Yeah, real culture is whatever you build in daily functioning. Or anyway, one kind of culture is that. And it would seem that for a helluva long time, real functioning in China was in villages.
I originally thought the article was interesting for pointing out how what gets touted as "Chinese culture" is all that elite stuff that wasn't part of daily functioning for (presumably) the majority for (presumably) all of those 5000 years. And coincidentally, all that village stuff is going by the boards presently.
This emphasis on "elite" is still real though. It's not much of a stretch to see high culture now as being money and status and the artform of how people display both. And if that's so, then yet again, real culture is being ignored for this elite stuff. (Or not - that doesn't really make sense.)
Anyway, reading the article seemed to crystalise a weirdness about China - how there's daily life and then there's some magical "culture" - and those two are NOT the same.