Chinese traditional cultural discontinuty中国传统文化断层现象

In ancient times, people always live near the river to make their most basic life demand met. Consequently, various colorful cultures were originated near the water at the first place, and meanwhile the history was made. To depict such historical course, we have a Chinese version “源远流长” originally describing the river flows rather far, and later representing a long history. However, in the recent 30 years, many rivers dried up and then human beings suddenly realize the invaluable water acquires our treasure, whereas the equal attention has not been paid to the problem of the Chinese traditional culture river.

The other day I happened to go through some photos of a Chinese costume drama, annoyed by the comments online on the photos. Some of the netizens criticized the main actress’s costumes for apparently imitating the Korean traditional clothes. Furthermore, many other netizens started to blame the prevalent Korean culture in China for Chinese media’s irresponsibility, whereas there was another group of netizens argued that the costumes were totally of Chinese traditional style that had been popular much earlier in ancient China than in Korea. In the meanwhile, several powerful comments were ignored due

to the arguments between the antecedent two groups. Ironically, only these overlooked comments did tell the real truth that although the costumes were authentically Chinese traditional, they were supposed to be invented in a dynasty hundreds of years later than the dynasty of the costume drama TV series.

Taking the above three sorts of online comments into consideration, quite a few Chinese lack of the knowledge of traditional clothes which we are always greatly proud of and fond of. And if we think further, not only about the traditional clothes but mainly about our traditional culture, I can’t help being worried about the present situation. It seems that we have problem inheriting as well as developing our traditional culture. Shortly, it is cultural discontinuity.

As history goes, we all know that to start a business is difficult, but to keep it going is more difficult. Compared with the inheritance of accumulated wealth, the inheritance of traditional cultural is rather tougher. Certain excellent conventional customs as well as cultures which our ancestors took thousands of years to establish currently are beyond our reach. The most extinct part is the

traditional festival customs. The elder we grow, the less interesting we feel about the traditional festivals due to the gradual custom losing. For instance, we have less access to the dragon dance and the lantern show. In addition, when the lovers buy the sharply expensive roses on Valentine’s Day, few young Chinese remember the custom of Qixi festival, Chinese Valentines’ Day. On the other hand, we enjoy the reputation of 5000- year cultural accumulation. We can easily name diverse kinds of traditional arts but lose the capability to appreciate them. Due to the lack of exposure to Peking Opera in childhood, few generations born after 1980 can understand this national cultural treasure, which involves sophisticated pronunciation techniques, and gestures and costumes with symbolic meanings. Besides, though once forced to recite the context of Lunyu for to purpose of college entrance examination, many college students now can hardly recollect the true meaning of it not to mention many other Chinese classics most of students never read before.

As it is challenging enough for us to inherit traditional culture, what’s worse, we are exposed to another tough situation – the development of it. The dress etiquette, with