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During luch hour they play music erally load over the load speakers on the Campus here. Usually this pisses me off because it is extra shitty Sino-pop. Today was a little better in that they were playing classical music. The strange thing about it was that it was classical music that you would never hear in America as background music because they already have cultral significance. These are songs like pomp and circumstance, Auld Lang Singe and a couple other more obscure ones that I associted with Charlie Chaplain. Listening to Pomp and Circumstance being played and knowing that everyone around me just thought it was a pretty piano song and not a message that you have comleted one part of your life and will now move onto a beeter things, really got me thinking about cultural differences. There are probably equivilent chinese songs that we hear in america.
I never really realized what kind of cultural baggage we carry with us. The Chinese are on the recieving end of a lot of American trends but there is no way they understand where they are coming from. The other day i saw a fashion show with some Chinese people dressed in retro 70’s style clothing. It is entirely possible that the people wearing and designing the clothes didn’t know they were retro or didn’t know that wearing them is making a Ironic statement about fashion in general. The other day I went out to by a coat and I didn’t really like the chinese styles, so I asked my Chinese friend if she knew any used clothing stores. She was aghast at the idea that i would want to buy used clothes and didn’t understand what I meant when I said “old clothes are cool.” This attitude is understandable, I wouldn’t want to wear clothes from the decade of the cultural revolution either.
And if any of my legions of readers think that these above paragraphs reflect to much time at macalester thinking about things like the “Ironic semiotics of retro clothing,” I think that these huge differences in cultrural baggage are important on issues across the spectrum, from democracy to Hip Hop. it is impossible for cultral institutions to switch cultures.
Despite these obstacles, I am trying to venture into Chinese culture. My vehicle is the Monkey King, an ancient Chinese story that is more complcated than the the lord of the rings. The main charecter is a monkey and his best friend is a pig. So far i have had a conversation about whether or not women like men with the charecteristics of the monkey or the pig. A surpising amount liked the pig. Understanding Chinese women may be harder than I thought….