FEOS wrote:
Cybargs wrote:
FEOS wrote:
Whatever Rosetta Stone provides, my friend.
tbh, I've always had quite an interest in Chinese culture...even more so since we adopted our daughter.
Chinese culture today is more post revolutionary stuff... If you want to look at a lot of traditional shit, Taiwanese is the way to look because we didn't have the whole cultural revolution.
It takes more than a few decades to change several millenia of culture.
Did you know that the section of the 'Great Wall' that most tourists visit today near Bejing is a rebuilt section? It was rebuilt by Mao's government as a new symbol for the communist state. The bulk of the so called 'Great Wall' is a myriad of fortress and wall fortification systems used to annex and or subjugate vast areas of land previously controlled by nomadic tribes. Most of what's left of the old walls erected by various dynasties is very hard to spot from a distance, if it even survived this long.
Did you know that prior to the communist revolution the Great Wall of China (called the Long Wall by most Chinese before exposure to Europeans, along with a few other names) was generally viewed as a symbol of the worst excesses of despotism by various Imperial dynasties? The first people to use the name the Great Wall were Westerners.
You'd be surprised at how much of the disparate and varied culture of China has been warped and amalgamated by the reign of the communists.
'The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000' provides an excellent introduction. I didn't get to finish it though (was working away from home for an extended period).
Might have to go borrow it again.
Last edited by Flecco (2009-10-01 05:24:24)
