Chinese Aesthetics

This study focuses on brand literacy in the emerging market of China. Results reveal Chinese consumer desire to express a deep resonance between Chinese values and aesthetics and a favored brand identity. Chinese brands such as Shanghai Tang and Shang Xia – developed in collaboration with leading European luxury brands – build upon Chinese culture, values, and aesthetics to create distinctive, culturally infused brand identities. At a basic level, culture, which includes aspects of particular histories of meaning, and moments of creative innovation, can be perceived as a resource upon which branding processes and practices can draw. Yet, brand culture refers not to a simple process of applying “culture” to a brand.
Under what conditions may we perceive the many ways in which branding – and brands themselves – go beyond cultural branding, and indeed, co-create culture in relation to consumer processes and practices? One way of thinking about how brands and culture interact draws upon the notion of brand literacy – how well consumers are able to “read,” understand, and engage brands and brand messages. We explore a growing brand literacy among Chinese consumers, and reveal how brand literacy is embedded in a cultural context and contributes to brand culture. This study highlights multidimensional aspects of brand literacy and represents an initial step toward a more developed framework in the context of brand culture.

The article is focused on the use of the term zhen 真in Chinese painting traditional theory. Tenth century Jing Hao's Bifaji 筆法記 shows the centrality of this concept, as well as its Daoist roots, particularly clear in some of the meditation works of Daoist Tang Shangqing master Sima Chengzhen, whose activity was by the way centered in the same area where Jing Hao seems to have ended his life in retirement: Wangwu Mountains, the first in the series of the ten "Grotto-Heavens" present in Sima Chengzhen's Tiandi gongfu tu.

The Impossible Nude: Chinese Art and Western Aesthetics by François Jullien is a small book that is well translated and full of ideas. 1 Jullien argues-and illustratesthat the nude was not possible in China. The nude, he shows, is not just a naked body, but an idealization, an expression of essence and form, sensible, intellectual, and divine. It freezes a moment in time and evokes the eternal. The nude would not have been possible without the Greek metaphysics of logos, eidos, and hulē , form and matter. Viewed against this background-and assuming that it matters for the nude-it is no wonder that the nude cannot be found in China, where one simply does not have this metaphysical background, but instead is focused on transformation, process, resonance, movement, continuity, the indirect, the allusive, and the indicial. In Chinese painting it is not formal resemblance and fixation that counts, but grasping the energy of qi, the internal coherence of li, and the transmission of spirit, chuan shen. This also leads to an explanation of why in Chinese painting landscapes have usually been favored over human figures in general, not to speak of the nude. These, then, are the basic ideas of the book.

This article argues that the concept of wuyi (‘martial ideation’) forms the aesthetic core of kung fu cinema. Rather than focusing on the expressive amplification of emotion, martial ideation negotiates action and stasis through stabilization and eventually reaches a state of tranquillity. In The Grandmaster (Wong, 2013), such an ideational experience is sketched through the Buddhist notion of guan (‘perspicaciousness’). Perspicaciousness is embodied by three ways of ‘seeing’ in the mise-en-scène, including ‘listening bridge’ in martial arts performance, ‘looking back’ in narrative structure and ‘visioning’ in theme. In this light, Wong’s kung fu debut treats the southern hand-to-hand combat tradition not as a spectacle, but as an embodied knowledge that links kung fu practice with Chinese aesthetics and philosophy.

Depuis la fin des années 1990, la Chine joue un rôle croissant dans le secteur de la mode et du luxe, faisant d’elle un acteur majeur sur la scène mondiale. La croissance de la production industrielle du secteur textile, conjugué à la hausse de la consommation, aux échelles nationales et internationales, ont largement contribué à l’essor de son économie. Cet article a pour ambition de présenter l’histoire de la mode et du luxe en Chine, ainsi que ses développements actuels, en donnant une place importante aux visions de l’esthétique dans ses évolutions.

