Cultures Asian

The Asian century is symbolized by Indian genre films (Bollywood), Hong Kong genre films, Japanese Animation, and the Korean Wave. The awareness of the different Asian cultures may be a part of a much more culturally aware world, as proposed in the Clash of Civilizations thesis. Equally, the affirmation of Asian cultures has an impact on the identity politics of Asians in Asia and outside in the Asian diasporas.

 The Gross National Cool of Japan is soaring; Japanese cultural products, including TV shows, are undoubtedly “in” among American audiences and have been for years. About 2.3 million people studied the language worldwide in 2003: 900,000 South Koreans, 389,000 Chinese, 381,000 Australians, and 140,000 Americans study Japanese in lower and higher educational institutions.

Feng Shui books topped the nonfiction best-seller lists and Feng Shui schools have multiplied. Major banks and multinational corporations admit to employing Feng Shui consultants to advise them on the organization of their offices. There has been a readiness to supplement eastern forms of medicine, therapy, and massage and reject traditional western medicine in favor of techniques, such as acupressure and acupuncture.

And practices such as moxibustion and shiatsu enjoy enormous popularity in the west. So too for that matter, do virtually all the Eastern martial arts, such as Judo, Karate, Aikido, Taekwondo, Kendo, Jujitsu, Tai Ji, Qigong, Ba Gua, and Xing Yi, together with their many associated schools and subforms. Even the smallest town in Britain, Scandinavia, or the United States generally has at least one Indian or Chinese restaurant.

Though the use of English continues to spread, Asian languages are also becoming more popular to teach and study outside of the continent. The study of Chinese has recently gained greater attention in the United States, owing to a growing belief in the economic advantages of knowing it. It is also being encouraged through PRC's support of Confucius Institutes, which have opened in numerous nations to teach the Chinese language and culture.

Chinese has been rated as the second most used language on the internet with nearly a quarter speaking Chinese, Japanese came as fourth, and Korean as the tenth as of 2010. According to the CIA, China is the country that hosts the most users, Japan the third, India the fourth, and South Korea as the tenth as of 2008.

 India has the largest film industry in the world, and Bollywood produces even more films than Hollywood. Bollywood's annual growth is at 12.6%, higher than Hollywood's 5.6%.

There has been a rapid rise of what has been called the animal rights movement, and also in the growth of vegetarianism which stem from the principle of Ahimsa in the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and especially Jainism. In the past popular sports of cockfighting and bull, bear, and badger baiting. What is more such conduct was not considered un-Christian or unethical in any way.

In the early years of the twentieth century very few people indeed were vegetarians. The figure given for the United Kingdom during World War 2 was a mere 100,000 out of a population of some 50 million...around 0.2 percent of the total. However, by the 1990s the figure was estimated as between 4.2 percent and 11 percent of the British population, and rising rapidly (Cohen, 1999). As Porritt and Winner observe, as recently as the sixties and early seventies, "being a vegetarian was considered distinctively odd", but "it is now both respectable and common place".