What are the characteristics of ancient Chinese traditional culture?

The development of traditional Chinese culture

The broad and profound Chinese culture has gone through a long and tortuous course of development from its conception to its strong and powerful development. It is a process of enriching material and spiritual culture, as well as a process of emancipating oneself and moving towards the peak of civilization.

First, the pre-civilization period: apes to Dayu Chuanzi

(a) the basic characteristics: the age of obscurity

This is the prehistory of Chinese culture, which includes the Paleolithic and Neolithic, equivalent to the legendary era of Chinese ancient history.

(II) Main Facts

1. The independent origin of Chinese race and culture. A large number of archaeological discoveries have strongly refuted the assertion that the Chinese race came from the west, south and east. China's widely distributed, a large number of archaeological sites show that from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic inhabitants, there is a clear physical succession, the development of ethnographic sequences, basically in a large race (Mongolian race) under the backbone of the occurrence and development of the Western race has not been found to participate in the Chinese race to say the West and the theory of the western origin of Chinese civilization lack of anthropological basis. That is to say, the Chinese Stone Age culture was developed on the basis of a relatively single ethnographic foundation, which played a significant role in the continuous and stable independent development of Chinese culture in the future.

2. The center of agricultural origin laid the cornerstone of agricultural culture. After more than a million years of collecting and fishing activities, the primitive people in China accumulated rich knowledge of plants and animals, and began agricultural cultivation and domestication of livestock around the Neolithic era. China is undoubtedly one of the centers of the world's agricultural origins, and the rich and varied agricultural production methods, including rice farming and dry farming, laid the cornerstone of an agrarian culture that was different from the nomadic way, thus determining many substantial features of the later Chinese culture.

3. Pluralistic occurrence of Chinese culture. China's pre-civilization period, the number of cultural heritage sites is extremely large and widely distributed, just like the "stars in the sky", which predicts the diversification of China's civilization, but the main body is concentrated in the Yellow River basin and the Yangtze River basin and its north and south not far away from the scope of the literature legend is generally consistent with the Chinese Xia (Hailuo), the East Barbarians (Haidai) and the Miao barbarians (Jianghan), the three major groups of the ancestors, in recent years, the Chinese people have been the most important and the most important group of the Chinese culture. Three major groups of ancestors, in recent years, archaeological excavations have been partially proved.

Second, the embryonic period: Xia, Shang, Western Zhou to the Spring and Autumn period, the Warring States

(a) the basic features: civilization foundation, the creation of the yuan canon

Like the rest of the world civilization system generated by the world alone, this stage has laid the basic framework of culture, and later influence on the culture of Chinese culture and even the entire culture of East Asia up to more than two thousand grandmothers, many of the characteristics of the stage has been the first to appear. Although this period of Chinese group of the grand space ("China") is still very limited, has not yet produced enough force on the north and south of the four directions, but the cornerstone of Chinese civilization has been initially laid, hieroglyphic Chinese characters, Confucianism, Mozambique, Taoism and law and the thinking of the scholars, patriarchal ethics and so on, have had a great impact on future generations.

(2) The main situation

1. The beginning of civilization. Around the second millennium BC, in the scope of China's general appearance of writing, bronze, palaces, altars, etc., Chinese culture began to enter the stage of civilization, which is comparable to the literature contained in the ancient historical system of the Xia Dynasty, the current archaeological excavations in western Henan, southwestern Jin is unveiling the childhood (Xia Dynasty) of China's early civilization.

2. Bronze culture is unique. The characteristics of the Chinese Bronze Age, such as copper-tin alloys, block casting, characteristic types of objects and their combinations, are different from those of Western civilization. Especially important is that Chinese bronzes were used as ceremonial objects to symbolize the king's power and hierarchical order, and then as weapons to be used in wars to defend the regime, instead of being used mainly as tools of production, as in other civilizations.

3. The three major rituals of heaven, earth and man were developed. In particular, ancestor worship is particularly developed, which is a cause and effect of the early patriarchal system and patriarchal concepts, and has given birth to a series of characteristics of Chinese culture, such as prudence, history and speech.