This paper examines the contending interpretations of Yeats's poem " Lapis Lazuli " in Western and Eastern scholarship. While scholars in the West have looked in the poem for the poet's universal concept of tragic joy, scholars in the East have regarded the poem as an expression of Yeats's enthusiasm for Chinese art and aesthetics. These opposing views are most clearly demonstrated in the studies by Calvin Bedient and Zhou Dan, particularly, in their discussion of the role of the Chinese landscape in the poem. While Bedient regards the Chinese landscape as an object of Yeats's narcissistic self-expression, Zhou sees it as a source of imaginative inspiration for the poet. In this paper, this interpretive disagreement is investigated as a clash of the two ekphrastic traditions triggered by the image of Chinese landscape in the poem. Building on James Heffernan's theory of ekphrasis as a contested negotiation between the visual and the literary, this paper shows that Yeats's own creative process of writing the poem reveals an intricate interplay of East and West in which ekphrasis unfolds as a transtextual and transcultural event. Finally, in view of globalizing Yeatsian scholarship, the paper argues that a transtextual and transcultural approach to ekphrasis could facilitate our understanding of the contested issues of hermeneutic authority and context.

This essay addresses the significance and status of Chinese art in sixteenth-century Iran through the lens of Safavid scholars, painters and album compilers, as well as their patrons. It focuses on the album that Dust Muhammad compiled for Bahram Mirza, completed in 1544/45 and largely preserved in its original arrangement. A close examination of the relationship between the Chinese and Persianate paintings in this album and comparisons with other paintings and drawings demonstrate the ways in which Chinese artworks were perceived, adopted and self-consciously adapted during Shah Tahmasp’s reign (1524–1576). Furthermore, my analysis of Dust Muhammad’s preface to the Barham Mirza Album and other important contemporary primary sources, such as the poem Āyīn-i Iskandarī (The Rules of Iskandar, 1543/44) by ʿAbdi Beg of Shiraz, reveals an early Safavid reluctance to embrace optical naturalism, which was strongly associated with the Chinese aesthetic. This analysis also elucidates the growing sense of a very distinct pictorial style in Safavid Iran, which was thought to derive from an inner vision situated in the mind or heart of the painter. The mimetic abstraction of this Safavid-Shiʿi aesthetic, initially connected to Imam ʿAli, was considered as superior to the optical naturalism of the Chinese aesthetic.

Nella storia dell'arte cinese un posto fondamentale viene assegnato al pensiero estetico e filosofico. In Occidente il termine aesthetica, di origine greca (aisthesis), è stato considerato come "teoria della percezione o del sentire", conoscenza ottenibile attraverso i sensi, soltanto a partire dalla metà del XVIII secolo con il filosofo tedesco Alexander Baumgarten. Nel pensiero cinese l'estetica è stata da sempre una disciplina legata all'equilibrio fra la natura, la mente e lo spirito, a differenza dell'Occidente dove inizialmente veniva intesa come conoscenza opposta e complementare a quella ottenibile attraverso la mente.

During the Tokugawa Period (also known as the Edo Period, 1603-1868), the Japanese government adopted a political strategy of a drastic isolation, known as sakoku (“the chained country”). By 1641, the port of Nagasaki (Kyūshū) was the only port open to Chinese and Dutch ships, and the city was undergoing a great transformation – from a small fishermen shore to an important cultural and artistic centre. At least until 1720, Dutch merchants, just like the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries (called nanbanjin, “southern barbarians”) in the 16th century, had largely contributed to the spread of the natural sciences and Western art in Japan. But while missionaries used art, science, and technology as tools to arouse the Japanese élites’ interest in Christian religion, Dutch merchants were mostly motivated by commercial interests.  The prominent role of Nagasaki was a significant step in the reconstruction of Japanese painting tradition. On one hand, the commercial activity in the port of Nagasaki facilitated the spread of Western knowledge in Japan; on the other hand, Japanese people were particularly interested in the millenarian Chinese culture. The doctrine of Neo-Confucianism (Song-Ming lixue), in fact, was adopted as an official ideology, becoming the philosophical base for the ethical code of the samurai, as well as a useful theoretical support to the political order upheld by the Tokugawa system.  Both Dutch and Chinese traders produced different cultural movements that finally reached the Nagasaki schools of painting (Nagasakiha kaiga).  Nagasaki schools of painting were particularly active between the 17th and 19th century. Their main purpose was to reproduce and study the styles of painting that appeared in Nagasaki. Scholar Iwasaki Yoshikazu differentiates five main schools, then puts the five schools together in three main categories. Some scholars also listed other schools. I shall argue that the ‘Nagasaki school’ should be intended as a broad term including not only the schools’ production but also the multiple factors that are directly or indirectly linked to the city and that occurred in the development of a specific style of painting. Thanks to the development of a wide variety of drawing techniques, painting styles, and methodologies in applying ink and colours, Nagasaki artists developed in Japan an interesting artistic production that was inspired to cross-reference influences coming from Europe and China. The artistic experimentation and painting creativity of Nagasaki artists could ‘refresh’ the tradition of Japanese painting, enriching the imagery and subject matters of traditional paintings, and developing a highly sophisticated decorativism. The role Chinese artists played in the transmission of Chinese and European styles to Nagasaki should not be underestimated, especially of those coming from regions such as Fujian and Zhejiang. The purpose of this paper is to especially focus on the six main factors I have identified as directly responsible for the Chinese cultural transmission, although some of them cannot properly be considered as schools, but just as movements, or painting styles. Each of these factors interested different aspects of Chinese painting culture. The artistic eclecticism was a crucial aspect of ‘Nagasaki school’, and the contaminatio between types and styles of art was the basis of much of its creative vitality. It seems clear, therefore, that the role Nagasaki painters played in revitalising Japanese painting tradition can no longer be underestimated.

