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Thursday, December 16, 2010

My Final Project

Final Project
English 191
Qian Wang                                                 
                                                Chinese Culture
As we known, China has a strong power from her history and culture. Chinese culture developed from dynasty by dynasty and generation by generation, the affection of this culture cannot be ignored neither. Chinese culture is generally thought as traditional Chinese culture, which have already accompanied by Chinese five thousands history. It can be seen as the soul of Chinese people and the whole of Chinese nations.
Chinese Lunar New Year is a grateful window to show Chinese culture, which mean people can deeply be in touch with Chinese life through spending the Lunar New Year with Chinese, especially.  People named Chinese New Year as “Lunar New Year” is because according to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, that Chinese count the date base on lunar phase. (Wikipedia, Chinese New Year) As the king important festival, Lunar New Year has magic to let all Chinese be delight. During Lunar New Year, there is a jocund circumstance among people. (Food in Chinese Culture, Page297)
Firstly, it is a time for Chinese people get together with their family; there are three public holidays with two weekend days, stacking up to seven holidays to thanks the good life with family. We can also feel how significance of Lunar New Year from how many proportion of public holiday for Lunar New Year. Seven important festivals and ten public holidays, Lunar New Year takes place three out of ten. Secondly, because of it is a holiday, people gain plenty of free time without work, everyone are rest and have fun. Thirdly, people will gain the happiness of changing into new one.  As the old tradition, Chinese would better get everything new from head to feet. For example, people had best buy the new clothes; get hair cut before New Year Eve’s; renovate or upholster the house and decorate or rid up the house. Everything is preparation for the new, because Chinese think after New Year is a beginning of a new year, people need to abandon the useless and unluckiness of old things and get a great start to achieve your pursuing. Fourthly, it is ritual fanfare to ancestral spirits. Although this point is dying year by year, we can experience the ritual fanfare ancestral spirits through a number of objects during this festival. Such as sacrificing ancestor or the dead people of family (in this way, we can see that food is not important for the living alone, it also for sacrificing forefather. People will put the food like sweet desserts and fruits in front of spirit tablet or gravestone); burning false paper money to offering to the dead, which hope them have a better life in the other world.
Chinese spend Lunar New Year usually contain these three parts, before New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Eve, feast which beginning with New Year’s Day.  Before New Year’s Eve, Chinese usually will go shopping not only for new dress but also for nian huo, “New Year goods”. During these days, streets are always crowded, shops are supplemented by this temporary markets; people are busy buying fresh and dry food, to hoard during festival because the price of food will rise exponentially. Generally, people will make sausages, kippers and prepare abundant meat or vegetable for the New Year dinner.  In the old days, for relatively poor family, they will have four to six dishes for the New Year dinner. But there are eight dishes for the better standard family, which contain four or six cold plates and one or two entrees. (Food in Chinese Culture)Usually, Chinese will start the New Year dinner from five o’clock, before they start dinner, most people will worship their ancestors. Since everyone get ready sitting around the round table, the oldest senior will eat firstly and then other people are allowed to begin to eat. This is a way to respect the senior who did significant contribution to the family, and this is also a way to show filialness of Chinese culture. Just as red stands for happiness and good luck in China, there are plenty of symbols in Chinese food for the New Year’s Eve dinner. For instant, poultry such as the whole chicken or duck represent unity and wholeness; soup as the bird’s nest soup stands for long life and youthfulness; Fish, which has the similar pronunciation with “Yu”, in Chinese, meaning abundance and remain, so put the fish dish in the end of dinner, symbolizing keeping the good luck all the year. (Buzzle.com, the Chinese New Year Dinner)So generally, soup, chicken or duck, fish, spring roll, meatballs (we call “lions head”, obviously, it’s not real lion’s meat, and it’s just pork meat) will be cooked for the New Year dinner. After dinner, it’s time for junior family members pay ceremonial respects to their seniors. Children will receive small monetary gifts from adults like their uncles or aunts, grandparents and their parents.
