Essay Sample on Chinese Society and Culture

Chinese society and culture remain one of the globe's oldest, originating millions of years in the past. The region covers a considerable area in East Asia with diverse traditions and customs. Besides, Chinese society and culture apply the insightful effect on the ideology, etiquette, virtue, and customs of Asia to the present day. The societal and culture of Chinese people influence world practices (Lin & Jackson, 2019). Chinese religion, politics, and philosophy, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, have continued to change Chinese traditions and culture. The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese society and culture, reflecting on various aspects that influence the culture and community of the Chinese people.

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Chinese Identity

History dictates that the federal government of the Chinese people divided its populace into four classes that comprised of merchants, landlords, peasants, and artisans. Landlords and peasants instituted the two major groups, while artisans and merchants established the two minor classes. There existed no hereditary, except for the post of the emperor. The Chinese have 56 legally recognized ethnic groups in the contemporary world (Lin & Jackson, 2019). Australian history differs from that of China. However, the present world offers several commonalities.

Chinese society and culture maintain five types of relationships. There exist interactions involving father and child, ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder sibling to younger ones, and friend-to-friend relations. Besides, Chinese culture has five constant virtues that entail trustworthiness, benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom. Confucianism focuses on social order and rituals that involve following the rules for an orderly community (Lin & Jackson, 2019). Daoism highlights action deprived of purposes like simplicity, naturalness, and spontaneity. The culture of the Chinese people means frugality, compassion, and humility.

The main religion in China remains Buddhism, which emphasizes on the philosophy that grief continues integral in an individual's life and that a person can get liberated from it through nurturing virtue, wisdom, and meditation. The revolution of Chinese society and culture from the customary ways of increasing entails competing social, commercial, and political influences (Lin & Jackson, 2019). The Chinese people have a history of overcoming oppression enforced by foreigners, landlords, and bureaucrats. The nation began a process of identity building in the post-1949 eon by developing new approaches of social, personal, and national identity.

Major historical events in China's history involve the land reforms that began in 1950-1955, the anti-rightist era of 1957-1958, and the Great Chinese Famine of 1958-1962. Besides, the Cultural Revolution that started in 1966-1976, the economic transformation of 1978, and One Child Policy of 1979 have shaped Chinese society and culture (Lin & Jackson, 2019). Furthermore, the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations of 1989, the introduction of the Internet in 1994, and the 2008 Olympic Games also molded the Chinese people's traditions.

Rituals and Life Cycle of the Chinese People

Scholars define rites as social conduct that the public governs, with various characters lacking choices about their destinies. Routines enhance our comprehension of a community through the development of multiple traditions that establish, worship, and standardize the different phases of life (Guo & Herrmann-Pillath, 2019). Therefore, a life cycle ritual detaches shifts in an individual's social or biological status at various stages throughout life. Some of these rituals may have religious implications founded on several philosophies and opinions.

In Chinese society and culture, before birth, married couples must pray to Songzi Niangniang, the Taoist goddess of fertility. Some of the Confucian values caution people against refusing to advise their parents when making mistakes, making no effort to support their parents, and not procreating (Guo & Herrmann-Pillath, 2019). Besides, the Chinese prefer boys to girls, although the notion changes with the advocacy for gender equality. Chinese cuisine remains vital to the Chinese culture influencing other cuisines across Asia and other parts of the world. Asian diet staples like soy sauce, tofu, noodles, tea, and rice get eaten with chopsticks, and the wok has impacted different cultures across the globe.

Zhengzhou (choosing ceremony) refers to a ritual practiced by the Chinese people to celebrate the first birthday. Parents put various objects before the child to choose from that signifies personality traits or career choices. Australian women also prayed to Ngapuny (God) before birth to protect the baby and the mother. In the present world, women give birth under the care of professional medics, just like in China. Initially, Chinese people attended local Confucius schools. However, with globalization, advancement in technology, and competition for talent has made formal education an essential part of the Chinese (Guo & Herrmann-Pillath, 2019).

Gaokao (National College Entrance Examination) exists as an academic examination undertaken by Chinese people that remains a prerequisite for entrance into almost all higher education institutions at the undergraduate level. The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) represents a number between 0.00 and 99.95 that signifies a student's rank relative to all the learners in their age group (Guo & Herrmann-Pillath, 2019). Universities utilize the ATAR to select students for their courses and admission to most tertiary courses founded on the selection rank. Another ritual that the Chinese take seriously involves marriage, which they consider as a union of families. Traditionally, Chinese people underwent matchmaking. The life cycle of the Chinese nation changes with time and world activities—aspects such as region, gender, class, age, and ethnicity influence societal culture and traditions.