4. The first turn of Chinese culture. The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were the first major period of social change and cultural transition in Chinese history. The rapid development of the private economy, the hereditary society to the salary system of bureaucratic transition, patriarchal feudalism into a centralized bureaucracy, "learning in the government" to "learning in the private door", "Shi" class emerged, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class, the "Shi" class. The rise of the "scholar" class, the separation of monistic culture, the development of multiculturalism, the coexistence of various schools of thought, a hundred schools of thought, academic branches, various disciplines gradually embarked on the road to independence and differentiation, such as literature, art, history, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, agronomy, military science, astronomy, etc., in various fields have absorbed and then discarded the Zongzhou's culture, and the social change of the new era of the table with each other to reach an unprecedented level of prosperity. This was the "axis" of Chinese culture. This was the "Axial Era" ("Yuan Dynasty") of Chinese culture.

5. The creation of the Yuan dynasty canon. During this period, the Chinese YuanDian (元典), such as the Poetry, the Book, the Rites, the Yi, the Spring and Autumn Annals, and the Analects, the Mozi, the Zhuangzi, the Laozi, the Mencius, and so on, systematically demonstrated the backbone concepts of the Chinese culture. The humanistic spirit, the cosmogony of heavenly nature, the sense of worry, and the categories of yin and yang, dao and instrument, existence and non-existence, and rationality, etc., have been spread out in the debates of the sons and the Hundred Schools of Thought, which have exemplified the conceptual level of the Chinese culture for the future generations and built the spiritual home of the Chinese people.

Third, the period of stereotypes: Qin and Han

(a) Basic features: the basic stereotypes of the empire model and the cultural model of the great unity

The four centuries from 220 BC to 220 AD are a continuous cultural process. If we go back, the beginning of the culture of the unified empire should be traced back to the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, because the first great social change and cultural transformation that took place at that time had already implied the political unification and cultural unification. With the establishment of the Qin-Han unified empire, the Han Chinese nation showed a strong momentum in politics, military, and all internal and external affairs, and the cultural originality of the nation was brilliantly erupted and showed the outward expansion of the imperial culture. This was the "completion of the ancient empire" and "the era of the totalization of ancient Chinese culture", which completed the unification and integration of the pre-Qin diversified cultures.

(2) The main situation

1. Many basic aspects of Chinese culture were fixed. For example, the unification of weights and measures, the definition of writing, as well as the pattern of education, the control of household registration, the way of examining officials, and the system of scripture and history were greatly finalized, which formed the unique characteristics of China and were effectively implemented within the empire. The formation of the Han nationality also took place during this period, and the cultural achievements of the Chinese language, Chinese characters, and Han Fang, which have been used up to the present day, were all basically finalized in the Qin-Han era.

2. Confucian culture began to dominate the ideology. After more than a hundred years of exploration, adjustment and integration between the Qin and Han dynasties, the centralized system of the great unified empire finally found a compatible ideology, that is, Confucianism, which originated in the era of the Yuan Dynasty and incorporated the schools of Taoism and Buddhism. Under the atmosphere of "exclusivity" advocated by the ruling group in the Han Dynasty, Confucian culture was subjected to scripturalization and officialization, and "scripture" became the supreme school of learning, which had regulated the sights, sounds, words, and movements of all the people for 2,000 years. In the actual operation of the ruling group, Confucianism and law were adopted, and the king and the hegemony were used, which also became the general strategy of authoritarian centralized rule in the future; the philosophy of complementary Confucianism and Taoism was popular among the scholars, and the lower class was supplemented by various folk religions that were practiced.

