tunes and Shaanxi costumes. Apparently we were not his only fans. Star Road has aroused great popular interest in Shaanxi folk music. Such media can help popular audiences to discover lost arts and introduce people to them for the first time.
The mass media raise the people’s popular interest in the traditional arts, but it is the performing artists who really develop the people’s understanding of traditional culture. Yang Liping’s dance show Yunnan Image, based on primitive Yunnan dance style, has had an enormous influence in and out of China. Yang has recovered for us the primitive life in Yunnan. It is the raw and unadorned beauty of nature in her dancing that moves her audience most. We desperately need professional artists’ endeavor to discover traditional arts, to train apprentices, and to project our traditional culture on the global stage. The third strategic factor in promoting our culture in global competition is an audience who knows what and how to appreciate our culture. But today’s youth—tomorrow’s explorers—are ill equipped to appreciate the traditional culture. Take myself as an example: I have had no painting or music classes since senior high school! No extracurricular activities like Chinese painting or calligraphy since primary school! What paltry little we learn about our traditional Chinese culture is relegated to a few lines and pictures in history books. We need our government and our school system to give us a better opportunity to embrace our traditional culture and discover its rich legacy for ourselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, the age of globalization should be a time for cultural discovery, not cultural extinction! Our traditional culture needs our concern and support to survive! With our combined efforts, we can save our valuable culture from extinction and showcase it, so it can shine brightly on the global stage, shared and enjoyed by people all around the world!
蒋春晖:宁波大学选手,第十三届“21世纪杯”全国英语演讲比赛季军。|
演讲稿:Living without globalization
Take a look at the street, we can see people walking around in Nike and Adidas ,beyond the curb, long lines of vehicles shuttle like wind on the tar among which there’re Mercedes-Benz ,BMW, Toyota ,and some of the Volkswagen whose price is definitely not so “volks” at all. They’re all heading for the same direction: the New Oriental School, coz the Olympics is around and learning English is currently the hottest way blowing away your after-work time and money in town. Everything about this picture is so global that you can hardly tell if it’s Bei Jing or Belgium.