Terra sebv s acta mvsei sabesiensi s

Typological Features of Chinese Culture in the Ming Dynasty (1398-1644)

 

 

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themselves able to demonstrate, like Shiva Nataraja,

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 the highest art. 

Chinese gods are somewhat modest against this background. But this “gap” 

is compensated for completely by the presence of a very special figure that 

emerged in China as a result of the unprecedented growth of the cult of 

literacy and written knowledge in the time of the Ming Dynasty. This was 

the “person of culture” (wenren, also known collectively as the literati), one 

who embodied the cultural element. 

In Chinese tradition, the cultured man embodied the image of the 

Keeper of heritage. 

“This was a personal ideal, which had no overall specific embodiment, and 

no one had exclusive rights to it. A cultured man did not have any 

predetermined social, educational, material or professional identity. The only 

thing uniting this varied cohort of people was education. In the context of 

the celebration of bureaucracy and merchantry, where it was not talent and 

hard work, but relationships and money which opened doors, it was 

necessary to preserve the public face [of the cultured man]. In this regard, it 

was all the more important to separate sincerity from hypocrisy, genuine 

spirituality from snobbery, [and to avoid] slavery to routine and 

unscrupulousness.”

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One particular feature of wenren was that they made a clear gesture 

of detachment, removing themselves from everyday life, demonstrating 

their estrangement from the vanities of the world; their lives were seen as 

solitary, secretive, closed to outsiders. The man of culture adhered 

externally to an ascetic lifestyle without any obvious posturing, swirling 

passions or great achievements. He busied himself with prosaic, 

unsophisticated and minor leisures: reading, talking with a friend, walking, 

fishing or playing checkers. However, the aim of his “idleness in solitude” 

was the search for novelty, personal experience and, ultimately, self-

expression and the cultivation of spirituality. Often the man of culture 

would amaze his neighbours by his eccentric actions. A master of Chinese 

calligraphy, Zhang Xu

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 (whose works date from 713-755 AD) was famous 

                                                 

30

 The god Shiva is often depicted as the cosmic dancer who performs his divine dance to 

destroy a weary universe and make preparations to begin a new process of creation. 

31

 Malyavin 2003, p. 85. 

32

 Zhang Xu became an official during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang 

Dynasty (713-756 AD). Zhang was known as one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup 

in Taoist mythology. Legend has it that whenever he was drunk, he would use his hair as 

brush to perform his art, and upon his waking up, he would be amazed by the quality of 

those works but failed to produce them again whilst sober. One of Zhang Xu’s poems was 

included in the poetry anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems (1763). 

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R. K. Bazhanova, D. E. Martynov, Y. A. Martynova 

 

 

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for his wild cursive script.

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 He belonged to a large number of famous 

eccentric poets, scientists, artists and calligraphers from the 7

th

-8

th

 centuries 

who were known for drinking copious amounts of wine in order to find 

freedom and develop their own original creative style. The direct impact of 

this aesthetic can be found in the calligraphy of Zhang Xu, whose style is 

distinguished by a grotesque ungovernability, and also by soaring, joyful 

ecstasy, spontaneity and improvisation.

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In terms of form, the artistic output of the man of culture was 

imbued with the aesthetic of the personal, sincere, spontaneous and 

impromptu; rough, perhaps, but never falsely smooth. The content of the 

works of art created by these scholars, of course, was connected to their 

reflection upon the Dao, made manifest through transitions of opposites, 

through fluidity, and through depiction of the Great Void, which absorbs 

the whole world. In these artworks, mythological heroes can appear more 

like historical persons and one can detect the sublime in everyday, 

unpretentious, curious and banal subjects. In a sudden insight into everyday 

life, these Chinese masters discovered the infinite creative power of being. 

In their poetic solitude and unpretentious contemplation of the fluid world, 

they updated and brought to maturity new artistic practices, illuminating the 

boundaries of an art that was not fantastical but represented the artistic 

experience of everyday existence. Chinese literati brought to world culture a 

conscious and all-encompassing idea of grace, of the mundane raised to the 

rank of elegance in everyday life. 

 

Conclusions  

In summary, we can draw the following conclusions. In course of the 

general evolution of the artistic experience, the cosmism and synaesthesia 

conventional to Indian culture was adapted by Chinese masters, who 

introduced new categories and strategies that reached the level of specific 

universals not only of the culture, but also of the actual artistry. Chinese 

artistic consciousness operates according to the categories of space and 

time, and was personified by the literati, “men of culture,” recognised as an 

official order, who celebrate the importance of creativity and pure leisure, 

cultural memory and advanced education. 

Thus, in late medieval China three main cultural types can be singled 

out: 

1. Folk-culture at this time was characterised by the survival of archaic 

features and was the product of the popularisation of classical tradition. The 

                                                 

33

 Sokolov-Remizov 1991, p. 168. 

34

 Ibid., p. 177-178. 

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