The Culture of the Copy and the Disappearance of China’s Past

The chapter is about Western man’s attempt to preserve the historical Chinese culture. It is a look at a trip that he took to China with an Italian named Cordaro. Historically the Chinese have a cyclical view of time. This view allows the Chinese to continually copy and rebuild the old with the new. The Chinese even have a word for this type of copying called Fu Zhipin. The view is in contrast to the traditional Western view that time is linear. During the Cultural Revolution Mao made an attempt to destroy the past with the destruction of several thousand monuments. This view of the past has forced many western museums to cancel exhibits of Chinese artifacts because the Chinese will send copies instead of originals. The preservation of the past has taken a backseat to the rapid modernization effort that China has been going through. In the city of Xi’an a school of art preservation was created to train Chinese students. The key word from the students was to make money. An exception was at Luoyang were it has been realized that the old cultural heritage of the region could be used to attract tourism dollars.

One are that the chapter touched upon was how the Chinese have traditionally placed more importance of the whole (i.e. The Great Wall) versus the Western view of placing the importance on the individual (i.e. Michelangelo’s David). This view is seen in the rewriting of ancient Chinese works throughout history. This view influences how the Chinese view a wholistic medicine compared to the Western symptom oriented view. The road ahead has tremendous opportunity for the future of Chinese archeology which is still considered in it infancy.