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The Spanish culture is colourful, rich and mysterious. The culture is a result of its geographical location and the people who influenced the area and is a mix of Greek, Roman, Muslim, Phoenician and North African. The location on the Iberian Peninsular which is shared with Portugal and the access to the south and Mediterranean has enabled trading links to these areas and has lead to many diverse influences on Spain and its culture.

Bullfighting is probably the most well known of Spanish traditions and culture that shows the influences that other peoples and races have had on the country. Bullfighting was brought to the Iberian Peninsular by the Phoenicians and Greeks and was then over time adopted into the Spanish culture. Important changes in bullfighting occurred in AD711 when the North African Moors moved to the area of Andalusia. The sport was which originally involved men on horses fighting bulls gradually changed to fighting without the aid of horses. The Moors also changed the bullfight from a sport to a more ritualistic event as is evidenced today in the modern bullfight.

Spanish culture is famously linked to the Flamenco dance style. Flamenco or passionate Flamenco originated in the area of Andalusia and was a traditional gipsy dance.

Artists have also famously impacted on the culture, including El Greco, Diego Velasquez and the 20th century masters as Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Spain has also had modern influences and the guitar, the main instrument of modern pop music was developed in Spain when a sixth string was added to the Moorish Lute.

Article Source: ezinearticles.com/?Spanish-Culture&id=886456

The Distinguishing Features of Ancient Chinese Culture

• A Long History with Good Recording of History
  Chinese culture has a recorded history of 5000 years. These 5000 years can be retraced in ancient books.
• Rich Contents
  Few people have realized that the traditional Chinese culture is actually not one culture but a conglomeration of many cultures of different tribes and different periods. For example, Buddhism was not a native religion of China. It spread into China from India through West Asia. Many West Asian tribes were believing Buddhism. They were defeated by the Turkic tribe and then started to immigrate into China. They brought Buddhism into China. Buddhism later became one of the major religions of China. The Chinese land was governed by different tribes in history. However, unlike other colonizers, the different governors in China’s history did not destroy the mainstream Chinese culture. They accepted the culture and language, and enriched the Chinese culture by adding contents from their own culture. The ancient China might be the most multi-culturalized country in the world. With all these enrichments, every aspect of Chinese culture, including the food, clothing, or drama, religion etc, has got very rich contents.
• Semi-divine Culture at the Early Stage
  At the early stage of Chinese history, Chinese culture was a semi-divine culture, in which divine beings were living together with humans and teaching culture to humans directly. Chinese people who lived at the Kun-lun Mountain survived the Big Flood. So Chinese culture had a continuous development from the Pre-Big-Flood period. The most profound parts of Chinese culture, such as I Ching, Ba Gua etc, actually were inherited from the Pre-Big-Flood period.
• Unique Language
  Chinese characters are imitations of object shapes, while other language of human kinds are mostly symbols to describe pronunciations. The language has become very meaningful after every word being explicated by all the persons and events that have happened in the long history.
• Now A Buried Culture
  The current governing Communist Party took power in China in 1949. It turned out to be the only governor that has committed a total destruction of Chinese culture. Now in mainland China, the school text books and media are filled with Communism contents. The real traditional Chinese Culture is not there in China’s mainstream society. We can only try to find the real Chinese culture in ancient books.

In summary, the Chinese culture is a big hidden repository of treasures that is to be discovered and restored.

Article Source: ezinearticles.com/?Chinese-Culture—A-Conglomeration-Of-Multiple-Cultures&id=1142713