Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

A few days ago, I met Chinese singer Gong Linna and her German husband Lao Luo in New York. They came to perform in the Bang on A Can Marathon, a 10-hour concert featuring innovative music held in the Winter Garden pavilion in Lower Manhattan on Sunday. This was their first trip to New York. But when I tried to warm them up with small talk and asked what they thought of the city, it was immediately clear that they were not interested in talking about the Big Apple but about the Middle Kingdom.

They pulled no punches and criticized the status quo of Chinese modern music. "There is no modern Chinese music. It's all Western. Folk singers sing in Western vocal techniques. Composers, even when they write for traditional instruments, they use Western techniques," said Lao Luo, whose real name is Robert Zollitsch. "Chinese value too much what's going on in the West."

Chinese nationalists may not feel comfortable that the comments are coming from this couple. Gong, a folk singer trained by the Central Conservatory of Music, spent five years in Germany to escape the rigid and formatted singing style popular in China. When she re-emerged, she shocked the Chinese audience in 2010 with "Tan Te," a wordless song written by her husband for which she put on comedic costumes and makeup and sang like an exorcist. And Lao Luo, despite his deep understanding of Chinese music, is, after all, a foreigner.

But they seem to have identified a critical problem in modern Chinese culture. Not only do Chinese open their arms unconditionally to almost anything imported from the West, from Broadway shows to Hollywood blockbusters, we also tend to worship our peers who could get a nod of approval in the West.

In recent years, more and more Chinese in the entertainment industry have shown that they would kill to get an opportunity to walk the red carpets of renowned award ceremonies in the US, and more and more Chinese artists hold exhibitions here. Many of these showcases get little attention abroad. But the open secret is that a resume listing such activities always works well in China.

As a result, China's modern culture, from contemporary arts to fashion, and even lifestyle seem to all be driven by Western tastes and trends.

Gong and Lao Luo are certainly not the only two who realize the problem. In a backlash against the trend of copying the West, some people are refocusing on China's own traditional culture. And if the influence of Western culture can only be seen through sharp observation that looks beneath the surface, the revitalization of traditional Chinese culture is much more obvious and visible.

College students dress in hanfu, the traditional dress. Some private schools are built in the ancient style and teach the Four Books and Five Classics. And renovated and even newly built cultural relics based on history or historic fiction can be seen all over China.

Last month, at the Book Expo America held in New York's Jacob Javits Center, the exhibition area for China, the honored guest this year, was also decorated with oracle bones and bamboo slips, while a tea ceremony was performed by people dressed in ancient-style clothes.

It is good to see more and more Chinese realize the value of traditional culture and try to seek self-confidence from our own roots. Traditional culture is indeed the best tool China can use to defend itself from the invasion of Western culture and to reclaim its voice in the world.

But I doubt we can achieve this by only making ourselves dress, sing, talk and live in the ancient ways, or by simply showing foreigners the objects and traditions we ourselves don't often see in our everyday lives anymore.

Even if we successfully step into the shoes and the clothes of our ancestors and take a time machine to go back thousands of years, it still doesn't mean we have found what makes us strong, proud and confident in our current lives. What's more important than traditional appearance is building a modern culture that is based on traditional values. But this is also a much more challenging task.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com