Question after Bollywood

One question after watching few Bollywood movies. Or, more precisely, one question was found after discussing Bollywood movies with my mom.

The question is:

How come there are so many dancing and singing in Bollywood movies, but not with Chinese movies?

The same question could apply to the Hollywood movie as well... How come there were many musicals back then, but so few now? What has been changed in the USA society?

I only saw one musical Chinese movie, which was from Hong Kong in 1960s. I saw many singing and some dancing from the clips on Youtube. Those were from Hong Kong between 1950s and 1960s as well. And frankly, I never saw those before I knew Youtube. I did not even dreamed it would exist.

During the discussion with my mom, she thought that the previous 100+ years of turmoil prevented Chinese from habit of dancing and singing. But India was colonized for few hundred years, I said. And many of them are still poor these days. I thought the Chinese intellectuals would be a factor since the culture was recorded by them throughout history. They failed to present a good picture of what we sang and danced in the old days.


But as I am writing these, I think India could really be an exceptional case. For I saw a few foreign films from Japan, Korea, England, France, Russia, German, Scandinavian, Africa, USA, South America, Spain...etc. There were not many of musicals in those Countries as far as I know. I would thought Africa would have many musicals. I did not see many African movies though. There were quite a few African American musicals. Anyway, I am still wondering why Chinese people don't dance and sing as much. As their classics said music was important, why didn't they dance and sing more, in movies, and in daily lives?

Interesting thought recorded.