What are the characteristics of traditional Chinese culture?

What is traditional Chinese culture? This requires us to first clarify the meaning of culture itself. According to the British anthropologist Edward Taylor, the composite whole of knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, habits, and all other abilities and habits acquired as a member of a society is always called culture. However, if we define traditional culture from this perspective, the problem of not being able to pass on culture also arises. This is mainly because when passing on culture, we always pass it on by grasping its main features, and too many connotations will cause us to be unable to digest it well. On the other hand, it is also because not all aspects of traditional culture are worthy of our inheritance, and in the process of inheritance, we must seize the excellent part of it. Specifically, the characteristics of traditional Chinese culture can be summarized as follows:

First, in terms of knowledge system, the knowledge of traditional Chinese culture is mainly divided into two aspects, one is the knowledge of seeing and hearing, and the other is the knowledge of virtue. The former is mainly a kind of knowledge of the laws of heaven and earth and nature and of birds and animals and fish and insects, while the latter is mainly a kind of knowledge of the moral nature of human beings. As far as the importance of the two is concerned, the ancient Chinese considered the knowledge of virtue to be higher than the knowledge of seeing and hearing. The main way for people to acquire these two kinds of knowledge was to study the Five Classics.

The second is in the area of art. There is no word for art in traditional Chinese culture, but traditional Chinese culture values skill more than art. Confucius believed that there were six skills that were most worth learning, which were ritual, music, archery, imperialism, calligraphy, and mathematics. Each of these six skills has a distinct artistic character, and in the case of calligraphy, for example, ancient China has developed a unique art of calligraphy that is unique in the world.

Thirdly, in terms of custom, this involves the form of social organization of traditional Chinese humanities. In this regard, ancient Chinese society was organized around the family, and all customs and habits unfolded with the family in mind. To this day, the concept of family is still the most important part of the Chinese concept.

To sum up, the three most significant features of Chinese culture include three aspects: in knowledge and beliefs, it is mainly the knowledge of morality that is the goal pursued by human beings; in social systems and customs, it is mainly the family that is the unit of organization; and in customs and arts and humanities, it is mainly manifested in the six kinds of skills, namely, rituals, music, archery, imperialism, calligraphy, and numeracy.

Inheriting traditional Chinese culture

Importance for language teaching in primary schools

Inheriting traditional Chinese culture is necessary for every Chinese, because every Chinese's identity of himself or herself has to be judged from the root of his or her cultural characteristics. However, this does not answer the question of why we should use language as a medium to pass on traditional Chinese culture at the elementary school level. The necessity and importance of strengthening traditional culture education in elementary school language education is mainly reflected in the following aspects:

1. It is in line with the inherent requirements of the content of language teaching in primary school

The main content of language teaching is the Chinese language, which, as the oldest language in the history of the world, is characterized by a distinctive national identity and is rooted in the long history and culture of China. The glyphs of Chinese characters come from the simulation of all things in heaven and earth in oracle bone inscriptions and jinwen inscriptions, such as mountains, water, sun and moon, etc. Chinese characters have distinctive pictorial characteristics. According to the author's observation, students' understanding and cognition of Chinese characters can be strengthened by learning the etymology of these characters. In addition, many grammatical conventions in modern Chinese are also derived from ancient Chinese, such as subject in front, predicate in the back, verb predicate in front of object, determiner and dative in front of the center word it modifies these terminological conventions are consistent in ancient and modern times.

2. In line with the requirements of elementary school language teaching on moral education

With the deepening of education reform, the comprehensive quality of the education sector to pay attention to the content of the assessment, in which moral literacy has become a top priority. One of the major goals of language teaching is to enhance students' state of mind through language texts that have the power of moral sensitization. According to the author's observation, many elementary school have now begun to introduce the ideas of filial piety, loyalty and righteousness in traditional culture into language teaching, and many elementary school have begun to let students memorize ancient cultural works such as "Rules of Discipleship" since the first grade. It can be seen that traditional culture education is an important way to strengthen moral education in elementary school language.

3. In line with the requirements of elementary school language to enhance students' humanistic literacy

One of the main goals of elementary school language teaching is to enhance students' humanistic literacy, which mainly includes the degree of familiarity with history, philosophy and literature. At present, elementary school language has begun to pay attention to the combination of language teaching and traditional calligraphy, painting, music and other arts, art greatly enriches the content of the language classroom, so that students in the classroom is not only just exposure to language and writing and language use ability training, but also exposure to the profound language and culture system behind the Chinese language and writing.