3. The basic pattern of centralized government, change of imperial power, and dynastic cycle was formed and fixed. This pattern had a great impact on the subsequent two thousand years of dynastic change and cultural inheritance. In this pattern, within a dynasty, emperors were transferred hereditarily according to a strict patriarchal system; however, when a dynasty became corrupt and untenable, a strong and powerful person took advantage of the situation to replace it, resulting in a situation of "rotating emperors", in which "the king and his vassals would rather have the same seed". The situation of "the emperor taking turns to be the emperor" occurred. The dynastic changes caused by the peasant wars or the seizure of power by the powerful were repeated over and over again. Precisely because the hereditary succession of emperors was not absolutely reliable, the rulers attached more importance to the deification and sanctification of kingship, and the theory of the exclusive office of the descendants became more and more intense. It is worth noting that the change of dynasties did not cause cultural isolation, although the succeeding dynasties "change the orthodoxy, easy to dress", but always consciously identify with the previous generation and realize the cultural relay, the Qin-Han period, the two Han period is so, and the subsequent generations are not so.

During the Qin and Han dynasties, Chinese culture moved from pluralism to unity, and the farming civilization of the central plains gradually gained strong control over the surrounding nomadic civilizations in the midst of their conflicts and interactions. Qin-Han culture is comparable to the culture of the Peacock Dynasty in South Asia and the Roman culture in Europe, and has become the three major imperial cultures that stand side by side in Asia and Europe. The Qin-Han period can be regarded as a great completion and integration after the prehistoric culture of China and the Yuan-Dian era, and can also be regarded as an independent stage of the later imperial culture and even the laying down of the pattern of the local culture of China, which has become a self-contained cycle of more than 400 years, with a beginning and an end.

Fourth, the integration period: Wei Jin and North and South Dynasties to the middle of the Tang Dynasty

(a) the basic characteristics: Hu and Han cultures, Sino-Indian culture fusion

In this stage, the Chinese culture began to a wide range of East Asia, West Asia, South Asia, the culture of integration, embarked on the road of the "China of Asia". During this period, in conjunction with the manor economy and aristocratic politics, theology pervaded the spiritual realm, and Confucianism, Taoism, Xuanxuan, and Buddhism each excelled in their own way, influencing the ideology of all cultural categories.

(2) The main situation

1. The second turn of Chinese culture. Since the Wei and Jin dynasties, China's economy, politics, military, and culture have changed, showing a different era from the Qin and Han dynasties. The centralized bureaucratic politics of grand unification collapsed, and the gatekeeper system and aristocratic politics became a major feature in the following centuries. The cutthroat nature of the manor economy and aristocratic politics led to a weakening of the court's intervention in the upper and lower cultures. Culture shifted from the social to the personal, from the external to the internal, and the search for the meaning of personal life and the nature of the heart left ample room for the upsurge of metaphysics and Buddhism in the following centuries. The decline of scripture and nominalism was a major sign of the cultural turnaround since the Wei and Jin dynasties. The main trend of culture from the Wei and Jin dynasties to the middle of the Tang Dynasty was "not Tangwu but Zhoukong", "letting nature take its place over and above what is taught in the famous religions", and "belittling Tangyu but laughing at Dayu". Confucianism was in a difficult situation, and although the subsequent development of the school and the famous school were once emphasized, what eventually took its place was "the wind of metaphysics alone", and the flourishing of Buddhism. The development of metaphysics can be regarded as a major liberation since the two Han ideological confinement, is the return of individualism; Confucianism "exclusive" situation was broken, Confucianism, Xuan, Shi, Tao multiculturalism, ****existence **** integration, the formation of pre-Qin Zhusi hundred schools of thought after the great prosperity of thought and academia for a period of time.

2. The conflict and integration between farming and nomadic cultures is a major theme of culture during these six hundred years. Unlike the Qin and Han dynasties, the assimilation of Chinese farming culture weakened during this period, and the oppression of the nomadic peoples in the north once led to the "five hu chaotic China", the north-south partition of the situation; but the nomadic culture undoubtedly brought to the Chinese culture of the reinvigorated and strengthened the role of the Sui and Tang dynasties after the Qin and Han dynasties to become the peak of the culture of the empire, we can't help but say that it is due to the Full of masculine spirit of the northern peoples of the "Hu Qi" of the inculcation, material so, spirit is also so.

