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Some elements that come to mind: - Traditional Chinese characters used more often in Taiwan than Mainland China. - Yayue (3,000 years old Chinese court mus

Some elements that come to mind: - Traditional Chinese characters used more often in Taiwan than Mainland China. - Yayue (3,000 years old Chinese court music). - Taiwanese recreation of Tang Dynasty dances. - In Taiwan poems are composed/written/recited in Hokkien, on the mainland it is done in Mandarin. - The preservation of uninterrupted institutional religion (eg Daoist priests) that was largely shutdown in China. - Taiwan's leader attending ceremonies at temples to mark the birthday of Confucius, something you wouldn't see Xi Jinping do. - Taiwan's ROC governmental organization was based on the Qing dynasty, so it has the traditional Inspection Ministry that accords with the old censorate. Edit: These are not hard and fast. One will always find examples on both sides of the ditch. They do though play into the narrative of Taiwan being a capsule for culture modified post cultural revolution. Let’s also remember that Taiwan is also heavily influenced from outside via democracy, Japan, and its own aboriginal culture.

rackjack 5y ago
This is interesting. It's a shame the grandparent is so binary, as if Chinese culture is a bacteria that can be purged and survive in pockets instead of something that ebbs and flows, as all cultures do.
- Danieru 5y ago
  The cultural revolution was pretty close to purging as any culture gets. It was not a natural ebb and flow.
jabbany 5y ago
Some of these are not the best examples... - Character simplification: This was a part of a wider progressive movement in the Sinosphere in general. Traditional characters were seen back then as a hinderance to raising literacy rates. In fact, the mainland's stance here follows that of Korea (which completely got rid of Hanja) and Japan (which tried, and failed, to completely remove Kanji). This was not done because the traditional characters are "old-fashioned" but rather to get the vast rural population to be able to read. - Hokkien: This is a regional dialect imported from southern mainland China to Taiwan long before the civil war that split the two apart. After the war, regional dialects were suppressed _both_ in the mainland _and_ in Taiwan in favor of Mandarin (which is a northern dialect that was imported into Taiwan during the KMT retreat and rule). The suppression worked quite well in both places, where Mandarin has since displaced regional dialects for most matters of life. In recent years, Taiwan has made lots of efforts to bring back Hokkien to distinguish itself from the mainland, but this is actually a fairly recent development... - Ceremonies at temples: This fell out of favor mostly because Communist parties everywhere have been progressive for the most part of history and like most progressive parties everywhere tended to de-emphasize religion. While most past leaders of the CCP stuck with this, Xi has actually moved the CCP to become much more _conservative_ (reinstating a lot of religious/traditional holidays in place of western ones) so I actually wouldn't be surprised at all if at some point Xi did start to re-introduce Confucian ceremonies as a part of a revival of a more conservative form of nationalism.
yorwba 5y ago
Traditional Chinese characters are still used on the Mainland for stylistic reasons, e.g. 為人民服務 "serve the people" in Mao Zedong's handwriting is popular as decoration: http://image.hnol.net/c/2014-02/28/16/201402281653233461-2278633.jpeg http://image.hnol.net/c/2014-02/28/16/201402281653233461-227... (And Simplified Characters get used in Taiwan for convenience, compare 台湾 vs. 台灣 vs. 臺灣 "Taiwan") Yayue performed at the closing ceremony of the World Military Games in Wuhan: https://bilibili.com/video/BV19E41187ga https://bilibili.com/video/BV19E41187ga Recreation of Tang dynasty dances: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1Lv411Y75s https://bilibili.com/video/BV1Lv411Y75s Poem recited in Hokkien: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1re411s7Tm https://bilibili.com/video/BV1re411s7Tm Recital of Daoist classics (warning: loud!) Subtitles are in the bullet comments: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1N7411t7fJ https://bilibili.com/video/BV1N7411t7fJ Okay, I couldn't find anything about Xi Jinping visiting Confucian temples, so have some Buddhist monks instead: https://file.dahe.cn/image/jpeg/20210723/1627048785988322.jpg https://file.dahe.cn/image/jpeg/20210723/1627048785988322.jp... And the PRC certainly doesn't have a dedicated Ceremonial Official to Confucius.
- starfallg 5y ago
  But those are the exceptions. The general situation is that traditional characters are official in Taiwan and taught as the standard in schools, and simplified characters in the Mainland.
  - platinumrad 5y ago
    Simplification was a good thing. Plenty of factions in the early 20th century wanted simplification, or even full romanization. It's just that the CCP happened to win the civil war, so they're the ones who actually implemented it and now it's a cultural flash point. Honestly, it's not a big deal, unless you somehow think Hangul and Hiragana are abominations too.
    - starfallg 5y ago
      >Honestly, it's not a big deal, unless you somehow think Hangul and Hiragana are abominations too. Not sure where you are going there and what the process of Chinese character simplification has to do with Hangul and Hiragana. That's more akin to the drive to romanise Chinese than simplification. Simplified Chinese isn't an abomination, but some parts of it is done poorly. If you take a look at how Japan did simplification with Shinjitai, you can see that in general the simplification process is more precise with a smaller number of characters affected, and those that are simplified were done in a way that is more linguistically and aesthetically sympathetic. For example, 個／个 and 廣/広/广.