‘Spirit consonance engendering a sense of life’ (Qi Yun Sheng Dong) as the first law of Chinese painting, originally proposed by Xie He (active 500–535?) in his six laws of painting, has been commonly echoed
by numerous later Chinese artists up to this day. Tracing back the meaning of each character of ‘Qi Yun Sheng Dong’ from Pre-Qin up to the Six Dynasties, along with a comparative analysis on the renderings of ‘Qi Yun Sheng Dong’ by experts in Western academia, I establish ‘spirit consonance’ as the rendering of ‘Qi Yun’. By examining texts on painting by significant critics in Chinese art history, and by referring to specific works by painters from the Six Dynasties up to the Yuan Dynasty, I present the merits and demerits of the different interpretations by Western experts, and explore the essence of ‘Qi Yun’. Once the painter successfully captures ‘spirit consonance’ as the essential character or ‘internal reality’ of the object, and transmits it into the work, ‘Qi Yun’ further implies the expressive quality of the work beyond formal representation. Additionally, the fusion of expressive and representative functions also leaves space for further explaining the aesthetic interaction among artist, object, work, and audience. From the Six Dynasties onwards, Chinese painters have practised the expressive pursuit beyond epresentation on the basis of the unification of ‘Qi Yun’ (spirit consonance) and formal representation, although spirit consonance was valued more highly than formal likeness.

SYNOPSIS: Cet article est une tentative de décrire la signification de Wushu Traditionnel et de fournir une clé de lecture pour sa préservation et sa survie grâce à l'utilisation de ses caractéristiques d'adaptabilité et d'étude esthétique-culturelle. Il s'agit d'une réadaptation et d'un approfondissement d'une intervention présentée au cours de la conférence "Wushu traditionnel ou moderne" (Wushu tradizionale o moderno), 26 septembre 2010, Coverciano, organisée par l'

This paper uses present-day philosophical aesthetic terminology to examine important aspects of Chinese calligraphic appreciation, as they are revealed in classical texts on this art. I hold that the aesthetic objects in the experience of a calligraphic work are twofold: the outer form and the inner expressive qualities. I propose that calligraphic appreciation can be understood as a process of retrieval, a term I take from Richard Wollheim. Highly pertinent to the retrieval view is a recurring topic in traditional calligraphy criticism – whether a trained calligrapher is an ideal critic. I argue that a trained calligrapher is an ideal critic, because proper calligraphic appreciation relates to the kinesthetic experience one accumulates chiefly, if not only, through calligraphic practice.

