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)
