Traditional Chinese Culture

I don't think it's real. Tea ceremonies, calligraphy, screeching opera, the four books and the five classics, it's all a lie. They are "culture" in the same sense opera and ballet are in Europe. They are performed arts, refined in particular directions, expensive, and shared by some as entertainment. Confucianism, for instance, isn't Chinese culture at all. It's a ruling philosophy pasted over a collectivist peasant culture.

I read in a book there were popular forms of "opera" in China, open to the public and performed (maybe) in villages. I do see groups of musicians out in public squares clanging out that wheedling, whiny "traditional" style (which, in a certain light, is pleasant and interesting). But this refined nonsense with five thousand years of backups? I do not believe. Among other things, the language of scholars and gentlemen was, for most of those five thousand years, not the popular tongue. The idea that the elites should speak and write the same way as normal people is a recent invention.

What's the real culture?

I think that a lot of what is considered "traditional culture" in any country around the world was more common among "elites" than the commoners/lower class(es). I suppose this is where the insult "uncultured" comes from.

Fair point. It also still means wheeling out these cultured items in China and calling them traditional or valuable acts to obscure actual culture. Whatever the real culture is, it's being overlaid with this refined nonsense because... why? What's up with that movement? It seems barely a step or two removed from theories of racial purity.

Culture is what most people do NOW, history is what they DID. In my mind anyhoo.

Most Chinese gob in the street and fart without humour, THAT'S their culture now!

Is my culture Robin Hood, Knights of the round table? nah, thats history, mythology actually.
The word culture needs reevauating.

English Gent  -->   Very good reply.  I think that is an awesome way to explain it and a good way for us to respond to these questions.   

But in context would it make sense to anyone in China? Routinely citing "5000 years of history" suggests Chinese public discourse does not want culture and history rendered distinct. That is, what "most people do NOW" is invoke history. (I don't know if it really is most people doing that, but it still seems very common.)

I forget where I read it recently, but Xi Jinping is apparently buffing up some parts of traditional Chinese culture and publicly offering them up as things to remember and engage with.

wow, one of my posts wasn't taken the wrong way! I'm chuffed!

Im no expert of course, but just a sensible 'man on the street'. Alot of chinese people dont seem to have the self-awareness to even consider the topic, maybe they are just overworked(!), us foreigners have the time to pontificate maybe we should just leave them to it.
I do remember during the beijing Olympics, alot of Chinese people were actually upset with the ceremony because it was all about bygone culture to pander to the world, and contained little of the 'new china'.

I like chinese culture(history) but like finding something good on the internet, you have to get past all the spam, trojans and things that make you sick, first!