Vanishing Tradition

I’m really fascinated with the idea of the vanishing tradition. Many people took what they have for granted. People get so lazy now that they leave everything to machines to do all the work for them, making it more convenient. Because of this that we now have vanishing tradition that can no longer be produce or look at again, it can’t even be replaced by machine. 

For example, the designs of Chinese outfits in the 13^th century and the 14^th century cannot be made again because no one knows how to make it. Even people now can’t program machines to make it. The outfits then were all handmade and produce by people. Silk robes that emperors wore where made from the silk of silkworms, threading it all together by hand to make robes for the emperors. They are being less and less produced now with the fact that the older generation are getting older and are incapable and the newer generation or unwilling or unable to learn. It requires so much hard work that only a hand full of people in china still does it, others prefer machines.

These silk robes are so rare to see, worn, or produce that many of them have been preserve in museums or other archives to give the public an idea of how it looks like. Something so significant in the Chinese tradition and it is being forgotten so easily. The quality of it has been degraded instead of being improved. When you want to shop for a silk robe or a Chinese outfit, it’s rare to see an actually silk robe with complicated designs such as the old ones does. All you see today are machine printed or machine generated designs that are exactly alike. Meanwhile the actually handmade ones are more unique and different from what machines generated are like.