China spared no expense celebrating its arts and culture during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Viewers at National Stadium (the “Bird’s Nest”) in China and in front of television screens across the world witnessed dancers, acrobats, pianists, drummers, and opera singers in spectacular performance. Yet no matter how cutting-edge or extravagant they were, the performances remained steeped in China’s ancient traditions. The events as a whole were a reminder that China is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, one that stretches back millennia.
After the communist government took over in 1949, the leaders undertook extensive reforms. But pragmatic policies alternated with periods of revolutionary upheaval, most notably in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. During this period, the government prohibited the practice of many traditional arts. But by the end of the 1970s, China’s leaders had started to renew economic and political ties with the West and had begun to once again invest in the arts.
Today, China’s cultural contributions are once again being overshadowed, this time by the country’s economic success. Images of its billowing factories and booming cities are the focus of the world’s news media. Goods of all sorts bear the label “Made in China.” This book reorients readers to China’s powerful influence in the arts and reveals how the country’s rich cultural history has shaped the lives of the more than 1 billion people who live within its boundaries.
The book introduces readers to the diversity of China’s people. About 92 percent of Chinese are Han. They speak different dialects in different parts of the country, but they are united by a common writing system. The remainder of the population includes some 55 minority groups, many of whom speak languages unrelated to Sino-Tibetan.
Of the Chinese dialects (or languages), the most important is Mandarin, the country’s official language. The Beijing-based dialect is also known as putonghua, or “common language.” But it’s hardly the only Han dialect spoken. In and around the city of Guangzhou in southern China, people speak Cantonese. The non-Chinese languages include Uighur, a Turkic language spoken in the Northwest, and Lahu, a Tibeto-Burman language that is closer to Burmese than to Chinese.
China’s cuisine is just as diverse as its people. Beijing is famed for its pork buns, fried tofu, and multicourse Peking duck. Spicy hot peppers, peanuts, and garlic dominate dishes prepared in central China’s Sichuan province. Adventurous diners in the Guangdong region savour exotic ingredients such as snakes, eels, and frogs—foods that do not appeal to many other Chinese people. The special preparation of food has deep and ancient roots. By the 10th or 11th century, China’s distinctive culinary style began to emerge. It is a cuisine based on principles of balance—hot and cold, grains and vegetables with meat—that reached its height in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12).
China is also one of the great centres of world religious thought, as this book demonstrates. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism have formed the basis of Chinese society and governance for centuries.
The ideas of Confucius and his followers have guided the lives of China’s people and leaders for about two millennia. Confucius was born in 551 BCE, and though he received little recognition during his lifetime, he may be said to have become China’s most famous philosopher and teacher. His teachings, compiled mainly in a text known as the Lunyu, or Analects, inspired a rich tradition—known in the West as “Confucianism”—of philosophers, scholars, political leaders, and occasional religious figures that helped to shape not only Chinese culture but that of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as well.
Confucius lived at a time in which society was highly fragmented into competing principalities. He believed that in order to stem the tide of social decay and to promote a flourishing and humane society as had existed in antiquity, the dao, or the way, of the ancient sage-kings needed to be revived. To accomplish this, Confucius advocated the institution of a meritocracy of cultured, virtuous scholar-officials who would advise kings to rule justly. Yet his social vision did not apply only to the ruling class; Confucius’s stress on moral character influenced every level of Chinese society. While it is not technically a religion, its emphases on personal virtue and on ethical action within human society continue to influence Chinese spiritual life.
The other great Chinese tradition that has its roots in pre-Han dynasty China is Daoism. Like Confucianism, Daoism emerged as a vision for stopping social decline and promoting good government. It took a different track. Instead of a particular dao of a group of historical leaders or group of political leaders, pre-Han Daoist thinkers stressed the Dao that generated the cosmos as the appropriate model for human action. The Daodejing, a philosophical and spiritual text attributed to the mythical sage Laozi, emphasized wuwei, or nonaction; however, this meant that people, and particularly the rulers, should take no action that is contrary to nature but should instead cultivate attunement with the natural fluctuation of the cosmos. In later centuries, this more naturalistic spiritual sense of attunement with the universe became increasingly religious, and Laozi became revered as a deity, especially after Buddhism, which was founded in India, transformed Chinese culture.
Buddhism arrived in China probably by way of Central Asian trade routes in about the 1st century CE. The most common form of Buddhism practiced there is Mahayana Buddhism in China and Vajrayana in Tibet. According to legend, Buddhism came to China after the Han emperor Mingdi (reigned 57–75) had a dream about a flying golden god that was interpreted as a vision of the Buddha.
While Confucianism remained the philosophical and ethical system of the bureaucracy and the imperial court, Daoism and Buddhism became the main sources of philosophical and religious ingenuity in China between the end of the Han and the late Tang dynasty (618-907). Each tradition influenced the other: Buddhist concepts were explained to the Chinese through a process of “matching the meanings” to Daoist concepts, and the Buddhist sangha (community of monks and nuns) sparked the emergence of Daoist monasticism. Early on, many people believed that after Laozi left China for the West (according to legend), he traveled to India, where he was honored for his wisdom and became the Buddha. By the time of the Sui dynasty (581–618), Buddhism received state support. In the 7th century, Chan (later known in Japan as Zen), which stressed the sudden experience of enlightenment, demonstrated a purely Chinese variety of Buddhism.
