Beijing Arts and Culture

Chinese arts – highest expression of culture

Calligraphy is regarded as the highest and most abstract Chinese art, yet it can still be appreciated by people with no understanding of the Chinese characters. The style in which the characters are written can express as much as or more than the characters themselves. In ancient times the power of the written was so revered that people slept with holy books under their pillows to ward off spirits.

Chinese Arts – Painting

Chinese painting and Chinese calligraphy are closely related. Chinese painting generally uses a small number of carefuly defined brushstrokes to paint a picture – and includes the artist’s calligraphy as well.

Chinese Arts – Chinese Opera

Chinese opera combines singing, dancing, music, stylised action, dialogue or mime, masks, make-up, costume and acrobatics to tell stories from Chinese history and legend.

Beijing Opera is the best known variety of Chinese Opera, but it is by no means the only one. Most Chinese opera variants make use of traditional Chinese musical instruments like the erhu, the lute and the gong.

Chinese Arts – Acrobatics

Chinese acrobats are among the worlds’ most accomplished, and happily this is one art form that you can enjoy in Beijing and China without understanding a word of Chinese. Some acts are quite awe inspiring, you will see things you never knew a human body was capable of doing.

Chinese Arts – Literature

Traditional Chinese literature reflects Chinese beliefs about the high artistic nature, even spiritual power of the written word. So strong was this conviction that people believed that reading passages from the classics, or sleeping with them under their pillows, could ward off evil spirits. Confucius taught that only history, calligraphy, philosophy and poetry were sufficiently serious to be worthy of the written word.

Chinese Arts – Chinese Gardens

Chinese gardens are some of the most idyllic and evocative places in China, gardening is seen as a high art. The garden was the traditional retreat of the Chinese scholar, a place of quiet beauty, calm and sophistication in which to smoke a pipe, read poetry and play chess.

Chinese gardens combine rockery, water and architecture in a way that can seem at once jumbled and logical, a vista, never the same twice, of the natural world recreated by man.

Recommended Chinese culture articles:

Traditional Chinese Architecture: Evolution and History, Chinese Siheyuan Courtyards

Chinese Religion: How To Tell Chinese Temples Apart, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism

Beijing Arts: Chinese Opera, Acrobatics, Tai Chi, Chinese Gardens

Beijing Society: Er Nai, Lucky Numbers, Chinese Etiquette, Drugs in China

Chinese History: Chairman Mao Zedong, Eunuchs, Chinese Emperors, Ancient History Timeline, Concubines, 20th Century Timeline