CHINA ASTER

also called Annual Aster (Callistephus chinensis), herbaceous plant of the aster family (Asteraceae, also called Compositae), many cultivated varieties of which are longtime garden favourites. The native species from China is 75 cm (2.5 feet) tall, with white to violet flowers having yellow centres. The cultivated varieties vary in height from 20 cm to 1 m (8 inches to 3 feet) tall. The flower heads, up to 12 cm (about 5 inches) across, are often totally composed of petallike ray flowers; they range in colour from white and pale yellow to pink, rose, red, blue, purple, and violet. Cultural life A ching-hsi (Peking Opera) troupe performing a scene from The Real and the Fake Sun 1/4 Chinese culture is remarkable for its duration and diversity. Skeletal remains and stone implements date to the Paleolithic stage of cultural development, from the 29th to the 17th millennium BC. Decorated artifacts, primarily marked pottery vessels, have been found in dozens of Incipient Neolithic and Neolithic sites, dating from the 12th to the 2nd millennium BC. Chinese Neolithic pottery shapes and types are mostly classified into two families-the earlier Yang-shao ware from the central Chung-yan region, characterized by geometric painted decorations, and the later Lung-shan ware, primarily from the Northeast but also found in the Chung-yan area. Lung-shan ware is unpainted and is elevated from the ground on a circular foot or tripod legs. The Bronze Age includes the first historically verified dynasty, the Shang (18th-12th century BC), and China's first written records. The Late Shang is well known from oracle bones recovered from the site of the last Shang capital near An-yang. The bones are turtle plastrons and ox scapulae with inscribed texts, used by the Shang kings in a highly regularized system of ritual divination and sacrifice aimed at securing the support of the ruler's deceased ancestors. Through their use, writing became linked to authority in a way that endured throughout premodern Chinese history. During the Shang and Chou (1111-255 BC) dynasties the art of bronze casting became highly developed. Finely cast and richly decorated pieces included cooking and serving vessels, bells, drums, weapons, and door fittings. The written language is central to China's culture. Scholars have identified ideographic inscriptions on pottery dating to about 4000 BC, and written Chinese has developed continuously since the Late Shang period. Chinese culture is inextricably bound up with the writing system in three ways. First, writing is the medium for the preservation and dissemination of culture. Indeed, China's word for culture (wen-hua) means "to become literate." Second, command of the writing system distinguishes the Chinese and their culture, seen as the centre of the world, from all non-Chinese peoples, categorized by the Chinese as "barbarians." Third, culture and the writing system are inseparably linked to statecraft in that a command of writing and knowledge of the written tradition were necessary and requisite skills for holding office. Thus, from the Shang dynasty oracle bones to the products of the modern printing press, culture in the form of written works has been a key instrument in the development of political thought and a tool of governance. The oldest art forms in China are music and dance. A 5,000-year-old pottery bowl from Tsinghai Province is painted with a ring of 15 dancers, adorned in headdresses and sashes and stepping in unison. Music played an important role in early Chinese ritual and statecraft. Bronze bells were instruments of investiture and reward. A bronze bell set from the ancient state of Tseng in Hupeh, interred c. 430 BC, contains 64 bells, each of which produces two distinct, tuned strike notes. More than 120 instruments were unearthed from the same tomb, including stringed zithers, mouth organs, flutes, drums, and stone chimes. Music and related rituals helped to provide a structure for activities in the courts of rulers at all levels in the feudal hierarchy. The Shih Ching ("Classic of Poetry"), an anthology of poetry given definitive form in about 500 BC, is one of China's oldest classics and contains 305 folk songs and ritual psalms. Although the T'ang dynasty (AD 618-907) is called the Golden Age of Chinese poetry, having produced the poets Tu Fu and Li Po, there are poets of renown from every dynasty, and the writing of poetry was practiced by most well-educated Chinese for both personal and social reasons. China's tradition of historical narrative is also unsurpassed in the world. Twenty-five dynastic histories preserve a unique record from the unverified Hsia dynasty (22nd-19th/18th century BC) to the Ch'ing (AD 1644-1911/12), and sprawling historical romances have been a mainstay in the reading of the educated since the spread of printing in the 11th and 12th centuries AD. The May Fourth Movement (1917-21) attacked much of this great literary and cultural tradition, viewing it as a source of China's weakness. Students and faculty at Peking University abandoned the demanding literary language and created a new popular fiction, written in a more accessible colloquial language on themes from the lives of ordinary people. Literary culture continued to be a subject of intense debate. Mao Zedong, who composed poetry in both contemporary and traditional styles, dictated that art must serve politics