China Tourist Guides — Culture

Chinese culture today is sharply divided into the Old Culture and the New. The Old Culture consists of customs and traditions developed over five thousand years. The social and economic upheavals of the 20th century have pushed China into a starkly modern era, where art and tradition play a muted role in Communist China.

Performing Arts
The Chinese have mastered the art of precision in the performing arts. Famed for their folk art, opera, aerobatics, special forms of dance and puppetry, Chinese performers are trained from childhood and devote their entire lives to the perfection of their art.

Visual Arts
The visual arts of China, now imitated en masse in the rest of the world, set apart by their delicacy and intricacy. Translucent Chinese porcelain and rich embroidered silks formed the backbone of 19th century trade along the famed Silk Route. Chinese calligraphy and traditional paintings adorn the walls of many a home in the West, and chop stick engraving, macram and paper cutting are a unique contribution of Chinese artisans to the world of craft.

Music
Chinese music has a different tone and cadence. Unlike western music, which uses the eight-tone scale, Chinese music uses the unusual five-tone scale, and produces a vibrancy and rhythm unfamiliar to western ears.

Literature
Through history, literature has not been regarded as a separate art form in China; rather every cultured individual was expected to develop a skill in elegant writing. Chinese literature dates back to 1100 B.C. Small wonder then, that Chinese literature is a repository of the most exquisite poetry and prose in civilization, and is highly regarded by Oriental scholars. Unfortunately, most of this is not accessible for Western readers.

Cuisine
The best known of all Chinese exports, is its varied cuisine. Two distinct style of cooking have evolved - the heavier pasta dominated dishes of the Northern style traditionally prepared in the Peking, Tientsin and Shantun styles; and the spicier, better known rice based Southern styles of Szechwan and Hunan, the Kiangsu and Chekiang styles, and the sweet Cantonese food. Chinese cooking lays great emphasis on color, aroma and flavor, all designed to be aesthetically appealing to all the senses. Stir-frying, stewing, steaming, deep-frying, flash frying and pan-frying are the most popular methods of cooking, with the ultimate aim being preservation of the freshness of the food. Sugar, soya sauce and vinegar are the usual seasonings added to an exotic combination of scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, peppers, wine, star-anise, cinnamon, pepper, sesame oil and black mushrooms to provide a unique blend of flavors.

Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine believes in the holistic cure of diseases and uses folk based remedies of animal, plant and mineral products. Although ginseng-in-a-pill is very popular in today's health conscious world, traditional Chinese medicine has been using remedies such as these for over 3000 years. Chinese medical treatises date back to the pre-Chin 221 BC.

Clothing
Traditional Chinese clothing is characterized by the dualities of external elegance and internal symbolism. Each item of clothing and the materials that comprise carries a significance of its own. Fighting peasant feathers on the headwear of warriors were supposed to imbue the wearers with a war-like spirit. Ornamentation in Chinese clothing dates back to almost 18,000 years.

Festivals
Traditionally an agricultural society, the Chinese people, with their reverence for nature, mark the passage of time with such festivals such as the Spring Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Winter Solstice.

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