Chinese Traditional Aesthetics Research Articles

The Nietzschean dimension of Chinese traditional Aesthetics*

ABSTRACT In ancient China, art has never been a substitute for the category of ‘truth’ in the sense of Western aestheticism, but a mimic for goodness and beauty. The image in traditional Chinese aesthetics never transcended the idea to the level of Western abstraction, and that is because the artistic expression bore a social synthesis, rather than metaphysical, between human beings, reality, and the world. However, the Ming Dynasty introduces a Dionysian discourse that challenges the Apollonian tradition.

Modernity, Aesthetics, and Nation Re-branding in Olympics: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games

The paper examines the construction of China’s country image in the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. It demonstrates how a country that has no winter sports tradition used the mega-event to showcase its national narrative and to promote winter sports industries. A semiotic framework is developed to model China’s country image as evaluative attributes and to elucidate how they are constructed through linguistic and visual resources in the theater, livestream, and video inserts. The analysis shows that the ceremony was narrated around four major themes—the world’s China, People’s China, the aesthetic China, and the modernized China. Instead of revealing a changeless, nostalgic and mythical China that speaks to a Western orientalistic imagination, these four themes work together to reshape a modern China identity, which brings the contrasting values of globalism, nationalism, Chinese traditional aesthetics, and neoliberalism into a coherent artistic performance. The characteristics of nation branding discourse reflect China’s urban regeneration policies on the one hand, and public diplomacies during the COVID-19 pandemic on the other.

리슈통(李叔同)의 학당악가(學堂樂歌) 예술특징에 대한 탐구

Western music officially entered China in 1842 and spread rapidly within several decades, becoming a means for Chinese people to save the country at that time. Intellectuals accepted Western ideas and at the same time emancipated the feudal thoughts of ordinary people, Xuetang music were born. This study will investigate the channels and acceptance process of Western music flowing into China, and analyze literature such as tunes and lyrics of school music songs, so as to understand the creation concept and purpose of Xuetang music songs. This study for the Xuetang music musician Li Shutong’s song “Song bie” creation background and investigation of the source of the melody and the lyrics on the surface of the mean. so as to grasp the song contains Chinese traditional aesthetics and artistic value. Li Shutong and other musicians of Xuetang Music combined Chinese traditional aesthetics with Western music, and derived many works containing Chinese and Western artistic flavor. It was the bold experimentation of artists like Li Shutong that helped advance Chinese music and inspired future generations.

A Study of the Aesthetic Thought and Application of "Virtual & Real" in Chinese Ink Animation from Strolling in Aesthetics ——A Case Study of Feelings of Mountains and Waters

Zong Baihua’s Strolling in Aesthetics is known as a textbook of contemporary Chinese aesthetic theory, while "virtual & real", as an important chapter in this book, is the core of Chinese traditional aesthetics. Its connotation of simple and natural aesthetic meaning has been applied in many fields with the rise of contemporary traditional art. The early ink animation Feelings of Mountains and Waters integrated this aesthetic conception deep into the film. In this paper, based on the analysis of Feelings of Mountains and Waters, a masterpiece of Chinese ink animation, and combined with the film, an in-depth analysis was carried out on the basic theoretical viewpoints in the "Virtual & Real in Chinese Artistic Expression" section in Strolling in Aesthetics. Then a summary was made on the presentation of "virtual & real" in Chinese ink animation, and a discussion was conducted on its internal association and application value with Chinese ink animation, so as to provide reference for the development of Chinese ink animation in the new era.

Chinese Traditional Aesthetics in Qing Palace Drama*-Take “Story of Yanxi Palace” as an example

Among the TV series that emerged in the summer of 2018, Yu Zheng’s “Story of Yanxi Palace” was the most popular, and it continued to surpass “Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace” (a court drama of the same type), with a wide range of influence and a high degree of discussion. This article attempts to explore the spiritual beauty of the plot, the exquisite beauty of costumes and the quaint beauty of the pictures through analyzing the plot, costumes, props, shots and other visual content of the drama from an aesthetic perspective.

On the Expression of Chinese Traditional Aesthetics in Chen Man’s Photography Works

On the Expression of Chinese Traditional Aesthetics in Chen Man’s Photography Works

중국 전통 미학을 계승한 번역 철학 : 푸레이(傅雷)와 린위탕(林语堂)의 번역론 비교

중국 전통 미학을 계승한 번역 철학 : 푸레이(傅雷)와 린위탕(林语堂)의 번역론 비교

The Aesthetic Appreciation of the Epochal and National Character of Competitive Martial Art Routines