The paper theoretically reconstructs the Daoist conception of music and musical experience based on the writings ascribed to Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Xi Kang. It is shown that in the eyes of the Daoists the experience of musical harmony is ineffable and nonrepresentational, transcending the limits of the human realm and requiring the emptying of one's mind and its inner feelings. This absolute Harmony, sometimes referred to as the directly inaudible Great Sound, was treated as another name for Dao-the Way things truly and spontaneously are. For Laozi, the Great Sound exists in all sounds as their totality, while for Zhuangzi thus understood "Heavenly music" consists in an endless harmony of the different tones spontaneously produced by all beings in the universe. Developing these approaches, Xi Kang argues against attributing human emotions to music and finally for the "categorial" separation between heart-mind and its feelings, which are released when stimulated by music, and the absolute Great Harmony. Xi Kang's arguments were also targeted at the Confucian view of music as representing the feelings of the people, but his elaboration on the non-representational nature of harmony and the non-intentional character of musical experience shows that these polemics were rooted in a positive standpoint, which, just as in the case of Laozi and Zhuangzi, successfully meets the definition of mystical experience.

This article explains the xing (form) of Chinese calligraphy, proposing that calligraphic xing is inseparable from shi (force), a key aesthetic concept in Chinese calligraphy criticism and Chinese aesthetics at large. The first part of this article starts with a discussion of xing in early Chinese aesthetic discourses before turning to the term's usages in texts on calligraphy. The second and the third parts discuss shi as it is used in classical calligraphic theory, clarifying how calligraphic shi, as a kind of directional force, persists through the three aspects of calligraphic form: brushstrokes, characters, and compositional structure. This article explicates how calligraphic xing and shi are mutually dependent. On the one hand, calligraphic shi, as an aesthetic effect, is attached to the visible xing. On the other, the forms of successful calligraphic works are never static; rather, they should be filled with internal force (shi). I conclude that understanding Chinese calligraphy as "force-form" has clear implications for calligraphic education and appreciation. The abstract quality of Chinese calligraphy in large measure consists of the aesthetic effect of shi actualized in calligraphic form. Thus, to appreciate this art, we must retrace the visible force-form of a piece of calligraphy.

Can we conceive of disorder in a positive sense? We organize our desks, we discipline our children, we govern our polities--all with the aim of reducing disorder, of temporarily reversing the entropy that inevitably asserts itself in our lives. Going all the way back to Hesiod, we see chaos as a cosmogonic state of utter confusion inevitably reigned in by laws of regularity, in a transition from fearful unpredictability to calm stability. In contrast to a similar early Chinese notion of chaotic disorder (luan), early Daoists posit a type of chaos that is to be cultivated rather than feared. This chaos is a primal disorder, akin to Hesiod's, but rather than threatening disruption, it is replete with creative potential and through spontaneous action yields orderly processes that proceed from the concretion of things to their dissolution and back, in a complex web of relations. This processional activity, although taken in one sense as cosmogonic, in a more important sense is immanent at every moment of activity. This article identifies terms of chaos, such as dun dun 沌 沌, hundun 渾 沌, and xingming 涬 溟 in Laozi and Zhuangzi and examines the passages in which they occur. Analyzing these passages brings us to a better understanding of "chaos" in a Chinese sense and to a familiarity with related terms in its semantic field, such as xuan 玄 (dark, mysterious), miao 妙 (subtle/profound), wei 微 (minute/inchoate), xiao 小 (small/minute), and pu 樸 (uncarved block). We see that the Daoist ideal is to return to a chaotic inchoateness by melding with the cosmos and there finding a repository of creative potential. This notion of chaos as the inchoate is used a springboard into understanding the origins of Daoist spontaneity.

A presente obra vai oferecer a você, leitor e leitora, um panorama crítico
do estado da arte atual do debate acadêmico filosófico de matriz chinesa, seja pelos seus próprios termos ou em perspectiva comparada. Esse é o primeiro volume dos Textos Selecionados de Filosofia Chinesa da Série Investigações Filosóficas, com tradução de vários verbetes especializados em filosofia chinesa publicados originalmente em inglês na The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Esses verbetes foram traduzidos por toda uma equipe brasileira de pesquisadores(as) especialistas em tradições asiáticas e em filosofia acadêmica

Written in 1931, Zhang Yinlin’s treatise “A Preface to Chinese Calligraphy Criticism” has long been neglected by researchers of twentieth-century Chinese calligraphy theory. The main part of this article is a translation of this treatise. In an introduction, the translator briefly reviews the development of the aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy in the early twentieth century. The influence of Western aesthetics on Chinese calligraphy theory in the early twentieth century is manifest, and Zhang’s treatise, quoting directly from some contemporary English books on aesthetics, is of this nature.