3. The interaction between the Buddhist culture from the South Asian subcontinent and the local Chinese culture is another theme of these six hundred years. At the beginning of the introduction of Buddhism, it was once in conflict with Confucianism, Taoism and other cultural systems, but finally compromised and integrated with Chinese ethical norms, practical rationality, worship patterns, political needs and so on; through the process of Buddha's exclusion, Buddha's elimination, Buddha's sycophancy, Buddha's assistance, Buddhism gradually realized the localization of China, and profoundly affected all aspects of Chinese culture. Especially in the Sui and Tang dynasties, Buddhist sects were established, and the sound of Zen was dazzling, becoming the strange peaks and mountains in the history of Chinese culture. If the history of Chinese scholarship is divided into seven sections according to the common saying (pre-Qin Ziqi, two Han scriptures, Wei and Jin metaphysics, Sui and Tang Buddhism, Song and Ming ethics, Qing dynasty Parkism, and modern Neo-Scholasticism), then three of them (Wei and Jin metaphysics, Sui and Tang Buddhism, and Song and Ming ethics) are directly due to the influence of Buddhism in the formation of the scholarly momentum, and two of them (Wei and Jin metaphysics, and Sui and Tang Buddhism) in this period, and then Song and Ming ethics are also latent in this. in this period, and later the Song and Ming philosophies also lurked.

4. The center of Chinese culture began to shift from east to south. This process began on a large scale with the southern crossing of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, to the Tang Dynasty, after the Anshi Rebellion, the economic center of China has been basically moved to the south, the so-called "power out of the world and the south of Jiangnan in the Shixi", but the cultural center of the south has not yet been finally realized, the six hundred years of the process of the south is just the process of the transition and the adjustment period.

Fifth, the period of strengthening: the middle of the Tang Dynasty to the middle of the Ming Dynasty

(a) the basic features: the near ancient culture stereotypes

China in the 9th century AD, following the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States period and the Han and Wei dynasties, another social change and cultural transformation, it also caused the East Asian cultural circle of North Korea, Japan and other cultures have also been transformed. There are many Japanese scholars and European and American scholars, the turnaround is regarded as the Middle Ages (or "Middle Ages") to the "modern world" transition. Chinese scholar Chen Yankee believes that "the history of the Tang dynasty can be divided into two periods, the end of the old situation of the North and South Dynasties in the early part of the inheritance, and the opening of the new situation in the late part of the Zhao and Song dynasties, on the political and socio-economic aspects of the same, and on the cultural and academic aspects of the same." The turnaround in the first and second half of the Tang dynasty standardized the general framework of the second half of China's cultural history. Tang and Song dynasties, Chinese culture in its own development, on the whole, has shown out of the ancient culture of the old rut of all kinds of movement, rhyme with some of the cultural factors of the modern world, can be called the period of ancient culture.

(2) The main situation

1. The landowner-peasant economy and civil politics combined with each other. Since the middle of the Tang Dynasty, the lord of the manor economy bankruptcy, landlord - peasant economy stereotypes; tax system has also undergone a fundamental change, the two tax law instead of the rent system for the beginning, and later the Song and Ming tax reforms, more and more clearly to the court on the direct economic relationship between the common people to determine. Politics is also the same, after the implementation of the imperial examination system. After the introduction of the imperial examination system, the aristocracy faded out of politics, management directly from the landlords and farmers in the examination and selection, with a certain degree of openness and mobility. This kind of landlord - peasant economy and the characteristics of the civil service politics, and the feudal era of Western Europe, Japan is very different.

The Formation of Civilian Politics

2. The Rise of Market Culture. Since the Tang and Song dynasties, the physical economy declined, and money (including paper money) circulated in large quantities; cities evolved from purely political centers and military fortresses into economic and cultural distribution centers (a change in function that some scholars refer to as the "urban revolution"). With the prosperity of industry and commerce, the rise of the civic class, the city culture tends to be active, reflecting the life of the citizens and their interests in the novels and operas, in both form and content, create a new style. If the Han Fu, the Six Dynasties of parallelism, Tang poetry, Song lyrics, Yuanqu, Ming and Qing novels constitute the mainstream of Chinese literature, then after the Middle Tang Dynasty, its common vein (such as opera, novels, etc.) will be gradually revealed by the potential.

