The culture of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a blend of traditional Chinese culture with communist and other international modern and post-modern influences. During the Cultural Revolution, an enormous number of cultural treasures of inestimable value were seriously damaged or destroyed, and the practice of many arts and crafts was prohibited. Since the early 1980s, however, official repudiation of those policies has been complemented by efforts to renew China's distinct cultural traditions.
The culture of the People's Republic was in development long before its foundation in 1949 and is mainly a combination of traditional Chinese culture and communism. Much of the diversity of China's culture seems to come from the diversity of the Han Chinese who make up China, and the national minorities who bring individual cultural elements from their cultures and contribute to a continuing development of Chinese culture that follows cultural changes nationwide and internationally. The culture is also very much based on the history of China, which has developed, adapted, and assimilated over thousands of years. The ideology of the Communist and Maoist movement beginning in the twentieth century is certainly crucial to understanding modern Chinese culture.
Today, China still has many close cultural links with other parts of the world, especially within East Asia, Southeast Asia, and overseas Chinese communities. Its cultural elements have spread across the globe due to Ancient China's influence, as well as the country's modernizing popular culture and rise as a global power, becoming one of the most prominent cultural forces in the world, and the predominant culture in Asia.
History
Early years China's cultural market prior to the founding of the People's Republic of China was too underdeveloped for most artists to support themselves through creating art. During the first half of the 20th century, the arts in China were not well-organized and the social status of most artists was low. Most elite artists found it necessary to engage in teaching, editorial work, or other employment to support themselves economically. The Communist Revolution expanded opportunities for artists to obtain steady employment in their fields.
The revolution promoted amateur arts programs. These expanded rapidly after the founding of the PRC.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, traditional Chinese culture was tolerated to some extent. The main changes concentrated on attempts to remove traditional social inequalities, such as sexism, ethnocentrism, and serfdom. The Standard Chinese dialect was promoted by the Central People's Government in Beijing as the lingua franca, continuing campaigns by the Republican era, but local varieties of Chinese and non-Sinitic languages remain in use.
As the Soviet Union was an ally of the Chinese government at the time, Russian culture and the Russian language were quite popular. This trend was halted in 1961 by the Sino-Soviet split.
Cultural Revolution When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, all forms of traditional culture, Chinese (Eastern) or European (Western), were suppressed, including to bring an end to the Four Olds. Temples and churches were vandalized by the Red Guards; Confucian morality was frowned upon; and a cult of personality surrounding Chairman Mao Zedong was promoted. The Little Red Book achieved a level of sanctity as part of Maoism, which became the national ideology. Simplified characters were also officially introduced at the time, though many such simplified characters have existed for hundreds of years. It was in an effort to promote literacy but has brought a debate on traditional and simplified characters.
The artistic community was particularly affected by the Cultural Revolution. Initially, only eight "Sample Acts", or propaganda performances, were allowed, along with the "Loyalty Dance", posters that deify Chairman Mao, and a large number of revolutionary songs such as The East Is Red.
During the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign was a political campaign started by Mao Zedong's fourth wife Jiang Qing, which lasted from 1973 to 1974 and was an extension of the then-current anti-Lin Biao campaign, used to attack the then-Premier Zhou Enlai.
Post-Mao era After the Maoist era, there has been a renaissance of traditional Chinese culture. Local religions, including Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, have flourished. These are not mutually exclusive, and many people practice a combination of the three along with elements of various folk religions. There has also been a revival of Islam and Christianity in China, although religious institutions remain under the control of the government. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian Council (CCC) are Protestant groups. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CCPA) and the Chinese Catholic Bishops' Conference (CCBC) are subordinate to the government in Beijing, instead of to the Holy See.
The television stations in the PRC have in recent years produced numerous quality drama series, covering everything from imperial history to modern-day police actions, and are gaining immense popularity in mainland China.
Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, mainland China became exposed to more western elements, notably pop culture. A trend for nude paintings, which were not historically an element of the Chinese cultural tradition, developed in the late 1980s. American cinema is popular. Young people gather late at night in bars and nightclubs. There is a growing obsession with brand names. Teen slang is incorporating western language. China has also developed a unique cell phone culture, as it has the most mobile phone users in the world, as well as being the country with the most internet users in the world.