rackjack 5y ago

This is interesting. It's a shame the grandparent is so binary, as if Chinese culture is a bacteria that can be purged and survive in pockets instead of something that ebbs and flows, as all cultures do.

Danieru 5y ago
The cultural revolution was pretty close to purging as any culture gets. It was not a natural ebb and flow.

jabbany 5y ago

Some of these are not the best examples... - Character simplification: This was a part of a wider progressive movement in the Sinosphere in general. Traditional characters were seen back then as a hinderance to raising literacy rates. In fact, the mainland's stance here follows that of Korea (which completely got rid of Hanja) and Japan (which tried, and failed, to completely remove Kanji). This was not done because the traditional characters are "old-fashioned" but rather to get the vast rural population to be able to read. - Hokkien: This is a regional dialect imported from southern mainland China to Taiwan long before the civil war that split the two apart. After the war, regional dialects were suppressed _both_ in the mainland _and_ in Taiwan in favor of Mandarin (which is a northern dialect that was imported into Taiwan during the KMT retreat and rule). The suppression worked quite well in both places, where Mandarin has since displaced regional dialects for most matters of life. In recent years, Taiwan has made lots of efforts to bring back Hokkien to distinguish itself from the mainland, but this is actually a fairly recent development... - Ceremonies at temples: This fell out of favor mostly because Communist parties everywhere have been progressive for the most part of history and like most progressive parties everywhere tended to de-emphasize religion. While most past leaders of the CCP stuck with this, Xi has actually moved the CCP to become much more _conservative_ (reinstating a lot of religious/traditional holidays in place of western ones) so I actually wouldn't be surprised at all if at some point Xi did start to re-introduce Confucian ceremonies as a part of a revival of a more conservative form of nationalism.

yorwba 5y ago

Traditional Chinese characters are still used on the Mainland for stylistic reasons, e.g. 為人民服務 "serve the people" in Mao Zedong's handwriting is popular as decoration: http://image.hnol.net/c/2014-02/28/16/201402281653233461-2278633.jpeg http://image.hnol.net/c/2014-02/28/16/201402281653233461-227... (And Simplified Characters get used in Taiwan for convenience, compare 台湾 vs. 台灣 vs. 臺灣 "Taiwan") Yayue performed at the closing ceremony of the World Military Games in Wuhan: https://bilibili.com/video/BV19E41187ga https://bilibili.com/video/BV19E41187ga Recreation of Tang dynasty dances: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1Lv411Y75s https://bilibili.com/video/BV1Lv411Y75s Poem recited in Hokkien: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1re411s7Tm https://bilibili.com/video/BV1re411s7Tm Recital of Daoist classics (warning: loud!) Subtitles are in the bullet comments: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1N7411t7fJ https://bilibili.com/video/BV1N7411t7fJ Okay, I couldn't find anything about Xi Jinping visiting Confucian temples, so have some Buddhist monks instead: https://file.dahe.cn/image/jpeg/20210723/1627048785988322.jpg https://file.dahe.cn/image/jpeg/20210723/1627048785988322.jp... And the PRC certainly doesn't have a dedicated Ceremonial Official to Confucius.

starfallg 5y ago
But those are the exceptions. The general situation is that traditional characters are official in Taiwan and taught as the standard in schools, and simplified characters in the Mainland.
- platinumrad 5y ago
  Simplification was a good thing. Plenty of factions in the early 20th century wanted simplification, or even full romanization. It's just that the CCP happened to win the civil war, so they're the ones who actually implemented it and now it's a cultural flash point. Honestly, it's not a big deal, unless you somehow think Hangul and Hiragana are abominations too.
  - starfallg 5y ago
    >Honestly, it's not a big deal, unless you somehow think Hangul and Hiragana are abominations too. Not sure where you are going there and what the process of Chinese character simplification has to do with Hangul and Hiragana. That's more akin to the drive to romanise Chinese than simplification. Simplified Chinese isn't an abomination, but some parts of it is done poorly. If you take a look at how Japan did simplification with Shinjitai, you can see that in general the simplification process is more precise with a smaller number of characters affected, and those that are simplified were done in a way that is more linguistically and aesthetically sympathetic. For example, 個／个 and 廣/広/广.