the words most frequently encountered when studying Asia or listening to media reports on Asia are ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’. One assumption is that we cannot understand Asia without knowing something about its traditions; another is that the influence of tradition in Asia remains particularly strong. It would seem from what we read in many scholarly and journalistic accounts that the influence of tradition is more powerful in Asian societies than it is in Western societies. There is often a sense that the ‘real’ Asia is the traditional Asia. The social and economic practices and institutions that have been imported from or heavily influenced by the West are not really ‘Asian’, regardless of how much they have been influenced by their Asian context. For example, an evening spent watching Beijing Opera would be seen by many as getting in touch with the ‘real’ China, the traditional China that existed before the West intervened and supposedly changed China. However, to go to a Beijing nightclub and dance to loud rock music under flashing lights would not be seen as particularly ‘Chinese’. Dress is another obvious example. ‘Tradition’ is often equated with forms of dress that are non-Western. We might not regard the Japanese executive's business suit as ‘traditional’, but we would the dress of the samurai or geisha. There are similar examples from all of the societies of East and Southeast Asia.