During a brief period of persecution starting in 845, Emperor Wuzong destroyed Buddhist temples and shrines and forced monks and nuns to marry and return to lay life. During the Song dynasty (960–1279), a group of thinkers reinvigorated Confucian thinking and helped it to reclaim its past glory in Chinese thought. The “Neo-Confucians” called their movement daoxue (“Learning of the Way”), and claimed to be reviving the original dao of Confucius that had been lost for centuries. In reclaiming lost ground from Daoism and Buddhism, it borrowed or adapted certain concepts that augmented the spiritual dimension of the tradition while emphasizing the moral character of government officials. Buddhism and Daoism remained widely popular in Chinese spiritual life, but they never again matched Confucianism’s prominence in Chinese intellectual life.
The book also details the history of Chinese art, especially its pottery, bronzes, and sculpture. In China, art has played a social and moral role. Noble themes were favoured in traditional Chinese art. Artists’ reputations could be damaged or rejuvenated by their work, depending on the rightness of their practice or their character.
The world has reaped the rewards of their efforts. Perhaps nowhere in the world has pottery assumed such an importance as it has in China. The influence of Chinese porcelain on later European pottery has been profound.
The Chinese have been casting remarkable bronzes from approximately 1700 BCE. From 1500–300 BCE, bronzes were vessels for making sacrifices of food to clan spirits, from the round-bodied li in which food was cooked to the gui, a bowl in which the food was presented. In the field of painting, landscapes predominate, usually done with black ink on fine paper or silk, often with colour washes. The landscape paintings from the Song dynasty (960–1279) to the Ming (1368–1644) dynasty are especially noteworthy.
Calligraphy is another notable fine art. Calligraphy masters spend years learning the craft of letting the complex characters that form China’s written language flow directly and naturally from their brushstrokes. Connoisseurs prize the personality and rhythmic elegance shown by the artists of different schools, from the controlled “seal” school to the free, loose “grass” schools of calligraphy, using words like balance, vitality, energy, wind, and strength to describe the beauties of different styles. According to legend, Cangjie, the inventor of Chinese writing, got his ideas from observing animal footprints in the sand.
China’s musical tradition is at least 5,000 years old, one of the oldest and most highly developed of all known musical systems. Not only do written records confirm China’s long musical history, but archaeologists uncovered a number of ancient instruments, including such objects as bronze bells and stone chimes. These and other instruments were classified in early times according to the material used in their construction: stone, earth (pottery), bamboo, metal, skin, silk, wood, and gourd.
Today the musical instruments most associated with China include stringed instruments such as the four-string pipa lute and the 25-string se zither as well as drums such as the dagu, used in China to accompany a narrative. Other noteworthy instruments include the sheng, a mouth organ with 17 pipes attached in a basin, and the fangxiang, made up of 16 iron slabs suspended in a wooden frame.
Chinese scholars have devoted much attention to musical principles as well. The Shijing (“Classic of Poetry”), compiled by Confucius, contains the texts of 305 songs that are dated from the 10th to the 7th centuries BCE. In 1345 scholars created the Songshi (“Song History”), a book of 496 chapters, 17 of which are devoted solely to music.
China also has distinct theatrical traditions, including Chinese opera. Over the centuries, two main schools have developed—quiet, refined kunqu, which started as a folk art, but which later became famed for being sophisticated and refined, and energetic jingxi (Peking) opera, so called because it is closely associated with China’s capital city of Beijing (formerly spelled Peking). Unlike kunqu, which is poetic and accompanied by flutes and stringed instruments, jingxi is lively, less refined, and popular. It features clappers and cymbals to make emotional points and energetic acrobatics during battle scenes. Yet, both styles are highly stylized and rely on the audience to understand a full range of symbols. A black flag carried across the stage, for example, signifies to knowledgeable operagoers that a storm has blown in. As in China’s visual arts, conventional morality is a strong theme, and the importance of doing good and avoiding evil is strongly emphasized.
But jingxi and kunqu are not the only forms of Chinese opera. Today more than 300 kinds of opera are found around the nation, each type performed according to local musical styles and in regional languages.
The ideals that have defined China’s artwork and performing artists have inspired its finest architectural achievements as well. Today the skylines of many Chinese cities reflect contemporary trends elsewhere in the world. Skyscrapers and bold designs, however, give no hint of China’s long tradition of achievement in the field of architecture. Although many of China’s oldest buildings have disappeared—some falling victim to modernization efforts, others to the enemies of wood construction—the timeless principles of traditional Chinese architecture are still evident. One of the most distinctive features of Chinese architecture is the use of beautiful sloping and gabled roofs, such as those seen in the country’s Buddhist pagodas with their several storied towers. The first curved roof appeared in China around 500 CE. Great care is also given to where buildings are placed and what they are facing, according to the geomantic principles of feng shui. The system of feng shui (meaning literally “wind water”) was developed during the Five Dynasties (907–960) or Ten Kingdoms period, and its purpose was to harmonize a site or structure with cosmic principles or spiritual forces) and thus to ensure good fortune.
Architecture had become highly stylized by the time of the Song dynasty, so that certain elements showed which buildings had greater and lesser importance. All those elements can be easily identified in one of China’s greatest architectural achievements: the Forbidden City. Located within the inner city of Beijing, this palace compound—the world’s largest—was used by 24 emperors during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911/12) dynasties. The Forbidden City has 800 buildings that have a total of about 9,000 rooms. Today it has been listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 and is now a public museum.
For the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, China invited acclaimed international architects to design many of the games’ signature structures, including the Bird’s Nest. These structures connect China to the contemporary world culture, to be sure, but they give little hint of the complexity and richness of China’s vast contribution to the world. We hope this volume serves to unveil China’s cultural wealth.