Shanshui (mountains and waters) has been an important form of artistic expression in Chinese art. Since the introduction of photography in the early 20th century, it has undergone several phrases of changes. From the works of photographic artists Lang Jingshan, Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang, this article explores how shanshui aesthetics has been re-appropriated from classical ink-and-water paintings to modern photography over the past century. Throughout the process, we will examine what has been created and lost in shanshui’s reinventions. It is argued that modern and contemporary shanshui, being re-appropriated in the form of photo collage/ composite photography, structures and shapes our perceptions through adopting multiple-point and trans-scalar perspectives. In the process, it has made some of the ideological ruptures visible, pushing shanshui to become more socially and politically reflexive in China’s times of transitions and crises.
Unlike literati painters in the ancient times who deliberately avoided politics and instead immersed themselves in creating nature paintings as a form of escapism, Lang Jingshan’s composite photography subtly and intricately reflects the political ruptures experienced in China in the mid twentieth century. Entering the 21st century, the emerging Anthropocene discourse is quickly reshaping our perceptions and the way art represents human-nature relationships. Contemporary artists like Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang create photographic shanshui collages that represent the excessively urbanized environments and observe the environmentally challenged social reality from various perspectives and scales. From the political ruptures we see in Lang Jingshan’s works since the 1950s, to the ecological ruptures in the Anthropocene epoch as reflected in Yao Lu and Yang Yongliang’s works, shanshui evolves under the camera lens and continues to be redefined according to ideologies of the time.

山水是中國藝術中一個舉足輕重的概念。自二十世紀初攝影技術引入中國後，山水經歷了幾個階段的演變。本文將透過藝術家郎靜山、姚璐和楊泳樑三人的攝影作品，探討山水美學在過去一世紀如何從傳統水墨畫被挪用到現代攝影之上。我們將探討山水被再創造的得與失。現當代山水是如何運用拼湊攝影/集綿攝影的技術去營造散點透視法和跨維度視界？同時，它們又如何讓我們更清楚從山水看到意識形態上的斷裂，從而反映中國當今社會和政治的轉變和困境。
有別於刻意歸隱和避世的古代文人畫家筆下去政治化的山水，郎靜山的集錦攝影暗示了他所處之世的政治斷裂和動盪。踏入二十一世紀，人類世話語的出現不但改變了人們對生態環境的感知，也改變了藝術呈現人與自然關係的方式。姚璐和楊泳梁所創作的山水集錦攝影反應當今社會過度城市化，亦透過不同的角度和維度直觀社會現實中遭受的生態環境衝擊。從上世紀五六十年代中國的政治分裂，到當今人類世衍生的生態裂縫，我們看到山水在攝影藝術家鏡頭下不斷演化，並受着不同的意識形態影響而被再三定義。

THe aim of this short study is to show the affinities between China aesthetic principles and an important part of Western aesthetics, which from Plato reaches the Middle Age and beyond. With the help of Chinese sources, most of which belonging to painting theory, and ranging from Vth to XIth century, some meaningful convergences will be stressed. The writer hopes in this way to contribute to the dismantling of some distortions of the Orientalism, like the still popular vulgatae about the peculiarity and the relativism of ancient Chinese thought.

This article provides a comparative analysis of the status of social and cultural forms in Europe and China. Specifically, it draws upon three main sources: the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, the Italian philosopher and writer Mario Perniola, and the Chinese philosopher and aesthetician Wang Jianjiang.
I begin with Boltanski’s and Chiapello’s analysis of the transformations of capitalism which took place in Europe throughout the twentieth century. By developing their claims, I show in what terms aesthetics, art and culture have faced decisive changes which still need to be further understood and explored. I then explore Perniola’s perspective on the relationship between knowledge and power in the context of contemporary European societies. In the process, it will become apparent that Europe is entangled in a melancholic and populist syndrome which affects both the academy and culture more broadly. Finally, I investigate Wang’s notion of the “Bie-modern”, underlining the international debate it has given rise to among scholars. My aim is to show how Europe and China are currently following two divergent strategies concerning the role and the value of knowledge.

