The Idea of Male Beauty in Russian and Chinese Cultures

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a contrastive study of the ideas of male beauty among Russians and Chinese. These ideas are studied culturologically, through the restoration of the relevant fragments of national pictures of the world. For this purpose, both linguistic and comparative-historical methods are used. Russian concepts of beauty are analyzed in the corresponding concepts in the Russian language, etymology and modern meanings, Russian epics, the reign of Peter the Great, the XVIII - XIX centuries, the period of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Stalinist period and the period of late socialism, modern ideas. To analyze the Chinese view of the subject under study, the corresponding hieroglyphs, lexical combinations, idioms, philosophical and aesthetic sources, and modern realities are analyzed. Such a multidimensional consideration of beauty in the Russian and Chinese pictures of the world caused the novelty of the study. Comparisons of Russian and Chinese are the main conclusion of the work: ideas about beauty are not just different, they are opposite. It is important to note that the image of the hero in Russian culture is a symbol of male beauty, and in Chinese, on the contrary, it is a symbol of a rude and unaesthetic person. The main oppositions are male/female, West/The East, rational/emotional — are characteristic of the Russian picture of the world, but they are not completely manifested in the Chinese ideas about beauty. The Chinese do not oppose, but combine what looks like an opposition in our culture.