Ancient Chinese martial arts generals' portraits, why are they all with big tummies, not at all like people who are always on the warpath?

For powerful people, it is often necessary to paint the realm of their richness and wealth, and then paint a slightly larger belly, "big belly and round waist". This is determined by the painting style of Chinese painting. Chinese painting focuses on writing, the pursuit of resemblance, rather than the pursuit of resemblance; not the pursuit of realism, but the pursuit of symbolism . Chinese painting figures, the main purpose is to show the posture and characteristics of the characters, but not focus on the size and proportion of the parts of the characters. In Chinese paintings, men often have distant looks and asymmetrical body and head proportions. Women are usually depicted with moths, eyebrows, lips, shoulders and waists If a real person looked like that, it would be really scary. This form of artistic expression is what characterizes the style of Chinese painting. This characteristic of Chinese painting is to deliberately exaggerate the shape of the characters to make the men look very majestic and the women look beautiful, so as to emphasize the character and features of the characters.

1. Ancient generals

The portraits of ancient generals that we see are of high-ranking generals, who did not need to fight against the enemy personally. In storytelling novels, we often see senior generals depicted on the battlefield by both sides that do not actually exist in a real war. When a senior general fights, he can only personally go to the front line to command, and usually does not fight with the enemy himself. In ancient China, where there were many famous generals, senior generals would be surrounded by many guards, nowadays known as the guard force, to prevent the senior generals from being killed by the enemy, which would cause the chain of command to malfunction. Administrators, in particular, were the ones who were protected.

2. Importance of generals

If all the leaders on the battlefield died, we know that the ancient soldiers were not well educated. Once they lost their command, they would be scattered in a group. They would fight for themselves, immediately lose the battle, and probably run away. As we know, living conditions in ancient times were relatively poor and many people were malnourished. But the chief's commander usually had good living conditions, so he was generally better nourished than his soldiers, and it was normal for him to be obese. And the battlefield conditions were tough, often suffering from hunger. Senior generals do not require you to be muscular, but to have good physical fitness and be able to adapt to tough battle conditions. Growing fat and having enough fat reserves is a good condition for your health.

3. Ancient aesthetics for men

In ancient China, there was never an aesthetic requirement for men's fitness and muscle development. It was not recognized that muscle was proportional to force, and it was even believed that a seemingly weak scholar might be an expert. These concepts of bodybuilding and muscularity came from the West. In ancient China, a general was described as more powerful, often using terms such as "bear-backed and bear-waisted". It emphasizes height, size and appearance. Describe a person's great strength. Instead of using muscle development as a criterion for strength.