A passagem por Macau e pela China será provavelmente um dos aspectos que confere maior unidade temática à obra de Camilo Pessanha. Da longa estada no território macaense nasceria um interesse pela escrita, pela literatura e pela arte chinesas sem paralelo em Portugal até à primeira metade do século XX e que marcaria profundamente a produção literária do autor. Para Pessanha, o Oriente constitui o cenário de uma penetrante experiência pessoal e um objecto maior ao nível estético, merecedor de estudo, de divulgação – e até de comparação com o Ocidente, muitas vezes em detrimento deste. O autor representa a inversão da tendência generalizada de chegar à literatura asiática por via indirecta e constitui, por isso mesmo, uma referência primordial na genealogia do encontro entre Ocidente e Oriente. Quer nos relatos das conferências sobre «Estética Chinesa» (1910) e «Literatura Chinesa» (1915), quer na «Introdução a Um Estudo sobre a Civilização Chinesa» (1912) ou no «Prefácio» às Elegias Chinesas (1914), Pessanha esforça-se por apresentar quase todos os tópicos que hoje consideraríamos essenciais numa lição sobre a sociedade, a língua, a arte e a poesia chinesas. O escopo deste trabalho é mapear e analisar os conteúdos temáticos de cada um desses textos, a fim de conceber, através do modo como recebeu a arte, a língua e a literatura chinesas, o perfil de Camilo Pessanha enquanto crítico.

This article uses evidence from digital databases to re-examine two controversial issues regarding the “Six Criteria” (liufa 六法) of painting listed by Xie He 謝赫 (d. after 532) in the preface to his Gu huapin lu 古畫品錄: (1) their syntax and phrasing, and (2) the origin and connotations of qiyun 氣韻, the most famous of the six. Despite recent claims to the contrary, the series of six numbered clauses taking the form “X, Y shi ye 是也” is unremarkable for the language of the time; moreover, the application of the Six Criteria in the subsequent biographies discloses that they are listed in decreasing order of importance. While the meaning and connotations of qiyun are impossible to state succinctly because they vary from one source to another, it is used (like similar phrases, such as yayun 雅韻 and shenyun 神韻) both to praise people’s character and as an aesthetic quality pertaining to music, literature, and art.

Through the analysis of the activity as a gardener of the poet Bai Juyi (772-846), and of his literary reflections on his gardens, the paper aims to show the influence of Chan thought on the formation of garden aesthetics in traditional China.

The appendix lists the original Chinese texts mentioned in the book The Aesthetics of Qiyun and Genius: Spirit Consonance in Chinese Landscape Painting and Some Kantian Echoes; the translations of some texts are partially quoted or paraphrased in the book. The number in the brackets refers to page where the English translation of the original Chinese text is quoted, or the original Chinese text is mentioned.

""Western" philosophy has been typically defined through the exclusion of non-Western forms of thought as non-philosophical.
In this paper, I place the notion of what is “properly” philosophy into question by contrasting the essence/appearance paradigm governing Western metaphysics and its deconstructive critics with the more fluid, dynamic, and participatory forms of encountering and performatively enacting the world that are articulated in Chinese thinking and made apparent in Chinese painting. In this hermeneutical encounter, "Western" and "Chinese" thinking themselves are interpeted as dynamically and asymmetrically co-relational rather than as discrete, mutually indifferent or ethnocentrically nativist traditions."

Music has always held an important place in Chinese culture and it has been deeply related to philosophy for ages.
In fact, one could say it played a key role in creating Chinese culture and civilisation. It could be assumed that one
of the most important concepts of this culture—the Harmony—has its roots in music-making practice and musical
terminology. Music was very strongly related to the official social ideology/philosophy of the empire, the
Confucianism. As an integral part of the rituals, it became one of the elements ensuring social order. Besides its
social/global function, music was an issue of great importance in the practice of achieving one’s personal
excellence. There is a strong correlation between music and the Chinese idea of a sage, which in the Middle
Kingdom is associated with the sense of hearing (not with sight, as it is in the Mediterranean tradition). The musical
instrument guqin became an inalienable attribute of a sage and the practice of playing this instrument became a way
to wisdom, allowing to improve one’s cognition and action. This paper will present the relations between playing
the qin, philosophy, and learning wisdom.

