Issue 10
Governments must ensure that their major cities receive the financial support they need in order to thrive, because it is primarily in cities that a nation's cultural traditions are preserved and generated.
Is it necessary or possible for a government to supply abundance of financial support to major cities in order to maintain or develop a nation’s cultural traditions, as the author claims? In my opinion, however, based on the personal experience and actual observation, I disapprove of it with some obvious reasons that I would like to serve in the following to bolster my stance.
First of all metropolitans are the places where various cultures integrate, thus keeping a single tradition totally intact prove to be very difficult. There’s no denying that as soon as we talk about Peking opera we associate it with Beijing at once. But meanwhile there are also hundreds of thousands of foreigners working in the China’s second largest city, bringing different cultures such as cultus and pilgrimage and the consequently contributing to a more diversified custom. Actually in the era of rapid social and economic change leading to increasing communication, preserving a certain culture turns out to be very hard, if not wholly impossible.
Furthermore while preserving traditions seems to be unlikely, generating it is possible. Nevertheless there is little help for the financial supports in this issue which largely a spontaneous one. Hong Kong is a perfect mixture of the eastern and western cultures. But it’s rare to hear that the SAR government allocates its budget deliberately to the so-called culture-generating project. It’s self-evident to say that with the overwhelming globalization, the culture of a nation will be always changing, which in turn is the process of producing a new one.
Last but not least, It’s not the big cities but rural areas that sustain a nation’s cultural tradition. Almost all the relics are found in countryside instead of the downtown district in New York or London. And the quiet and placid pastoral areas are more or less free from foreign cultures’ invasion. Nowadays Chinese youngsters in big cities deem Christmas eve a fashion while in the country people accentuate the Spring Festive as the biggest celebration and carry on the very traditions passing from ancient times
Above all, From what has been discussed above, We may safely arrive at the conclusion that preserving a certain tradition which maybe work in rural areas is almost an impossible task in big cities while generating it only needs communication and time, not funds paid by innocent taxpayers.