3. Confucianism revival. Conceived in the middle of the Tang Dynasty, in the Song and Ming Dynasty to expand the science, in a certain sense, is the return of Confucian humanistic rationality, especially Yangming Xinxue has the connotation of moral individualism; the spirit of skepticism of the Song Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, the spirit of the empirical evidence of the Park School, but also has touched the underpinnings of the empirical sciences; in addition, the literati, bureaucrats, landowners or merchants into a single entity to form the so-called Shidaiwu class, their aesthetic tastes, personality ideals, Their aesthetic tastes, personality ideals, and moral concepts dominated the value norms of the whole society, and still have an impact on the spiritual life thereafter and even today.

4. The temperament of the national culture shifted from the strong and powerful outward expansion of the Han and Tang dynasties to the refined and inward convergence of the Song and Ming dynasties. After the Tang Dynasty, under the increasingly strengthened centralized monarchical pattern, the bureaucratic politics to implement the separation of civil and military, the right cultural and military policy, although the prevention of military rule and usurpation of power, but led to the disadvantage of national defense, but also make the temperament of the national culture and the national character change. Meanwhile, China's neighboring ethnic groups were on the rise, moving towards a path of rivalry with the native Chinese culture. Although they eventually inherited and passed on the agrarian culture of the Central Plains, the destruction caused by the repeated military conquests of the latter peoples undoubtedly also hindered the possibility of a modern transformation of the original Chinese culture.

The cultural transition from the mid-Tang Dynasty onward determined the basic pattern and general direction of Chinese culture for a thousand years. Therefore, the insightful people pay more attention to the two Song culture, such as Yan Fu said, "the reason why China has become today's phenomenon, for the Song people's creation of the eighty-nine". As for the Western culture, "most of the characteristics of modern China, which the West has been exposed to in recent centuries, emerged at this time". In short, this phase constructed the cultural background of China before the intrusion of Western capitalism, and was the basis and starting point for the modern transformation of Chinese culture.

Sixth, the transition period: the end of the Ming Dynasty to the present

(a) Basic features: the convergence of Chinese and Western cultures, Chinese culture towards modernization

In this stage, the industrial West, which had already completed the modern transformation in advance, opened up the closed door of China with gunboats and commodities. For the first time, Chinese culture encountered the invasion of "high-powered" culture, and the process of conflict, adaptation, and integration between Chinese culture and Western culture was extremely difficult and painful, but this process also gave Chinese culture a new opportunity for development, and Chinese culture entered a period of modern transformation at the institutional, material, behavioral, and spiritual levels.

(2) The main situation

1. Early Enlightenment. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the commodity economy became more active, and the so-called "bud of capitalism" appeared; in the conceptual level of consciousness, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Tang Zhen and a group of advanced people are not the king of the public, advocating the "people-oriented", the "people-oriented". "People-oriented", the first modern Enlightenment.

2. Western learning. During this time, the Western missionaries into the Middle Kingdom, opened the prelude to the East of Western learning, which is called the East after whether the Chinese native culture and foreign cultures after another big convergence. Manchurians moved into the Central Plains to establish the Qing Dynasty, the early stage did not interrupt the East and West, but after the Yongzheng largely so that the cultural exchanges between China and the West came to a standstill. It was not until after the Opium War that another round of Western learning began.

3. The rise of Park. In the first and middle of the Qing Dynasty, basically followed the cultural path of the Song and Ming Dynasties, only the empirical spirit of the Park School of Evidence has been the unprecedented development of the sacredness of the scriptures since the two Han Dynasty is "deconstructing" role.