This is the first posthumous volume by Mario Sabattini, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca' Foscari University at Venice. The present work offers an essay on the aesthetic thought of Zhu Guangqian and Benedetto Croce and the translation of the Wenyi xinlixue (Psychology of Art and Literature).
The volume is edited by Elisa Levi Sabattini.

While it is common to hear that we are living in an era of global education, academic philosophy and aesthetics continue to reflect a heavy bias toward Western philosophies, thinkers, and arts. This curriculum project has two central aims. The first aim is to support the diversification of aesthetics curricula through the inclusion of Asian philosophical perspectives. The second aim is to present reading modules in a way that highlights the rich possibilities for cross-cultural and comparative work in aesthetics. Aesthetics often succeeds in philosophizing across borders where other methods fail for a number of reasons. Aesthetics brings together a wide range of philosophical methods and considerations, including but not limited to epistemological, hermeneutical, metaphysical, political, and ethical. The fundamental role of perception in aesthetics should encourage appropriate cultural reflexivity and reflection. Additionally, the philosophical interpretation of a work of art can place demands and yield results in a manner similar to ideal cross-cultural philosophizing. Asian philosophy of art and aesthetics contributes to these aims in at least two important ways. First, the arts were often treated as philosophical practices in a number of Asian traditions. Second, aesthetics occupied a principal place in the philosophies included here, arguably on par with the preeminent role that metaphysics has played in the history of European philosophy. Complementing the first two aims of diversifying contemporary aesthetics and highlighting opportunities for comparative and cross-cultural work, this reading list is designed to also strengthen the role of aesthetics in philosophy more broadly by showcasing traditions for which aesthetics was at the center of philosophical practices and methods. This project therefore supports the importance of non-Western traditions in the discipline of aesthetics and confirms aesthetics at the center of philosophy.

China has played an increasing role in the world economy, and subsequently, fashion and luxury market since the end of 1990s. The build-up of the industrial production of textile domain, along with the great rise of consumption in both national and international markets, has obviously contributed to the flight of its GDP. This paper aims to present the fashion history and its recent development in China by giving an important place in the sight of their aesthetics evolution.

Please see the new version of the article in the Ying Xiang, a journal of asian cultures :
Part 1 in the link

As one of the most popular online media in China, personal livestreaming attracts massive attention and effects on human social communication in multiple novel ways. This article explores the semiotic mechanism of the barrage, a special form of commenting, on China's livestreaming platforms. Drawing on cultural semiotic theories, it discusses the impact of the barrage by the fandom of China's livestreaming. Two interrelated semiotic paradoxes are created by two interrelated forms of markedness from the use of the barrage by Chinese livestreaming fans, that is, the markedness of time and the markedness of space. Through careful assessment of the use of the barrage in China's livestreaming fandom, this article sheds new light on China's livestreaming and its potential impact on the future of digital China.

How does a painter develop aesthetic awareness of environment, observe the fusion of self with bamboo, and create natural beauty with ink and paper? To address these three puzzles, I gather five features of the practice of Chinese literati painting, by studying the writings of Su Shih and Shi Tao, along with commentaries by Gao Jianping and Peng Feng. Through an analysis of calligraphy, go, and Shi Tao’s account of “one-stroke” painting, I claim that the literati painter concentrates on paper for the sake of its empty space as a visible whole. But how does this facilitate the transformation of the painter into a pure self that observes it own fusion with bamboo and environment? Continuing, I interpret and apply Merleau-Ponty’s use of the terms “the visible” and “constitutive emptiness.” He uses “total visible” to denote a secret, whole of corporeality, innate to the self – an element of interior flesh -- that provides an openness upon nature. “Constitutive emptiness,” he tells us, refers to the spatiality of paper, when line transforms the indifferent page into an exemplar of the whole of the visible. Gathering these results, I uphold all five features and describe how Wen Tong observes bamboo within the whole of the visible that is an observable element of his own composite self. While painting, Wen relives the fusion of his body with visible bamboo, by watching the empty space of paper take the shape of bamboo through strokes of ink. I argue that this corporeal interpretation of the practice of painting avoids Moore’s Naturalistic fallacy, as well as Wittgenstein’s case against the private naming of sensations. I conclude that Chinese literati painters and art critics have left us ideas about painting, self and inseparability from nature that may help us reshape present-day aesthetics.