A five-year-old child Yeye from Jinan City is reluctant to
return to his grandma's home in the village, because the TV set
there can only receive three to five channels, and it cannot
receive the CCTV kid's channel or provide a selection of cartoons
for viewing.
Due to the uneven distribution of cultural resources and
facilities, the rural areas in China have always been regarded as a
"cultural wasteland", where a number of regions have no access to
cable TV programs and people have no choice but to receive TV
signals through a television aerial. There are few programs with
high resolution pictures. Very few books besides textbooks for the
children can be found in most of the rural households.
At the end of last year, China proposed to construct the new
socialist rural area. While striving to solve the problem of
farmers' economic incomes, governments at all levels began to
tackle the problem concerning the tedious and boring cultural life
in villages.
Shandong's local government significantly
increased its investment in cultural development of rural areas.
County-level cultural museums and libraries, together with a batch
of township-based cultural stations and village-based cultural
chambers were set up in some regions.
From 2000 to 2004, China's investment in rural cultural
construction rose 15.6%, higher than the GDP growth rate for the
same period. There has been a significant improvement in the
quantity and quality of public cultural services that are provided
to villages across the country.
At the same time, the Chinese government is also urgently
seeking to conserve the endangered folk cultures that have been
endangered by the economic growth. In some rural areas, training of
folk artists, cultural talents and cultural brokers are in
progress.
Ju Chuanyou, deputy-director of the Cultural Bureau of
Shandong's Wendeng City, said, "Excellent folk culture resources
are conserved in the rural areas in China. If we begin to nurture
cultural talents in these areas, there will be a revival for the
cultures in the rural areas that possess a distinctively native
flavor."
(Chinanews.cn June 15, 2006)
