hand, by satisfying local Chinese people, western people can somehow manipulate and predict the behavior of their Asian neighbors.
Habits
China is a unique country. Its people are also unique in some ways, especially in habits. Traditional Chinese habits are quite different from those in western countries. For foreigners, it is very unusual to see Chinese people spitting or smoking everywhere. But modern people in China have similar habits as well as western people have. In reality, some of the western habits were “imposed” by outside. A few examples are very clear: consumerism, imitation, and food preferences. Nowadays, Chinese people consume a lot of goods every day. They buy those products, which are not necessary to them. In my opinion, it happens because of Chinese became wealthier; their incomes have been rising rapidly. Now they can afford much more products than before. Moreover, high demand is stimulated by imitating desire. After watching fancy western shows such as America Got Talents or American Idol or similar Chinese shows, which are copies of western TV programs, Chinese people want to look like Americans and Europeans. They want to adopt their personal style and style of living. By doing this, they even started to eat western food and drink coffee. In the past, Chinese people used to drink tea, but today their demand shifting toward coffee, wine, cola, etc. and western food such as pizza, pasta, steaks, and so on. Nowadays, they want to follow western culture and at the same time, they do not forget about Chinese traditions.
By answering the main question, which is posed in this essay paper, we can say that modern Chinese culture is influenced by outside, especially western culture. Such impacts can be seen in various aspects of people’s life. Food, habits, appearance, language and entertainments are great examples of westernization of Chinese people, particularly youth. Present society in China needs to follow the transnational culture rather than belong to ancient traditions only. However, recent trends show that China also has a significant influence on other cultures. A lot of people started to listen Chinese advises regarding health and beauty. Chinese entertainment industries also started to attack western competitors. Nowadays, China has the influence not only in political and economic spheres but also in cultural aspects. In spite of this, Chinese traditional culture is besieged by outside influence because western culture and habits already penetrated deeply inside of culture of China.
References:
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Chris Buckley (2015). Why Chinese embrace America's
culture but not its policies Read more at http://economictimes.
Cheng Li. Brand culture and consumption: Chinese consumers and the foreign brands. D.Sc thesis, Université d’Aix- Marseille III.
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