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Commercial exploitation in the name of culture shows lack of concern for people
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ONE of the many buzzword terms today is “cultural industrialization.”
The idea is that anything cultural must be subject to the litmus test of the market, or money.
It brings to mind the now classic success story of Xintiandi, where huge tracts of old-style shikumen housing were transformed inside out as a shopping and eating mecca.
Here the Westerners can gratify their craving for exotic oriental flavor without running the risk of running into locals sauntering about in pajamas and slippers. They can experience at first hand local conditions in the full security of modern amenities.
Shikumen is a kind of dwellings originally catering to refugees from neighboring provinces fleeing the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864).
While this is a style of dwelling peculiar to Shanghai, our officials are more ambivalent about this legacy, secretly afraid that the squalid and seedy local conditions might offend the delicacy of the travelers.
Another way to ensure aggressive commercial exploitation is to secure international recognition, by having our local manners, buildings, canals, even mountains, listed as UNESCO heritage in its many categories.
It would probably entail a sinking of a considerable amount of investment for sprucing up, for standardization, for the strengthening of antiquity through repairs, or for PR, broadly known as “protective” measures, but the investment can be soon recouped in the form of ticket sales and other revenues.
Otherwise our governments at all levels have been fairly resolute in embracing the brave new life of modernity, and in diligently eliminating whatever aspect of our life that might be suggestive of our past.
Many experts agree local dialects are dying fast. With elementary school students no longer communicating in local dialects, there is a very real possibility that dialects will be listed as a UNESCO heritage soon.
And probably that status, only, will provoke some protective measures.
The drive towards modernity and the political mandate to globalize are quickly eliminating local manners, differences and idiosyncrasies.
I was reminded of a short South Korean documentary film featuring the only railway in Nepal that travels from Janakpur to India.
It is an old train, with passengers not only within the train, but also spread all about the exterior, atop, before the locomotive, or clinging to the sides.
The train started after an usual five-hour delay, but the passengers all waited patiently, exuding contentment and serenity.
It travels at 12 kilometers per hour. The speed allows people to cross and recross the tracks in front of the approaching train. As explained in the film, 12 kph is about the maximum speed where happiness is possible.
For our steadily civilized compatriots who are constantly dazzled by the ever higher speed of bullet trains, that modest speed will surely elicit an instinctual response: How poor the Nepalese are!
These Nepalese are so poor that instead of being subject to the freezing cold within a bullet train, they can breathe in the fresh air outside, free from smog and pollution.
Time to stand and stare
Instead of hunching over their smartphones or tablets in insulated cars, the Nepalese passengers can take in the slowly receding scene of fellow peasants harvesting in the fields.
These deprivations give us a clue as to why they enjoy the highest “happiness index” in the world. Of course only those positively unhappy will waste their time working out so many indices.
I applaud local authorities for not allowing, at least for the time being, the peace and pace of locals to be disturbed by the pursuit of “prosperity” presumed to be compellingly universal.
I particularly admire the local authorities for their courage to allow foreigners to view their “backwardness.”
This attitude implies a self-confidence and a disdain for what others might think. Unlike Chinese officials, they do not feel the need to apologize for local conditions. Given the globalized drumbeat for progress, all civilized beings must realize how threatened such distinctly local conditions are.
The Oriental Morning Post reported last Friday that a tribal village of the Dulong ethnic minority group in Yunnan Province is confronted with an existential crisis.
In recent years, about 30 in this village of 600 have committed suicide. That is about 40 times the national average rate for suicide.
The tendency has been particularly strong since large-scale new countryside construction took off in 2009.
When a paved highway replaces an ancient trail and cookie-cutter brick houses replace time-honored wooden huts, these people are forced to abandon the traditional way they related to the nature, or fellow villagers.
Many find it hard to adapt to the tyranny of time so essential to progress.
They used to spend half a month collecting medicinal herbs in the mountains. Today many find it too exacting going to a factory at 9 every morning.
They are particularly uncomfortable with a new order of human relations defined by competition, and are appalled at the widening wealth gap. They have been overtaken by progress, and gone is the untainted simplicity of tribal life.
The central element of any culture is human beings. With money, the physical aspect of a culture can be easily packaged or recreated, and marketed at a profit. But without the human factor that culture is gone forever.
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