Culture of Asia

• 1. A Continent of Cultures

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  The culture of Asia encompasses the customs, art, architecture, music, literature, philosophy, food, politics, and religion of the most populous continent on Earth. Three of the four ancient river valley civilizations arose here, and from those origins grew a mosaic so vast that scholars hesitate to define a single "Asian culture" at all. The continent divides into six geographic sub-regions: Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and West Asia. Each carries recognizable commonalities in religion, language, and ethnic character, yet each also holds internal divisions that defy easy summary. What force, then, holds this diversity together? Trade was the answer. Inter-regional commerce gradually built a Pan-Asian character, carrying ideas across deserts and mountain ranges that would otherwise have kept civilizations apart.

• 2. Trade Routes and Cultural Flow

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  Asia's size posed a fundamental problem: great distances and hostile terrain separated its civilizations. Deserts and mountain ranges blocked easy contact. Yet merchants, diplomats, and pilgrims found ways through, and the road networks and sea routes they built became conduits for something far more than goods.

  At the crossroads of Indian and East Asian maritime trade since around 500 B.C., Southeast Asia absorbed waves of influence from both India and China. The Chola dynasty spread Tamil and Hindu cultures across what are now Southeast Asian countries. Hinduism, Buddhism, and later Islam diffused into local cosmology along those same routes. Central Asia, positioned between the Caspian Sea and East Asia along the Silk Road, became a theatre for steady exchanges and east-west conflicts, including the Battle of Talas. The region was shaped in turn by the Chinese, Greeks, Mongols, Persians, Tatars, and Russians.

  The Imperial Chinese Tributary System carried this logic into formal diplomacy. Based on the Confucian idea of submission to celestial harmony, it bound nations from Central Asia to Southeast Asia in mutually favorable economic cooperation and security arrangements. Ceremonies were presided over by the Emperor of China as the Son of Heaven. Nations within that orbit paid into a system that, in return, offered stability and trade access across the region.

• 3. Writing Systems and Language

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  Around 10,000 years before the present, the Yellow River civilization emerged in the flood plains of northern China, and from it grew the East Asian cultural sphere: China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Vietnam. Classical Chinese became the literary language of elites and bureaucrats across the entire region. The Chinese script is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems in the world, and it functioned as a major unifying force across East Asia.

  As Chinese writing concepts spread, each nation built on that foundation with its own inventions. Vietnam created Chu Nom glyphs; Japan invented Kana; Korea developed Hangul, its own distinct alphabet. Vietnam today mostly writes in Chu Quoc ngu, a modified Latin alphabet, though a resurgence of Han-Nom writing is underway. Sino cognates compose a vast majority of the vocabulary of Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese. In the 20th century, China itself re-borrowed terms from Japan to represent Western concepts, a practice known as Wasei-kango.

  Asia's linguistic diversity extends far beyond the Sinosphere. The 2001 census of India recorded 30 languages spoken by more than a million native speakers, and 122 spoken by more than 10,000 people. Indonesia hosts over 600 languages, while the Philippines has over 100. Korea, by contrast, is home to only one language. The continent contains almost every major language family on Earth, with the notable exception of the Bantu languages.

• 4. Religions Born in Asia

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  Asia is the birthplace of Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and more. In 2010, the Pew Research Center found five of the ten most religiously diverse regions in the world to be in Asia. Islam and Hinduism are the largest religions on the continent, each with approximately 1.1 billion adherents.

  Over 60% of the global Muslim population lives in Asia. About 25% of Muslims are in South Asia, mainly in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. The world's largest single Muslim community within one nation is in Indonesia. Christianity has more than 286 million adherents in Asia according to the Pew Research Center's 2010 count, with Roman Catholicism dominant in the Philippines and East Timor, and Orthodox Christianity predominant in Russia, Georgia, and Armenia.

  The Indus Valley civilisation, which thrived from around 3,300 B.C. in what is now northeastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India, was one of the principal cradles of civilization. It flourished for almost 2,000 years before the onset of the Vedic period, roughly 1500-600 B.C. The Vedic texts form the basis of religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas across South Asia, and the Vedas constitute the oldest works of Sanskrit literature. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism all trace their origins to the Indian subcontinent.

• 5. Literature and the Arts

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  Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, dramatist, and writer from India, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate in literature. He wrote Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem of India, and Amar Sonar Bangla, the national anthem of Bangladesh. Other Asian Nobel laureates in literature include Yasunari Kawabata of Japan in 1966, who wrote Snow Country and The Master of Go, and Kenzaburo Oe of Japan in 1994.

  The literary traditions across Asia run deep and distinct. In the early 11th century, the Japanese court lady Murasaki Shikibu wrote the Tale of Genji, considered the masterpiece of Japanese literature and an early example of the novel as a form. The Edo period poet Matsuo Basho became a master of haiku, a form built on three lines of five, seven, and five morae. In Sanskrit literature, Kalidasa, often compared to Shakespeare in his field, wrote the plays Recognition of Shakuntala and Meghaduuta, and the epic poems Raghuvamsham and Kumarasambhavam. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights stands as one of the most famous literary works of West Asia.

  Martial arts trace back at least 4,000 years on the continent, with first known traces from the Xia dynasty of ancient China. Karate comes from Okinawa, Judo from Japan, Taekwondo from Korea, and Pencak Silat from Indonesia. Karate alone has 50 million practitioners worldwide. The 2019 Korean film Parasite became the first Asian film to win an Academy Award, marking a new chapter in a long history of Asian cinema that includes Bollywood in South Asia and the globally influential kung fu films of Hong Kong.

• 6. Food, Festival, and Daily Life

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  Rice is a staple across much of Asia, served steamed or as congee, a porridge. China is the world's largest producer and consumer of rice. The instrument of eating varies sharply by region: in Central Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia, bare hands remain traditional at the table, though Western cutlery is increasingly available. In China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Vietnam, chopsticks are standard, though each country's design differs. Chinese chopsticks are long and square; Korean chopsticks are short, flat, and metal, a choice linked to the relative rarity of wood on the Korean Peninsula; Japanese chopsticks are rounder and short, shaped to manage bony fish.

  The durian, a fruit common in Southeast Asia, earned a noted endorsement from the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who attested its flavor was worth the entire cost of his trip to the region. India's cooking relies on spices such as cardamom, cumin, and fennel seeds, and most spices originated within the Indian subcontinent.

  Festival life reflects the continent's religious plurality. Japan's practice of Japanese syncretism means that most Japanese celebrate Buddhism's O-bon in midsummer, Shinto's Shichi-Go-San in November, and Christmas and Hatsumode in winter together. The Philippines, known as the "Fiesta Country," holds year-round celebrations nationwide, most in honor of a patron saint, with strong Spanish influence alongside native Asian character. Examples include Sinulog from Cebu and Dinagyang of Iloilo. Filial piety, the Confucian concept of respect for parents and elders, known in Chinese as xiao, shapes family life across much of the continent, with children expected to care for aging parents and, in Chinese culture, sometimes for grandparents as well.