Important examples of the staying power of Chinese tradition
8000 BCE
2000 CE
By Greg McCulley
Drafted 7 September 1997
����������� Upon any substantive study of the Chinese people by a westerner, one is almost immediately impressed with the relative longevity the Chinese culture has enjoyed since very nearly the dawn of civilization.� There are scores of examples that support this statement, but some are more revealing of the nature of the Chinese people than are others.� Perhaps most indicative of the staying power of Chinese tradition is the sense of community possessed by the nation.� The concept of family and the role food has played in its history are also significant, but as we will see, not necessarily mutually exclusive elements.� This essay addresses these three factors of Chin ese tradition, their correlation to one another, and their value when considering the continued presence of Chinese culture.
����������� To many Americans, the word "community" draws images of either our hometown or another past experience with a place we have lived.� Whatever the case, it is basically a reference to geography.� This is not the case with the Chinese people, for with this group, "community" is a powerful tool used for many, by many.� Mass mobilization made possible many feats of engineering that are daunting even by today's standards.� Consider the creation of the famed Great Wall of China, constructed by the first emperor of the Ch'in dynasty, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti.� The Great Wall was reported to have cost the lives of 1 million men, during forced labor.� This effective utilization of mass labor was harsh, but it got results.� Such exploitation of manpower also allowed the digging of a connection canal between the basins of the lower Yangtze and Yellow rivers (Watson, 70).� These works, and others, set the precedence for employing the majority of the population in the creation and maintenance of civil works, a thought previously unheard of.� Any use of manpower for other than essential means (i.e., production of food or shelter and the provision of defense) is a sign of surplus.� Therefore, there were more people around with time to spare to help raise the quality of life for the community.� If the quality of life increases, more children are born, and you will have to continue to maintain and build civil works to support the growing population.� From this cycle a sense of continuity developed.� The once feudal and scattered people now had accomplishments under their belt, and with them newfound responsibilities to the community they helped create.� A case in point is the problem of the Yellow River.� Claiming the dubious honor of having the highest silt content in the world, this river is choked with particles of runoff from central China.� This sedimentary buildup is to blame for the slow rising of its riverbed, and ultimately, occasional flooding.� In fact, the whole of southern China is saturated with waterways and moisture.� While this makes possible the cultivation of paddy rice, which gets nutrients from the water, the Chinese have been plagued with floods.� Frequent construction of water rerouting and management techniques, as well as the building of dikes, have forced the Chinese people to rely on each other for survival.�
����������� The life of the Chinese peasant has never been one of luxury.� To glean a living from the flooded rice paddies of the south or the dry wheat fields of the north, Chinese farmers have been forced to engage in back breaking labor.� The old adage of "many hands make for light work" was nowhere more appropriate.� Thus, it paid to have a large family.� The more children you produced, particularly sons, the more workers for the family you had.� And when the time came for you to retire, children were a source of financial security.� So, in China, family is not only an institution, but also a part of the persistence of culture.� In many ways, because of the near requirement for large families to ensure individual success, what the individual was to the family, the families were to the communities.� They perpetuated and supported one another--for several thousand years, in fact.� Some argue that this is due to Confucian influence.� Confucius taught that when one's father died, one should retreat from public office or responsibility and mourn for three years, eating nothing but gruel and never straying far from his father's grave (Bloodworth, 106).� This is perhaps an extreme example, but ancestor worship, or a milder form of it, was (and arguably is still today in a diluted form) an important part of Chinese families and their manifestation of heritage.� As recently as this century, families have dictated the business-like alliances of marriages.� After the marriage, the new wife was not so much a new wife to the man but a new daughter-in-law to the parents of the man.� And if the marriage were to prove fruitless, then the husband was allowed a concubine to have children with, for as Mencius said, "The most unfilial act is to have no offspring"� (Bloodworth, 107).� Family was, and is, not an element of life to be dealt with, but rather a fundamental foundation of life in China.� The relationships within families and how this structure makes possible China's long history and staying power is almost the same as with the former topic mentioned in this essay:� community.� Both family support� and community support are requisites of how the Chinese have chosen to exist, and it has flourished.� So much in fact, that the culture has had the time and pleasure to establish a rich array of arts, not the least of these is the culinary arts.
����������� For centuries, the Chinese have regarded eating as one of the central pleasures of life.� Chinese, perhaps as a result of population problems, eat almost any type of edible animal.� This holds true especially in southern China.� Archeological finds in China have indicated that much of the cooking procedures have remained the same, with several central tenets:� conservation of� fuel in preparation, freshness of ingredients, and conservation of resources (Heart of the Dragon, Eating).� The later may support the notion that the Chinese will eat almost any animal.� In further support of this, one need only to visit some outdoor markets;� the variety is nearly unmatched in all the world.� The Chinese have placed a value of not only cooking and the act of food preparation, but also, in the consumption of food.� Dinner with the family is an event, to be respected and enjoyed as a high point of the day.� Dining with the family is a sign that the family is doing well, and is a source of pride for the father of the family.� From this, a pattern emerges:� the group appreciation of food enhances family cohesion, and a strong family supports itself in a monetary fashion, the community in a manpower fashion.� All this leads to the overall feeling of harmony, or at a minimum, the pursuit of it,� that pervades Chinese culture.� At least, from a western point of view.
�� �������� It is this pursuit of harmony which has lead westerners to both idealize and prejudge the Chinese people in one fell swoop.� What is it that makes so many Americans captivated by the mystery and tradition of China?� That is a matter of subjective opinion;� what is plain, however, is that China's tradition is long in age.� From the Peking Man, to the Ch'in dynasty, to the end of the Cultural Revolution, there has been a society of people living in the area we call China.� There are many reasons for its success, as this essay asserts, not the least of these being the sense of community, family and appreciation of food.� We can see where this culture has been, and can only hypothesize of its future, but one thing seems clear:� the Chinese tradition is here to stay for a long, long while.