According to traditional Chinese legend, there was an extraordinarily fierce and cruel monster called Nian, which just ate human beings. Nian slept the whole year except the New Year’s Eve, so people were afraid of Nian and hided inside of house. However, one day a gray hair man was brave to stand outside and found the secret of Nian, that Nian was fear of red things and exploding firecrackers!  From then on, people began got everything red around them, dressing red clothes on; sticking red banners (usually with good luck words on the banners) on the doors; decorating house with red things and so on. This is why Chinese people like red when they spending New Year, in legend, and red also stands for good luck and future.
Moreover, spending New Year in Chinese is “Guo Nian”, which means passing of year, year is Nian in Chinese. (Chinatownconnection.com, Chinese New Year Legend) Therefore, in the middle night, Chinese start exploding firecrackers, which bring the lively busy atmosphere into the New Year’s Eve.  After New Year’s Eve, the feast begins with New Year’s Day. People will visit relatives’ and friends’ places, to send their best wishes to them. When people visit the place, house owner will set his or her snacks for the visitors. The snacks are from the Nian Huo (New Year goods), and “in form of watermelon seeds, sesame candy and other sweets, roasted peanuts, fruits such as pears and oranges, and cakes are available at all times”. (Food in Chinese Culture, page 299) New Year feast is a great time for people to reinforce the relationship with others and strengthen the family relationship. Chinese people gain plenty of fun from the Lunar New Year festival either.
When talking about Chinese New Year, people cannot do not mention the animals of years. In China, there are twelve animals in the Chinese animal zodiac, which are rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. (C-c-c.org, Chinese Culture Center’s Zodiac Page) These twelve animals constitute a cycle, each animal represents a year. It works as transmigration. For example, 1989 was snake year, after twelve years, 2001 was snake year again. During the New Year festival, you can see there are a number of beautiful light candles which are in the shape of the animal of New Year.  Additionally, there are also peddlers who can make animal candy within one minute by using hot syrup drawing the animals, and using one thin and short cudgel to stick with the hot syrup. When the hot syrup cools down, customers can hold the animal candy and eat. Usually, people would like to play the turn plate to decide to pay for which animal candy, from the Chinese animal zodiac. However, nowadays, the drawing animal candy is nearly disappeared. The drawing animal candy skill is losing, just as other traditional Chinese workmanship craft skills, like Chinese traditional wood carving skills, which were in fashion among old Chinese dynasties like Ming dynasty (news.folk.com, Gaozhou traditional Burmese Eggplant carving handicraft disappearing);  traditional skill of making silver, which were prevalent through the Miao minority of China (0755zb.com, Traditional silver).
Disappearing of the traditional craft techniques, shows intangible culture heritage is slacking down from modern China. On the one hand, it is because the developing of economic. People do not want to learn the traditional techniques, which are behind the times and difficult to be proficient at this art. On the other hand, Chinese people are lacking the sense of protect either intangible culture heritages or material culture heritages. The Chinese Cultural Revolution is an example of destroying the material culture heritages and interdicting the inheriting of some traditional culture. From 1966 to 1976, this culture revolution bogged down China development, the important domestic political campaign was totally a wrong domestic war. “That it was great may be seen from the fact that it shook the Party and the country to their foundations, closed schools and universities, slowed production, and virtually shut down all diplomatic activity.” (Its History and Culture, page215) During 1966 and 1967, owing to iconoclasm swept folk and the ultra personality cult of Chairman Mao, there was extraordinarily large-scale destroying of traditional material, such as culture relics. “In Beijing alone, at least 4,922 of the capital’s 6,843 officially classified historical sites were damaged or destroyed from mid-August to September 1966.” (The Chinese Culture Revolution as History, page 64-65) Under the slogan “smash, burn, fry, and scorch” a mass of culture relics disappeared, people of that time insolently wrecked the precious legacy which forefathers left to us. And they thought they did the right thing, to perish the “feudal old culture”. “Turn the old world upside down, smash it to pieces, pulverize it, create chaos and make a tremendous mess, the bigger the better.” (Mao‘s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic, page 321)
Although, the Cultural Revolution let China suffer heavy losses of her splendid culture, it penetrate deeply into Chinese people’s mind that we should protect and treasure our culture from now on. Specially, when China fought for the ownership of the Dragon Boat Festival with South Korea, China began pay more attention on protect her own intangible culture heritages. South Korea registered Dragon Boat Festival as their intangible culture heritage in 2008, and South Koreans disputed Chinese on Dragon Boat Festival a lot of times. (chinahush.com, Sinida Zongzi Gate) Who’s Dragon Boat Festival? It became the hot topic during 2008. From this issue, Chinese do not treasure the traditional festival firstly, when they lose it, they became treasure it. However, from other aspect, we can see that China has a strong impact on other countries’ culture, specially the countries near her.
