What is traditional architecture?

In the long river of human history, the ancestors of the Chinese nation created splendid culture with labor and wisdom. China culture has a long and continuous history, which has been affecting today's life. Inheriting and carrying forward China's traditional culture is an objective requirement to unite the strength of the Chinese nation and a realistic need to build Socialism with Chinese characteristics's material and spiritual civilization. It is an unshirkable and glorious task for China scholars to comprehensively and systematically excavate, sort out and introduce China children's communication culture. In view of this, dozens of scholars who study traditional culture have compiled this "Grand View of China Traditional Culture" and dedicated it to readers.

Culture is the way of human spiritual activities and practical activities and the sum of their material and spiritual achievements. Because of the complexity and diversity of people's life practice, culture has different contents, forms and levels accordingly. As one of the four ancient civilizations in the world, China was famous for its unique Yellow River culture as early as thousands of years ago. Since then, through the long-term creation and accumulation of Chinese people, Chinese culture has become richer and more profound, and its achievements and influence are rare in the world.

China's traditional culture has a distinct integrity, and various cultural forms are interrelated and influenced each other. Only on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of various forms of China culture can we have a deeper understanding of its overall characteristics and essence. In fact, grasping culture as a whole is one of the basic spirits of China traditional culture. Many outstanding figures in the history of China are generalists and have made important achievements in many fields. The "adult" admired and pursued by Confucius, a world-class cultural master, not only has noble moral sentiments, extensive knowledge and profound wisdom, but also has excellent written expression ability, political management experience and artistic, sports and military skills. Confucius himself is such a great man with all-round development and versatility. Confucius, as an outstanding educator, thinker, politician, historian and writer, put forward very subtle opinions on the artistic fields such as music, archery and other skills, as well as the principles of cooking and clothing. China's outstanding figures' all-round pursuit of culture inspired the author of this book to integrate different kinds of knowledge into one book.

The time range involved in this book is slightly different due to different categories, from primitive society to modern times in general. Faced with a sea of historical figures, a sea of ancient books and scattered cultural relics, this book does not adopt the writing method of Chronological Memorabilia of China Culture and the compiling form of cultural dictionaries classified by items. The simple piling up of a large number of characters, works, terms and events cannot reveal the essence of China traditional culture. In limited space, this book is dedicated to readers with systematic rather than fragmented knowledge. This book attempts to put the development clues of various categories of China traditional culture in the first place, and strive to achieve the unity of history and logic. At the same time, this book also tries to analyze the basic characteristics of each cultural category and explain their position in the whole traditional culture of China. What is finally presented to readers is not only a colorful historical picture scroll, but also the fusion and taste of all aspects of knowledge, including the overall summary and reflection of China traditional culture. I believe this way of writing can help readers acquire clear, definite and systematic knowledge.

Strong times is another major feature of China's traditional culture. The essence of culture is not an established thing, but a process of change. This book reveals the fact that traditional culture has been developing in the unity of opposites of "endless" inheritance and variation described in Zhouyi. The old form is constantly being replaced by the new form, but the new form contains the enduring national spirit. For example, Beijing Opera, regarded as a national quintessence, is actually a very "young" art, which really matured only a hundred years ago. Since the Song Dynasty, the art forms that dominated the stage of China's traditional operas have experienced great prosperity for many times. However, this change is not an independent creation divorced from history, but on the basis of absorbing the legacy of the past, carrying forward the past and making innovations. This is also of great significance to study the traditional culture of China. Although many old forms have lost their vitality with the changes of history, they can continue to develop through transformation to meet the requirements of the new era. Therefore, while studying the historical development of various categories of traditional culture in China, this book also predicts the future development of this field as much as possible.

Another major feature of China's traditional culture is its outstanding regionality. China has a vast territory and abundant resources. Since the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, except for a few separatist periods, a unified multi-ethnic country has been maintained as a political institution for most of the time. Therefore, in the system of China's traditional culture, Chinese civilization originated in the Yellow River valley is the main body, and various minority cultures are the supplements, which bring out the best in each other. China's traditional market began to communicate with foreign cultures thousands of years ago. During the Han and Tang Dynasties, China culture was quite open. In many ways, the ancestors of the Chinese nation bravely and without hesitation absorbed foreign cultural factors and reformed them, constantly enriching the connotation of China culture. Ideologically, China accepted Buddhism from India, which is one of the biggest exchanges among the major civilization systems in the world. From an artistic point of view, China absorbed a lot of exotic music and dances along the Silk Road and made them China-like. "Huqin" is an important representative of China national musical instruments, but as the name implies, it was originally imported. From the aspects of diet, costumes and folk customs, the content of foreign culture absorbed by China is also amazing. At the same time, China also exported its own culture, such as papermaking, silk and porcelain handicrafts, which had a positive impact on world culture and made great contributions to human civilization. Many essences of China's traditional culture, such as Chinese medicine, Qigong and Wushu, are still valued by countries all over the world. The exchange and comparison between Chinese and foreign cultures is one of the basic topics of cultural research, which needs special research. Due to the limitation of content and space, this book only reveals that some cultural exchanges in China's traditional culture will be further expanded, and China culture with a long tradition will surely enter the future world cultural system with a brand-new attitude.