To understand the most important characteristics of society, one must study it's major cities.

At face value, the statement that people should take a close look at the major cities of a country in order to gain insightful knowledge about the peculiar characteristics of that country seems persuasive and reasonable. After all, big cities represent most aspects of the custom and culture of the nation and count for a major component in society study. Nevertheless, the argument neglects the reality that with the widespread international communication and mutual interaction, many major cities have lost their uniqueness and become more comprehensive, and thus study of major cities cannot be considered general standard or the only approach to investigate a society.

Admittedly, many years before, when world’s population was far less than now and people in different countries began to gather in bigger and lager groups and consequently formed the major cities, it was true that those places became the representatives of the community or nation. And without question, one should and must investigate these cities to gain understanding of that society’s characteristics. For instance, Beijing has been the core of cultural study of China since over 100 years ago and is now still attracting people from all over the world to observe its appearance and history. And when the United States is mentioned, New York city will be the first place to pop up in mind and travelers will set New York as their first destination when they plan to visit USA.

Notwithstanding the fact listed above, people should caution the trap in big cities’ cultural investigation. With the development and advance of technology and the overall society, now the earth becomes more like a global village and the major cities in a certain country become the habitats of people from all over the world. Take Shanghai in China for example, international citizens play a significant role in its function and even turn into the character of the cosmopolitan itself. When the custom and culture is talked about, one will find it difficult to single out Chinese characteristics from other cultures and confused by the integration of international culture. No origin of a certain place can be easily distinguished and the multi-culture merge evolves into its own complexity and fruition. Thus, many cosmopolitans including Shanghai have lost the original flavors and thus cannot be adopted as the measure of the whole nation’s characteristics.

To conclude, big cities of a nation are good sources of investigation of that nation’s characteristics. But this approach should not be considered the only way.