Blog forum at The China Daily-English
‘History’ as what we call is the collection of events, incid ents and innovations happened in the life of people who came before us. It involved wars, social structure, religion, poor,rich, class system as well as the nat ural disasters. But, how we got to know about all of this so easily? Alright, not so easily but still we are able to extract so much from the past. Those pictur es on the walls carved inside the caves, those paintings in the famous temples and those scripts full of information brought so much from the past. But How this happens?&It is because, our ancestors pioneered something we all know very well. Something, we all practice in our day to day life but may not define its existence. It is not just Chinese culture, but almost all cultures in ancient society practiced, pre served and nurtured to pass on to the future generation. It is called, ‘Art of Storytelling’
Storytelling is not a new phenomenon. We all read stories of how evil kings were destroyed by a brave warriors. We also studied different folktales, wh ich literally shapes our ideologies and made many of us understand our culture. This is only through the art of storytelling, many of the ancient stories are st ill alive. Telling or describing anything in dramatic way increases the chance of understanding the knowledge inherited. This is how folktales shapes our thinki ng process, transform us what is now known as ‘cultural identity’.Through puppet, dance , opera and theater ; stories were told in many different way s to convey a message to larger crowd. Many of the historical documents and monuments too tells some stories to us.
I am sure, you have now understand enough about the ‘Art of Storytelling’. In the upcoming post, I will talk more about specific incidents in history of China and importance of stories in bringing knowledge to us in the present form.
(Taken from my blog at The China Daily, first published on 23-09-2015)
Ankit Khandelwal 