Family and Marriage

The family institution in China has its foundation from 1900, where the urban Chinese families adopted the nuclear form. During the 1950s, Chinese families assumed an average of 5.3 individuals per household. However, the Chinese government enacted the One Child Policy in 1978. From the 1990s, most Chinese families embraced extended families to support each other by providing child and eldercare (Ma et al., 2018). Besides, household size in China remains closely linked to the family income. Urbanization and industrialization have affected most households. Furthermore, a decrease in fertility rate has only influenced the size of family households. Scholars attribute to the decline in family sizes to socioeconomic progress and changes in values and norms of family conduct. In 2016, the government of China allowed two children per couple to solve the country's aging challenge.

Most people in China prefer family courtyard over apartments due to convenience, space availability, and more interaction. However, the nuclear family in Australia continues to increase as opposed to China (Ma et al., 2018). The Policy devastated women due to forced abortion, sterilization, and the forced usage of contraceptives. Besides, women undertook regular pregnancy tests. The birth of a second child had consequences like losing employment, demotion, wage cut, and destabilization of social status. The Policy further led to gender discrimination in which some ethnic-minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs remained exempted from the consequences of the Policy if they had a girl as their first child (Ma et al., 2018). Besides, the Policy encouraged selective abortion of girls.

The Chinese society and culture encouraged arranged marriages, in which the bride and the groom did not interact until the wedding date to secure the parents. Besides, men had the leverage to purchase young girls for future marriage. However, such arranged marriages have declined in recent years. Traditionally, divorce remained rare and could only get initiated by men until a Marriage Law got enacted in 1950, permitting women to initiate divorce (Ma et al., 2018). An increase in divorce rate resulted from social changes, women empowerment across the globe, and the shift away from the customary Chinese traditions. Besides, influences from Western cultures, economic development, and post-1949 political campaigns also led to an increase in divorce rates. However, families have remained an integral aspect of the Chinese people.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender refers to a hierarchical portion between men and women encompassed in both social establishments and standard procedures. Sexuality entails socially systematized institutions like education and family establishments sustained by different factors, such as science and religion that indicates what sex requires (Lin, 2018). Gender defines various attributes of life like work, education, family, and political involvement, in both private and public dimensions. Traditionally, women in China took the bottom position as they got considered inferior to men. Chinese people practiced polygamy in which if the first wife failed to give birth to a boy, the husband had the right to marry a second with the hope that she would bear a son (Lin, 2018). The emphasis remained that marriage and sexuality had to produce future generations. Pleasure and love came second. Female fidelity remained unacceptable. In the post-1949 political changes, women got empowered, and polygamy got prohibited. The government of china enacted Al-China Women's Federation department to address women's issues.

There still exists insufficient awareness of sexuality and gender in China. Divorced women underwent stigmatization (Lin, 2018). Presently, changes such as living together even though not officially married and intimacy in public occurs. However, sexual harassment and traditional gendered-segregation still happen. Prostitution has risen to serve the swelling number of affluent business people. However, the legalization of commercial sex has created social injustice and corruption to prostitutes (Lin, 2018). Female's sexuality remains moralized, resulting in those involved in sexual discourses ethically dissolute. Homosexuality and lesbianism have remained a global issue. Most Chinese people still view homosexuality and lesbianism as a moral disgrace that attracts stigma and violent treatments.

Community and Neighborhood

China's economic progress has considerably shifted the traditional arrangement of the social framework. Urban and rural dwellings have emerged as facilitators of civil society, contrary to the pre-reform period. After the 1949 revolution, the kinship-based community arrangement disappeared. During the 1950s, China embraced land reforms that revitalized the agricultural sector through collectivization and the establishment of a people's commune framework (Wang et al., 2018). Native villages emerged as production units, and the government started influencing village activities from 1949-1979. However, the introduction of market reforms in the late 1970s resulted in de-collectivization. Household contract tasks presented a shift in rural areas. Besides, the changes also produced social differentiation and geographic mobility. The reforms introduced solidarity groups, social mobilization, and reduced the powers of state agents within communities (Wang et al., 2018). Within the urban setting, the market reforms presented socialist ideology and urban neighborhoods.