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��Home>>China Observer
Chinese "self expression" on the rise
www.chinanews.cn 2005-10-26 08:58:00
Chinanews, Oct. 25 - China's traditional heritage is that of a rural
society where every one lived under traditional concepts. For most of the
ordinary folks, they did not have the idea of self expression from a
cultural value point of view and the sense of individualism was quite
weak. Therefore, expressing one's thoughts used to be a matter for
intellectuals and the latter would express themselves in two situations,
one to become an official and worry about the nation's affairs, the other
to become a disappointed scholar and retire from the world.
When many intellectuals ran into obstacles in their government careers,
they would borrow their skills in chess, music, painting, calligraphy and
drank enough wine to create poetry and songs to express their
individualism and special interests. This type of individualistic
expression did not have much social meaning and was purely a matter of
self-entertainment. What is worth a mention is that during the Spring and
Autumn and subsequent Warring States period (770 B.C. to 221 B.C.) when
feudal lords were fighting each other, a large group of learned men who
believed in "literature serves as morality" was running all over the
country and writing books and actively promoting and propagandizing their
own political views and method of ruling a country. This is the
unprecedented period of Chinese history known as "a hundred schools
fighting for supremacy" and Confucius was the most outstanding
intellectual of that period.
"May fourth" period was also the period of individual liberation during
which time anti-traditionalism and anti-authoritarianism carried double
meaning of both freeing the individuals as well as freeing society
(building a new social order) and the two were intertwined like both
sides of the same coin. For example, the young were against traditional
marriages and fighting for the freedom to choose their own mates. This
was both self liberation as well as part of social revolution and
societal movement -- the individual being a member of this social
movement.
"Cultural Revolution" can also be called "totalitarian" societal period.
The characteristics of a totalitarian society is that 1) ordinary life is
highly politicized and there is no room for personal space. Even dating
and marriage become political questions and must be approved by the
organization and everything must be reported to those above. Before and
after every dinner one must declare one's allegiance to Chairman Mao; 2)
there is no freedom and no self, not even freedom to socialize. Every
song that is sung, every movie viewed and every garment worn were almost
all planned by those on top. There is no room at all for individual
expression. At that time, although everyone participated in political
activity, that participation had no individual element. Instead it was
largely a blind following.
In the 1980's, China entered the period of cultural re-awakening. Reforms
and liberalization enabled those who were confined during the Cultural
Revolution to be liberated and have also brought unprecedented
prosperity. At that time newspapers held numerous discussion forums and
invited their readers to participate in discussions with experts and also
started new columns on their papers to allow many readers to express
their views.
From the 1980's to the early 1990's, works that described the life of
ordinary people began to surface in large quantity. These new realistic
writers and film directors used the content of the stories they told to
change a literature of sorrow, of pain borne out of reflecting on one's
culture as well as attempting cutting-edge aphorisms to ordinary life of
citizens. The central characters of this type of literary work are no
longer the hero or the model worker. Instead they are people we run into
on the street, so ordinary they are often banal.
The period from the 1990's to the present is a very special era and is
viewed as "anti-totalitarian society" and the characteristic of this
society is that various elements of different qualities are mixed, recast
or broken up, quite opposite that in a totalitarian society. Today,
people have achieved a definite measure of individual freedom and space
in their cultural entertainment and cultural consumption as more and more
once-closed public spaces have been opened up and many public questions
can now be discussed.
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