補習-Chinese recreational life is on the decline, expert

Chinanews, Beijing, Dec. 12 – Over the past 50 years, the development of Chinese entertainment facilities has been in a somewhat abnormal state. While the national economy has been developing at an extraordinarily high level, the common Chinese people have made many sacrifices in trying to attain such outstanding economic achievement. One of the sacrifices is that as Chinese economy grows, the development of Chinese people's recreational life lags behind. Rather than making any progress, entertainment activity is actually on a decling trend, says Fu Jin, a professor at the National Academy of Chinese Theatrical Arts, in an article published in China News Weekly. 50 years ago, China had plenty of entertainment venues. Any researchers who have studied Chinese contemporary history can enumerate a few places that were very famous then. Statistics show that in 1950 when the New China was just founded, Shanghai had 109 theatres that were often used for giving performances. In later years, however, fewer of these theatres were ever used. By 1995, there were only 22 theatres that were working and their number was reduced to 17 by 2003. During the same time, however, population in Shanghai had tripled. More serious situation occurred in the medium and small cities. During the urbanization process, a lot of rural farmers have flowed to cities, especially to medium and small cities. When these cities have experienced a fast population expansion, the theatres there have not grown accordingly. On the contrary, the number of theatres in these cities is actually deminishing. By the end of the 20th century, the theatres in many of the small cities had closed down. Even if they had some theatres that were opened, these theatres might not be able to present a single show for a whole year. Fortunately, things began to change at the turn of this century. From 2001 to 2005, the fund allocated by China in the cultural infrastructure construction increased from 1.984 billion yuan to 3.717 billion yuan. Although not all of this fund was used for building theatres, it at least boosted the construction of show places. However, the current problem is: although Chinese local governments have contributed huge input to cultural infrastructure construction, rural farmers and urbanites still hunger for cultural and entertainment activities.

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