To a certain extent there is truth to the idea that Traditional culture was better preserved in HK and ROC (ROC, not “Taiwan” as the DPP calls it now).
We have to recognize that the Communist movement was a revolutionary one, supposed to usher in a new era for all people (not just China even). This spirit is famously embodied in the song 沒有共產黨就沒有新中國, emphasis on the New China part. Of course there is also 新話/Xinhua news, etc.
This went further to changing the language to the use of simplified characters and the name to 普通話 (common speech) from 國語 (national language).
Of course as most of us know, the Revolution grew excessively culminating in the Cultural Revolution, which at this point is best recognized as a “two steps forwards, three steps back” situation. Once the country pulled back from that edge, it had to slowly rebuild the cultural consciousness. Hand in hand with the economic growth was reclaiming the mantle of cultural leadership (not coincidentally this is evident in Chinese pop-culture, dominated by Canto-pop in the 90’s, Taiwan Mandopop in the 00’s, and of course mainland acts now).
One interesting news article I read quite a long time ago was how mainland restauranteurs were going to HK, Canada, and the US to get chefs, paying very big bucks. Fine dining being an obvious bourgeoisie pursuit that was obviously discouraged in the early days.
It was only since the reign of CSB that Taiwan has progressively gone down the “full retard” rabbit hole (apologies to those that don’t get the reference). He committed to a policy of de-sinicization which might have made sense if everyone was not speaking and writing Chinese. Now the DPP continues this illogical charade claiming all kinds of nonsense like aboriginal descent or being Japanese. Of course when stupidity reigns, expect stupid results like the above video.
I would say in some ways that progress made is more important than preservation. It is easy to not change vs. create meaningful change. Do you want Taiwan Minister of 76,000 genders or China highest % of female CEOs in the world?
There was a famous case in Canada a few years ago where an Indian family had disowned their daughters in their will even though they took care of them in their twilight years. When the lawyer representing the daughters in the court case was asked if these cases were common (disowning daughters) he said that he only encountered it mostly amongst conservative immigrants from India and HK, but never mainland China.
