Medium Changes And Minority Culture

The Dai is a long-established ethnic minority with splendid culture. Siam, written as暹罗in Chinese character, is the ancient or old name for Dai ethnic group, which at present is called Thai. In the early1950s, the Chinese Government in accordance with self-recognition and will of the Dai people officially named her as "Dai". In fact, the Dai of China, Thai of Thailand, Shan of Myanmar and Assam of India, living closely with each other and sharing similar language and culture, are all called "Thai" in a broad sense internationally. As one group of descendants of ancient Daiyue Clan living in the south of the Yangtze River, the Dai has inherited and followed a lot of culture of Yue People, based on which, formed then its own unique tradition and culture through widely absorbing the Han culture of the Central Plains of China, the Buddhist culture of ancient India and various culture of ethnic groups from Indo-China Peninsula (South East Asia).Dai ethnic minority is not a big family in China of today if only counting on its distribution and population. Owing to its historical development and prosperity of civilization, also the close contacts with and deep influence upon the South-east Asian people through the ages, the Dai has been the focus of attention by the academic circles for its special origin and development and long-history of culture communication. Especially in recent years, as the establishment of modern Eastern Political and Economic System, the communication history and trend of Dai culture has become a major focus of the domestic and international academic research.This article, discussing the culture communication of Dai ancestors and linking up the related theories with present situation of Dai group, puts forward how the Dai ethnic minority of our country should adapt its own culture to the modern communication. First, the paper systematically sorts out the rich variety of interpersonal communication media of Dai, including those ways of communication like oral, written languages and the organization, through which the traditional Dai community has been maintained and linked. Then, it is found through the survey that a two-wings communication system has formed in current Dai areas of China with the Party’s Chinese magazines, newspapers, radio and television stations as the main boby and the newspaper, broadcasting, TV and Internet in Dai languages being co-developed. Apart from these, in order to further understand the development and acceptance of mass communication in Dai areas, the author has made several visits to those important Dai inhabitant areas of our country, and by carrying out a large number of direct observation, research and questionnaire survey sorted out a lot of data which can show the present situation of the mass communication of Dai ethnic minority.Thanks to the widely application of Dai language and its complicated way of media communication, this important ethnic culture of China could be continuously communicated and spread at present. In order to better inherit her own culture, the Dai people of China needs to adapt to the fifth phase of information dissemination and link up the cultural dissemination with Internet communication. In order to inherit and spread the culture of Chinese Dai in the modern environment, the author puts forward in the last part of the paper of adopting new media in time on the one hand and continuously improving the old culture on the other hand so as for Chinese Dai to enter the Internet era of communication with its own cultural characteristics and strive to realize the sustainable development of the ethnic culture of the Dai.