As the the capital of Sinic civilization area, China plays a significant role among East Asia by her brilliant and gorgeous culture. Countries like Japan, Korea and Vietnam were profoundly influenced by China’s culture. Japan, who has strong culture history and economic today, cannot develop without China especially in the culture area. Tracing back to the seventh and eighth centuries, Japanese brought plenty of wealth from China to Japan, that including “Tang dynasty’s dominant religion, Buddhism, and its Confucian values, as well as its basic political principles, forms of government organization, patterns of bureaucratic administration, and codes of law”(China and the Major Powers in East Asia, page 89). Japanese not only cited the culture of China, but also adapted it for their own use. They developed Chinese bureaucracy into feudal system, and created “a miniature Japanese version of Chinese society” (China and the Major Powers in East Asia, page 89). By the way, Japanese borrowed Chinese writing system and then brought about Japanese, which is one reason why a lot of Chinese can understand what the subjects are in Japanese, though they even never learn Japanese. On the other hand, Korea gained affection from Chinese culture too. For instance, Korean Confucianism which gave substantial inflation to Korea is another side of Confucianism developing from China. (Wikipedia.org, Korean Confucianism)
Chinese culture is the riches to China, Asia, Western countries and even the whole world. By the remote historical spreading, more and more people know and want to know much about it. Resplendent Chinese culture cannot just is exuviating object, we can gain a number of benefits from it. So respect it and treasure it, people may be better from learn Chinese culture.


References
From books
Barnett, A. Doak. (1977) China and the Major Powers in East Asia. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution.
Morton, W. Scoot (2005) China its history and culture. United States of America: McGrew-Hill.
Esberick, W. Joseph; Pickowicz, G. Paul; Walder, G. Andrew (2006) The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Chang, C.K. (1979) Food in Chinese Culture. Great Britain, Europe, Africa, and Asia (except Japan): Yale University Press, Ltd, London.
From Internet
Ray, Ritchey. (2010) The Chinese New Year Dinner http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-chinese-new-year-dinner.html [accessed 12/11/2010]
BBC News. (1 February, 2003) Asia welcomes Lunar New Year http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2712567.stm [accessed 12/11/2010]
Jason, Huang. (?) Chinese New Year Legend http://www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-new-year-legend.htm [accessed 12/12/2010]
Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. (?) The Chinese Animal Zodiac http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/zodiac/zodiac.html [accessed 12/12/2010]
Sheng, Liang. (13 April, 2009) Gaozhou Traditional Burmese Eggplant Carving Handicraft disappearing http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?ref=SERP&br=ro&mkt=en-US&dl=en&lp=ZH-CHS_EN&a=http%3a%2f%2fnews.folkw.com%2fwww%2fdongtaizixun%2f152159685.html [accessed 12/12/2010]
Key. (16 June, 2010) Simida Zongzi Gate: dispute over Dragon Boat Festival between China and South Korea http://www.chinahush.com/2010/06/16/simida-zongzi-gate-dispute-over-dragon-boat-festival-between-china-and-south-korea/ [accessed 12/12/2010]
Wikipedia. (2010) Korean Confucianism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Confucianism [accessed 12/15/2010]