International Education Week at Ole Miss takes place around the second week in November every year. The Ole Miss Office of International Programs hosts this event for international and American students.
It welcomes all the students to experience different cultures. A lot of international student associations and countries represented on campus participated in the event in 2012 and had their own special ways to demonstrate their cultures. International Education Week 2012 was between Nov. 11 and Nov. 17, and each day had different topics and activities.
The first day was World Fest in the Grove. Many organizations and countries had their own display tables.
At the fest, Sri Lanka’s table displayed its traditional costumes and culture; Japan’s table offered Japanese foods; Koreans used their writing brush to write non-Korean names in Korean; Egyptians provided their traditional desserts, and a beautiful woman did Henna painting for other female visitors.
On the following days, Vietnamese people provided their cuisine along with some entertainment (lion dance and fan dance), Africans had a drum and dance ensemble and Koreans provided their cuisine, along with a surprising flash mob dancing to “Gangnam Style.”
The colorful international activities provided a platform for international students to demonstrate their cultures to the campus and community while enriching campus life.
Interestingly, I didn’t see any Chinese activities promoting our long-standing history and rich culture — only two boards with some pictures on a display table. Calligraphy, lion dance and fan dance are all part of the Chinese culture. However, Koreans, Vietnamese and other non-Chinese cultures love, develop and expand upon different aspects of the Chinese culture more than the Chinese do.
An increasing number of non-Chinese are interested in Chinese culture, so why do the majority of young Chinese not carry forth the Chinese culture?
As a young Chinese woman, I also have that responsibility.
Between the 1950s and 1960s, China’s Cultural Revolution ruined a lot of the traditional culture of our country. Moreover, after Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform in 1978, China’s economy was booming. However, we have paid too much attention to the economy while overlooking the culture.
The discordance between the fast-growing economy and the stagnant culture allowed the cultural deformities and deprivation of our youth to increase.
In my generation — although we still learn some traditional culture and history — we learn very little, considering our history goes back thousands of years. It seems the traditional culture is only embraced by the older generation. The majority of young people only care about popular culture.
This phenomenon is not only occurring in China. Cultural heritage is disappearing in the United States as well, like with traditional Delta blues. People who live in the Delta area are trying their best to revitalize the music, but the blues audience right now is composed mainly of people who are middle-aged and older. Although there are still some famous blues artists, the majority of those artists are aging. And even though blues is the origin of a lot of other music, the younger generation is more interested in its derivatives.
The problem is that these traditional cultures have a hard time attracting young people and have an even harder time getting them to carry on the tradition. How do we save and carry forth these vanishing cultures? It is an important question for people from all ethnicities.
These are the crystallizations of human wisdom, along with the development of human society. These are the common, valuable treasures of our society. We do not want to lose them.
Wanfei Wu is a second-year graduate integrated marketing communications student from Yunnan Province, China. Follow her on Twitter @WanfeiWu.