in his talks at Yen-an in 1942. Throughout the following decades, writers received both admiration and ridicule. Indeed, the fate of most important writers was closely linked to the vicissitudes of national politics from the 1950s onward. Only in the mid-1980s did writers again begin to enjoy a period of relative freedom in which there was some official tolerance of "art for art's sake." Painting and calligraphy, like poetry, were the domain of the elite, and most educated Chinese traditionally boasted of some competence in them. There are early anonymous and folk-oriented paintings on tomb and cave walls, and many works are known from the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). Fine-art painters are known by name from as early as the 6th century AD from historical records and serially copied versions of their works. Chinese painting is predominantly of landscapes, done in black pine-soot ink on fine paper or silk, occasionally with the addition of faint colour washes. The most vigorous period for landscape painting spanned the years from the Sung (960-1279) to Ming (1368-1644) dynasties. Calligraphy rivals painting as a fine art in China, and paintings are often captioned with artfully written poems. Calligraphy reveals the great fondness the Chinese have for their written characters, and it ranges in style from meticulously and laboriously scribed "seal" characters to flamboyant and unconstrained "grass" characters. Calligraphy, as painting, is prized for a number of abstract aesthetic qualities, described by such terms as "balance," "vitality," "energy," "bones," "wind," and "strength." Painting has undergone numerous style changes in the 20th century. Before 1949 painters such as Ch'i Pai-shih (1863-1957) developed distinct new styles that internationalized traditional Chinese aesthetics. After 1949 pressure for socialist realism made painters shift their focus to such subjects as factory scenes, peasant villages, and convoys of tour buses. But with the liberalization of the arts that followed Mao's death in 1976, more traditional values reasserted themselves. Sculpture and carving date back to the Chou dynasty (c. 1111-255 BC) or earlier. Tombs frequently contained burial dolls, said to have been made to replace live sacrificial victims, and many early jade carvings are related to burial practices and include body orifice stoppers and bangle bracelets. Of all the arts, sculpture received the greatest boost from the introduction of Buddhism to China during the Han dynasty and from the spread of Buddhism during the Six Dynasties (AD 220-589) and T'ang periods. Statues and carved reliefs of Buddhas and bodhisattvas were made by the thousands and, along with cave paintings at prominent sites like Tun-huang, Kansu Province, represent the pinnacle of Chinese religious art. Chinese art and artifacts have found their way into various collections around the world. The most important collection of fine arts is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, the bulk of the superb traditional palace collection having been ferried across the Taiwan Strait during the Nationalist retreat in 1948-49. Excellent collections of Chinese painting, calligraphy, and bronzes are found in a number of North American museums, most notably the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts in Kansas City, Mo.; the Smithsonian Institution, Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Significant collections remain in major museums in Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, and Wu-han. Since the 1950s, new archaeological discoveries have filled China's provincial and local museums with fabulous treasures, and new facilities have been constructed for the study and display of these artifacts. Especially notable is the life-size terra-cotta army of the first Ch'in emperor, Shih huang-ti. The army, complete with soldiers, horses, and chariots, was discovered in an enormous underground vault near Sian, in Shensi Province. Many of its figures have been painstakingly removed and prepared for public display. Theatre is the most important popular art in China. It originated in early religious dances, performed at festivals to exorcise demons, reenact important historical events, or prepare for harvest, hunting, or warfare. Urban storytelling and theatrical genres are well documented from the Sung dynasty but are known to have matured during the Yan dynasty (1206-1368). Yan dramas, or operas as they are more accurately called, consisted of virtuoso song and dance organized around plots on historical or contemporary themes. The operas were performed in special theatres, with elegant costumes and decorated stages. From Yan drama later forms developed, including contemporary Cantonese and Peking operas, that feature song and dance, elaborate costumes and props, and displays of martial arts and acrobatics. During the Cultural Revolution, an enormous number of cultural treasures of inestimable value were seriously damaged or destroyed and the practice of many arts and crafts was prohibited. Since the early 1980s, however, official repudiation of those policies has been complemented by vigorous efforts to renew China's remarkable cultural traditions. China's culture thus remains highly complex, encompassing ancient traditions and modern experiments, in what sometimes appears to be a rather tenuous mix. Kenneth J. DeWoskin