China/The Past
 

Member Logout

    ImatchYou.com Home
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The past

Nowhere in the world is the past more woven into present than in China, and no other country can boast the sense of continuity that has been bred into the Chinese people over at least three thousand years of continuous civilization.

 
Pressure of history
 
Chinese history has been a source of great strength and resilience in difficult times. Perhaps no other county could have survived such a cataclysmic event as the Culture Revolution to become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies a mere 20 years later. In few other countries, on the other hand, would the Cultural Revolution have occurred in the first place. The pressure to do as your forefathers have done and conform to ancient ideas is very great indeed in China. Occasionally it becomes too much for some parts of society to bear. The stranglehold exerted by the past so frustrated the young people of China in the 1960s that they were easily mobilized by Mao, assisting in his radical but ultimately futile attempt to sweep away all reminders of the past and start all over again. Ironically, the communism that Mao espoused has proved to be little more than former imperial system under a new name.

 
Inflexibility
 
Sometimes it seems that age-old habits are actually fused into the genes of the Chinese, so automatic are they, and so widespread. One example of this is always giving the answer that the listener wants to hear. For more worldly Chinese this is frustrating, because these habits seem almost impossible to break.

At its best, Chinese conservatism—a determination not to change merely for change’s sake, combined with a belief in the overriding power of precedent—is admirable; at other times it is tiresome, as when agreement is reached to do something in one way, only to find that ultimately the old way prevails.


 
Outside influence
 
In most civilized societies the past is manifested in tangible remains, and, where they survive, this is also true of China—and even in the case of contemporary art and architecture the tendency is always to evoke the past. But the material residue from Chinese history is less important than the impact that the past has had on the Chinese mind. Chinese history is remarkable for the fact that outside influences have had almost no effect on the national psyche. Without an appreciation of this fundamental fact, it is impossible for the visitor to understand modern China.

 
The tiger awakes
 
On several occasions this century, when it seemed China was about to alter course, it was in fact merely ret rimming its sails. Now, change seems more certain; the challenge is to recover the best of the past and marry it to the realities of the modern world.

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

©Copyright 2002 I Match U., Inc.


Interface is designed by HomeMem Web Solutions