Role of intelligentsia needs to be redefined
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From this point of view, our urgent task is not the export of culture and art, but a clear definition of our shared values. Maybe not too much creativity is needed in this process: All we have to do is to find and accept it, for our shared values should be popular and in accordance with our daily life instead of being beyond our reach.
Another problem is, who can take up the mission of exporting our culture. Since the 1980s, cultural elitism has been losing popularity, and, of course, the elitism that existed in our culture also had many negative effects, like being out of touch with reality.
And today in the information age, with emerging media like the Internet bombarding us with information, we begin to feel the need for an intelligent class that can employ their knowledge in summarizing the complexities of our daily life. It is difficult to find substitutes for intelligentsia to exporting culture and values.
Elites should not be isolated from the ordinary people; just the opposite, they are also a part of the common people, essential and indispensable. If the voice needed by society cannot find a channel, then it would be lost in the noise created by chaos.
I grew up in a small town where cultural resources are in short supply. For a long time in my boyhood, almost nothing but TV series and Hong Kong kungfu movies were within reach. However I have been rewarded for the habit of reading.
In the mid-1980s, I read a novel Ren Sheng, or Life, by Lu Yao, in which the problem of the hukou system is addressed. The novel made me acknowledge the inequality created by the hukou system. It is reading that gave me ideas and deliberative thoughts.
Therefore, might I conclude that it is a grave error to say that people do not need ideas or culture. I firmly believe that if China hopes to rise again, the role of the intelligentsia should be redefined, and the necessity of their existence should be emphasized.
The author is a Chinese film director. His work Still life won the Gold Lion Award of 63th Venice Film Festival.