Literature
Modern prose In the New Culture Movement (1917–23), the literary writing style was largely replaced by the vernacular in all areas of literature. This was brought about mainly by Lu Xun (1881–1936), China's first major stylist in vernacular prose (other than the novel), and the literary reformers Hu Shih (1891–1962) and Chen Duxiu (1880–1942).
The late 1920s and 1930s were years of creativity in Chinese fiction, and literary journals and societies espousing various artistic theories proliferated. Among the major writers of the period were Guo Moruo (1892–1978), a poet, historian, essayist, and critic; Mao Dun (1896–1981), the first of the novelists to emerge from the League of Left-Wing Writers and one whose work reflected the revolutionary struggle and disillusionment of the late 1920s; and Ba Jin (1904–2005), a novelist whose work was influenced by Ivan Turgenev and other Russian writers. In the 1930s, Ba Jin produced a trilogy that depicted the struggle of modern youth against the age-old dominance of the Confucian family system. Comparison often is made between Jia (Family), one of the novels in the trilogy, and Hong Lou Meng. Another writer of the period was the gifted satirist and novelist Lao She (1899–1966). Many of these writers became important as administrators of the artistic and literary policy after 1949. Most of those still alive during the Cultural Revolution were either purged or forced to submit to public humiliation.
The League of Left-Wing Writers was founded in 1930 and included Lu Xun in its leadership. By 1932 it had adopted the Soviet doctrine of socialist realism, that is, the insistence that art must concentrate on contemporary events in a realistic way, exposing the ills of non-socialist society and promoting the glorious future under communism. After 1949 socialist realism, based on Mao's famous 1942 "Yan'an Talks on Literature and Art," became the uniform style of Chinese authors whose works were published. Conflict, however, soon developed between the government and the writers. The ability to satirize and expose the evils in contemporary society that had made writers useful to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before its accession to power was no longer welcomed. Even more unwelcome to the party was the persistence among writers of what was deplored as "petty bourgeois idealism," "humanitarianism," and an insistence on freedom to choose the subject matter.
At the time of the Great Leap Forward, the government increased its insistence on the use of socialist realism and combined with it so-called revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism. Authors were permitted to write about contemporary China, as well as other times during China's modern period — as long as it was accomplished with the desired socialist revolutionary realism. Nonetheless, the political restrictions discouraged many writers. Although authors were encouraged to write, the production of literature fell off to the point that in 1962 only forty-two novels were published.
During the Cultural Revolution, the repression and intimidation led by Mao's fourth wife, Jiang Qing, succeeded in drying up all cultural activity except a few "model" operas and heroic stories. Although it has since been learned that some writers continued to produce in secret. During that period, no significant literary work was published.
Literature in the post-Mao period The arrest of Jiang Qing and the other members of the Gang of Four in 1976, and especially the reforms initiated at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee in December 1978, led more and more older writers and some younger writers to take up their pens again. Much of the literature discussed the serious abuses of power that had taken place at both the national and the local levels during the Cultural Revolution. The writers decried the waste of time and talent during that decade and bemoaned abuses that had held China back. At the same time, the writers expressed eagerness to make a contribution to building Chinese society. This literature, often called "the literature of the wounded," contained some disquieting views of the party and the political system. Intensely patriotic, these authors wrote cynically of the political leadership that gave rise to the extreme chaos and disorder of the Cultural Revolution. Some of them extended the blame to the entire generation of leaders and to the political system itself. The political authorities were faced with a serious problem: how could they encourage writers to criticize and discredit the abuses of the Cultural Revolution without allowing that criticism to go beyond what they considered tolerable limits.
During this period, a large number of novels and short stories were published; literary magazines from before the Cultural Revolution were revived, and new ones were added to satisfy the seemingly insatiable appetite of the reading public. There was a special interest in foreign works. Linguists were commissioned to translate recently published foreign literature, often without carefully considering its interest for the Chinese reader. Literary magazines specializing in translations of foreign short stories became very popular, especially among the young.
It is not surprising that such dramatic change brought objections from some leaders in government and literary and art circles, who feared it was happening too fast. The first reaction came in 1980 with calls to combat "bourgeois liberalism," a campaign that was repeated in 1981. These two difficult periods were followed by the campaign against spiritual pollution in late 1983, but by 1986 writers were again enjoying greater creative freedom.
Sport
Traditional arts China was an early supporter of UNESCO's effort to draft a convention on intangible cultural heritage and signed the resulting convention in 2004. In 2011, China enacted its Law on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritages.
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