4. Internal and external forces **** the same role in promoting the modern transformation of culture. The modern transformation since the late Qing Dynasty is the result of internal and external forces **** with the role of the Western influence and the inherent factors of Chinese culture and mutual agitation, interaction and product. The once-influential "impact-reflection" model fully recognizes the role of the import of modern Western culture in China's modern transformation, as well as the resistance of China's inherent traditions to modern transformation. However, it is not enough to recognize this aspect, but we should also see that, in the face of the national peril and the impact of modern Western culture, the spiritual traditions of Chinese culture, such as the sense of distress, the concept of change, the distinction between Chinese and foreigners, and the idea of the people's fundamentals, which have been embedded in Chinese culture since the Yuan dynasty, have gained a new life through modern interpretation, and have been transformed into the modern consciousness of salvation, the ideology of "change of law - self-strengthening" and the concept of "self-improvement". --Through modern interpretation, these spiritual traditions have gained a new life, transforming into modern consciousness of salvation, "change of law", "self-improvement", revolutionary concepts, and modern nationalism and democratism, which contributed to the modernization of Chinese culture; as for the original modern cultural factors that have been hidden since the Song and Ming dynasties, they have been included in the system of motives for the modern transformation of Chinese culture. If this is underestimated, it will lead to a one-sided understanding of the modernization process in China over the past hundred years.

5. Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang became the frontiers of the collision between Chinese and Western cultures. Because modern Western culture landed on the southeast coast, the two provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu and Zhejiang became the frontiers of the collision of Chinese and Western cultures for more than a century. Fujian and Guangdong, as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which had been cultural centers since the Song and Ming dynasties, were not only centers of economic gravity but also centers of new cultures at this stage, and their cultural energies were constantly radiating and advancing into the interior. This kind of from south to north, from east to west of the Wenhu ah spread road, and the two Song dynasty before from west to east, from north to south south of the cultural dissemination of the road just into the opposite trend. And the two lakes region has become the ancient and modern, in and out of the West meet each other in the key area, so the intersection of the wind and clouds, the people asked to gather. All these constitute China's modern cultural landscape rich in characteristics.

6. Cultural change is dramatic and unprecedented. cultural change since the 20th century, whether in depth, breadth, or in the intensity of the degree of change, than the first two transitions in Chinese cultural history (Spring and Autumn and Warring States and the Tang and Song dynasties) have been more than ever. The break between the old and the new in the May Fourth New Culture Movement can be seen as an end to the Enlightenment thinking that had been going on since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and as a clarification of the Chinese tradition of Wenhu ah. Since then, China has gone through the process of learning, choosing and abandoning European, American and Soviet-Russian models. Especially since the end of the 1970s, in the era of world informatization and global integration, China has been undergoing changes of an unprecedented scale and depth, thus bringing to a climax the cultural transformation that has been underway for more than a hundred years since the middle of the Qing Dynasty, which has been characterized by ups and downs. The radical change and complexity of this transformation is rare in ancient and modern times, and it includes three dimensions: firstly, the transformation from an agricultural civilization to an industrial civilization (this process has already begun since the middle of the 19th century, and is now gaining acceleration), which is the basic content of the social transformation in contemporary China; secondly, the transformation from a planned economy under the control of the state to a socialist market economy, which is a transformation of the economic system and the above-mentioned changes of the economic form at the same time, which is exactly the transformation of the modern Chinese society. The transformation from a state-controlled planned economy to a socialist market economy, where the change in the economic system goes hand in hand with the above-mentioned changes in economic patterns, is precisely where the "Chinese characteristics" of the modern transformation lie; third, the transformation from an industrial civilization to a post-industrial civilization, where all the problems induced by this transformation in developed countries that have already achieved industrialization are also being presented in front of contemporary China, which is still in the process of modernization, in the context of globalization, such as the crisis of faith, ecological crisis, energy depletion, clash of civilizations, and so on. The deepening modern transformation of the present time is unprecedented in terms of its stirring up of traditional culture, its challenges, and the opportunities it offers for development, and the history of Chinese culture is unveiling a spectacular new scenario.

Thinking questions:

1. Under what cultural background did the "Hundred Schools of Thought" come into being?

2. How to evaluate the status of Qin and Han culture in the history of Chinese culture?

3. What were the reasons for the diversification of Sui and Tang cultures?

4. How to understand the conflict and integration between agrarian and nomadic cultures?

5. What were the characteristics of the second great convergence of Chinese and foreign cultures and its impact on Chinese culture?