Tradition, broadly defined in terms of beliefs, moral values, custumes,crafts and so on, has accopanied us human beings all along till nowadays. Inner our minds, tradition has formed a regular or fixed behavioral model, according to which we establish the modern society. However, recently certain proportion of us arbitrarily claims that tradition stands in our way to further development and metaphorize tradition as water while modernization as fire. We have to make a choice btween these two completely contradictory trends. Meditate calmly for a few seconds, and do we have to make such a choice? The answer seems to be “No”.

Ever since the primitive society, ancient people accumulated huge amount of knowledge and experience through hard labouring, hunting and religious rituals. Every step of social advancement was saturated with the fruits of wisdom handed down by former generations. This axiom is especially effective in scientific field. Newton developed his towering three fundamental laws of mechanics on the basis of perceieving and coordinating the scientific insights of Galileo, Copernicus and Archimedes. Just as he said:” the veneratin people grant me and the keen perspectives I have are all but because I am standing on the shoulder of uncountable achievers as Galileo, Archimedes and so on. Einstein followed Newton’s example and created his Thoery of Relatibity on the basis of latter’s discovery. Without respecting the precious traditional knowledge and experience, you just cannot inmagine how we could manage to live as comfortably and at ease as today in this world!

From another angle, we have to admit that there indeed lie some draw-backs or fallacies in our traditions, whether as to social science or to natural science. For instance, every early April in China, people will burn some paper as “the money spent in nether world” for their passing away relatives. Though with a good intention to commemorate the dead, the measure people take, however, damages the fragile environment severely, considering the incrediblely large number of Chinese population. So this kind of convention must be abandoned while holding other environment-friendly activities to achieve the same purpose.

What makes things worse is the attitude people take when dealing with the formerly right or useful traditions. Once given the seemingly final conclusions, people tend to be dominated by laziness, blind pride and undue self-esteem, which all hinder people from exploring the further development as time moves forward and surrounding condition varies. Some young reserchers’ fingdings received highly appraisal and compliment from the academe, which should have becomed the impetus to their harder endeavors but only to erode their mobility. As a result, scrutinize ourselves by the reflection formed in the mirror of past experience and never stay still because the later generation also need our experience to be their mirror.

Contemporarily, we have actually invented a good many combinitions of tradition and modernization. The torch of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, named as “Lucky Cloud” ,best demonstrates that. It is a mixture of the highest modern technology and the unique ancient Chinese culture. To ensure every participant’s safety and comfort in the torch relay, its desigh has adopted the bionic thoery to best suit people’s hands and the holding-gesture when they are running. Besides that, the “Lucky Cloud” design, which is usually in the Fobidden City, can make anyone think of China immediately they have a glimpse on the torch.

Tradition, being wisely selected, and modernization, being creatively progressed, form a balanced and therefore positive circle to write an even bright future in history.