With the temporal aesthetics as the mainstream background, the aesthetics appreciation of competitive martial art routines reflects obviously the characteristic of aesthetic globalization, which is just as same as the aesthetic characteristic of the programs mainly based on skills. While the competitive martial arts also inherited the essence of Chinese traditional aesthetics，that’s to say, pursuing artistic conception and the beauty of skills. After 2008, in order to promote the Olympic process of competitive martial art routine, we must enhance the aesthetic values of it in the whole world. When facing the two distinct characteristics of competitive martial arts’ fixed routine—epochal spirit and nationality, whether we choose just one or both is worthy of thinking. Zhang Dainian, Cheng Yishan pointed out in the book the Debate of Chinese Culture and Culture Theory that culture has both the characteristics of epochal spirit and nationality and the relationship between the two characteristics is general and specific. Cultures of different ethnic groups in the same era have the same epochal characteristics, which is general. And different ethnic groups have their own national features in the same era, which is specific. With the changes of the needs of current time, the aesthetics of martial arts becomes more and more important and especially the aesthetics for the fixed routine of competitive martial arts should adhere to the Olympic motto, “higher, faster, stronger” and it should also attract more audience, make more people appreciate its beauty and embodies higher aesthetic value. Competitive martial arts was not a formal program in Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, however, it doesn’t mean that it will never enter the Olympics. This article analyzes the aesthetic situation from the perspectives of temporal spirit and nationality, searching further for a breakthrough of the development of competitive martial arts’ fixed routines.

Second Enlightenment by Wang Zhihe (王治河) and Fan Meijun (樊美筠) (review)

Reviewed by: Second Enlightenment by Wang Zhihe (王治河) and Fan Meijun (樊美筠) Franklin J. Woo (bio) Wang Zhihe (王治河) and Fan Meijun (樊美筠). Second Enlightenment 第二次启蒙. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011. 478 pp. Paperback 59 yuan, ISBN 978-7-301-16690-1. In August 1998 the Center for Process Studies, Claremont Graduate School of Theology, California, sponsored an international conference on Process Thought and the Common Good. Among the more than three hundred participants from twenty different countries at this twenty-fifth anniversary of the Center, seven were from the People’s Republic of China. Two of the Chinese delegates, Wang Zhihe and his wife, Fan Meijun (coauthors of the above volume), decided after the conference to identify with its sponsoring Center. With a master’s in philosophy (Peking University), Wang was an associate at the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS, established in 1977). His special focus and research was on Western philosophy. Fan has a master’s degree in Chinese traditional aesthetics (Peking University) and a Ph.D. in history and Chinese thought, Beijing Normal University. For two years, she taught at the Southwest Normal University, Chongqing, followed by a professorship in the Department of Philosophy of Beijing Normal University (1987–2002). She is the author of six books on Chinese aesthetics and its relation to education. When Deng Xiaoping emerged as the paramount Chinese leader in late 1976, the central goal of his remaining life’s mission was to continue the disrupted modernization process of the People’s Republic. His strong emphasis was on science, which he regarded as the most crucial factor in the modernization process. To [End Page 420] accomplish this gigantic task, Deng advocated sending tens of thousands of China’s brightest and best abroad to gain the science and technology that the country needed so urgently. Even for those who do not return to China but remained abroad, he confidently predicted, they would, in the long run, still be an asset to China.1 How true was Deng’s prediction, especially with regard to both Wang and Fan as assets not only to China but to the United States as well. Since the Claremont conference, Wang completed his doctoral studies in religion in 2007. Fan had returned to China to finish her teaching obligations. In 2002 she and their son rejoined Wang in California. Along with others, Wang was instrumental in the establishing the China Project of the Center for Process Studies. In 2005 Wang and Fan expanded the Project into the Institute for Postmodern Development of China for more programmatic activities with the PRC. Wang assumed the role as the latter’s executive director. Through these two channels, Wang and Fan have been working indefatigably for more than a decade in U.S.-China intellectual relations under the rubric of constructive postmodernism (建设后现代化). They have overseen publications of the work of the Project and Institute, translations of articles and books on process thinking, especially the writings of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), John B. Cobb Jr., David Ray Griffin, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, and others. They have worked closely with their natural contacts in China in bringing individual and groups of scholars to Claremont and opening doors for their American counterparts to enter China on lectureships, scholarly symposiums, and conferences where East-West exchanges happen. The first international conference in China on process thinking, Whitehead and China in the New Millennium, was held in June 2002 at the Beijing Normal University (Fan’s alma mater). Since then, more than twenty networks on process thinking have been established in universities throughout China, where articles, papers, and PhD dissertations were and are appearing. Fan and Wang have successfully organized fifty symposiums or conferences, with representative names such as Toward an Ecological Civilization—the Perspectives from Marxism and Constructive Postmodernism. Second Enlightenment is a distillation of more than a decade of interaction between Chinese and American scholars in which Fan and Wang were the facilitators. The book is a virtual diary, an annotated bibliography, and a dynamic kaleidoscope of the new modes of thinking between and among scholars in East and West toward a viable earth, our common home in a postmodern age, fraught with uncertainties and dangers with humanity at the...