Middle Kingdom on the brain

oh ya, before china was opened we thought that, we still think that today, but we dont call other people uncivilized or barbarians anymore, we just try to do our best , i think thats a better way

Progress is progress and it is all good. Still, the ideology that goes into the concept of the Middle Kingdom, no matter how you adapt or modernize it, stands to be a detriment. If "nobody else has any good ideas" then you're guaranteed to miss something big, sooner or later.

Mind you, the pride that the people of China have for their nation and culture are quite justified. They just need to make the great culture they have a bit more adaptable perhaps.

Sheesh, I'd say all of East Asia could use some adaptability.

Mind you, the pride that the people of China have for their nation and culture are quite justified. They just need to make the great culture they have a bit more adaptable perhaps.

well we have, no longer calling whitepeople barbarians, koreans/vietnamese fringespeople, and willing to learn and revceieve from other nations

Acceptance? Oh yes of course. China have been recieving much Engineering and technical assitance from Germany lately. Many of China's High Tech buses and civilian jet engine plants are manufactured by German-runned plants. As a visitor of China during the summer of 2003, the people are very fascinated with foreigners especially Europeans.

Over the past few years since the turn of the century, China have been adapting at a tremendous rate. I can assure you that the skyscrapers of Shanghai derived from Japanese, European, American architects.

And you wonder why the PRC Government welcome foreign investments that lead to its economic boom. So the person posted above me is actually correct at some point. The Chinese are willing to learn from others greatly depending on the situation.

Constrastly, adaptation can be negative if taken in too much. The Chinese culture is becoming supressed and I have seen this several times during my visits. I was pretty much dissapointed during my visits in China. My expectations was to experience diversity and the different culture, but instead what I usually see is MTV, McDonalds, KFC, Ikea, Wal-Mart, etc.

As an Foreign Observer, I spotted something particularly odd. Many of China's youth are turning away from the Chinese Culture and are willing to adapt to the western lifestyle. As One Chinese Child told me, he prefer McDonalds instead.


Note: Japanese Pop Culture is not considered to be Western.

you want to experience cultural diversity in china??


go to Suzhou, a megacity just west of shanghai, its called china's garden of eden

just visit the area around shanghai, you can enjoy boat rides in the greatest system of canals in the world, enjoy some local cousine right on the boat, cooked just before the beautiful sunset that you can enjoy in the canal waters of a village, you can look at teh ancient chinese archtectture of chinese buildings, and most improtantly, the famous arch bridges that span teh waterways



i can tell you cabal, that to experience china, you must experience food, china is huge, no one can eat all the local foods everywhere, just go to any place and they will have thousands of local dishes

Cabal, don't be discouraged because your visit to the cities. you can see alot inside and outside of Beijing city. Shanghai is a bit different. it was a colonized area by the alliance of 8 in Qing dynasty. So, it was well influenced by teh west in turns of culture.

One place to visit is GueiLing, near Vietnam border. You can see lot of culture if you venture deeper inside of China.

Yes food, Oh my goodness, but you do need a guide tho.

Chinese food is by far the best in the world, on the whole. SSSOOOO varied, and I'd love to make a trip to China to exerience the many local specialties. I cannot understand why kids would prefer McDonalds, but kids sometimes think that Ramen Noodles and Macaroni and Cheese are the greatest things ever.

I was thinking making a quick trip to visit my parents either end of this year or spring break in 2006. If any of ya wanna vist Guang Zhou and a couple of days in HK with me, I be your guide if I still remeber things and places around. Muahahha., I might sell you the local Brothels, :P

u might want to see the greatest things china has ever made accidently/purposely by the thousand years of civilization

greatwall

the beijing-hanzhou grand canal - this is the greatest canal ever, it is really wide and is very long, you can see the gradual change from northern chian to souther china just by boating on ths canal

this is very cool, go to tianjin, which is next bo bejing, you wont believe that some 1000 years ago this was all sea, as well, across the whole of northern china the yellow river ran wild here, you can probably trace the previous channels of the river




i recommend you go deep west into china, in sichuan, where the food is supers spicy