by Peacedog on Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:29 pm
Traditionally the Chinese didn't make much use of bleachers and the raised platform, as others mentioned, allowed people sitting on the ground to see.
It also allowed for a fair amount of portability as to where you could host the event.
Frankly, I never saw many auditoriums in traditional Chinese culture. Entertainment was largely performed for the emperor, or other high status individuals, with little concern for the views of others. So that person would sit on a platform and everyone else just had to glimpse what they could.
Entertainment for the masses would have been much more informal and would have probably lacked a stand alone venue.
The size of the middle and upper classes was always significantly larger as a percentage of the population in the West than it ever was in the East. Additionally, the pooling of resources at the very top occurred to a much greater degree in the East than in the West.
Versailles, while impressive, is absolutely nothing compared to the fact that the old city in Beijing belonged entirely to the emperor.
The West always had some check on royal power that, prior to the rise of the communists, never happened in the East. In the East only the state mattered in terms of the economy and societal structure with some, limited, counterbalancing by the Buddhist and Taoist religious organizations.
The merchant class was always an important power in Western societies and became increasingly important after 1100 AD. With the Industrial Revolution it rose to prominence over all other sections of society where it remains in the West.
I suspect communism's takeover of power happened the way it did in peasant based societies as they only had to overcome the power of one main group, the monarchy, which in the case of China was in total disarray.
Last edited by
Peacedog on Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.