A hundred years of change in China - how have social mores changed? Urgent!

Social, historical, economic, political and other reasons for the change, but this is generally more pronounced in modern history ...

One, the early twentieth century, "historical hunger" left a void

Eighty years ago, Liang Qichao said this: "Today, the Chinese academy, has been trapped in the 'historical hunger' situation, we can not afford not to urgently try to relieve the situation. We cannot afford not to try to relieve it urgently. The truth of each part of history is not clear, then the whole truth will not be seen. And in order to find out the truth of each part, it is necessary to penetrate y into it by means of a division of labor, which is by no means within the power of the general historian, but must be shared by the specialists of each science." (1)

The phrase "historical starvation" was nothing less than a shocking statement in the Chinese academic world of the early twentieth century.

Chinese historiography is one of the earliest and most mature disciplines in traditional culture. The Homeric Hymns of ancient Greece and the Babylonian Poems of Genesis, which are all based on myths and legends passed down by word of mouth, are credible, but not wholly believable, while the Chinese historiography is based on actual written records. Written more than three thousand years ago, "Shangshu. Pan Geng Chapters", is the document of the Shang Dynasty emperor, with a reliable history of letters for the ancient civilizations of the world rare. The word "Shi" in the oracle bone inscriptions is the official in charge of the documents, which indicates that there have been historical transcribers since the beginning of the written word, writing down the people and events that existed conclusively, and the artifacts unearthed from the ground by the descendants can often confirm the original written records, which are seldom overthrown. The Chinese people with such a clear mind and a solid attitude to recognize their own history, in the historiography of the rationality of the early enlightenment, for other countries is difficult to reach.

However, maturity is not perfection. In ancient China, the historiography of the government and the system of historiographers made the content of the official histories mostly about the ruler's political achievements and orders, military and cultural accomplishments, rituals and ceremonies, astrological changes and calamities, production and economy, conquests and border affairs, and other national and royal events. The compiler of the history book is the highest ruler to implement the decree of the right-hand man, such a historian is actually the state's functional institutions, it does not rise and fall due to the change of dynasties, as long as there is the continuation of the national system, the historian set up along the unchanged, from generation to generation, the accumulation of documents and archives for thousands of years. But also because of this, the first key point of history is to make the government's administration of history, and the most thorough and exemplary statement of this intention was made by Sima Guang and his book Ziji Tongjian, in which he emphasized that the purpose of articulating history was to "poorly explore the traces of the rule of law and disorder, and to help the holy and wise learn from the past." This idea has in fact become the general outline of the official history books, which runs through the twenty-four histories. Therefore, Liang Qichao indignantly denounced it as "imperial genealogy" rather than national history. At the same time, he suggested that efforts should be made "to make the people realize that modern life is closely related to the life of the past and the life of the future." (2)

The assertion that the Twenty-four Histories is a genealogy of the emperors is not without its radicalism, but the demand that history be closely related to the life of the nation is a very good point, and yet this is the weakest point in Chinese historiography. People want to understand the history of the system of rules and regulations, socio-economic evolution, the rise and fall of the country, can be found in the literature in the full of information, to know the feelings of the people at that time, the pattern of life and behavior, in the history of the see Liao Liao. The notes and novels which are regarded as wild history and barnyard products have preserved a large amount of social and cultural information for the future generations, but due to the bias of the orthodox historiography and the co-existence of good and bad of such writings, which are disordered, they have not been systematically sorted out and fully utilized so far. How did those industrial and commercial people, farmers and village women, peddlers, and servants live and work on the Chinese land to create a splendid civilization? And from where a glimpse of their life style, feel their joys and sorrows? The absence of various types of specialized history left a huge gap. Liang Qichao is to explore the whole truth in history, issued a "history hunger" call.

History is the people and events that occurred in the past, which has disappeared, never to return to the human condition, due to the limitations of the times and the bias of the history of the ancients left behind the historical data far from reflecting the social holography and the state of affairs of the whole picture, the study of history is to fully explore and utilize the information already available, to restore its original appearance, and to explore the ins and outs and the development of the law. Liang Qichao called for the establishment of specialized histories of various disciplines, precisely for the purpose of searching for the truth of history from all sides and searching up and down.

After the founding of the country, a huge gap is being filled from the archaeological excavations, Chu culture, Liangzhu culture field archaeological achievements, indicating that the source of Chinese civilization is not limited to the Yellow River basin, the Yangtze River basin is also an important birthplace, which is an indisputable fact. Qilu, Ba Shu, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Northwest and other regions of the culture of new discoveries, but also is changing the previous history books of stereotypes. Therefore, the academic predecessors have been proposed to rewrite Chinese history (3), recognized by many colleagues.

What causes the rewriting of history is not only the new discovery of cultural relics, but also the change of certain ideological concepts and the downward shift of perspectives that can cause the re-examination of all or part of history. The Marxist-guided historiography has changed the old historiography, which elaborated history from the standpoint of the feudal rulers, restored the historical status of the working people, and reversed the upside-down history, which is a great change in the historical writings, and the publication of various specialized histories has enriched the "historical hunger". However, due to the interference of the extreme leftist ideology and the absolutization of class struggle, a colorful history has become a history of struggle between people. When you open the history books, you can only see the changing winds and clouds, the change of system, the change of regime, what kind of way the people live and live, what are their clothes, food, housing, transportation, wedding, funeral, entertainment, socializing and socializing, and what are their pursuits and fashions? What do they think about big events and big personalities? Many close to the people's lives and social culture of the subject, but also reduced to insignificant or out of sight, often vague or incoherent. In this kind of historical writings, shuttle to and fro of the historical passers-by, no life, no feelings and desires, no personality, one size fits all, like a mold carved out of the template, at best, is a political form or the personification of the laws of the economy. Named and surnamed historical figures are still so, no name and no name of the people's groups, and where their traces, this is the biggest gap in historiography. Some of the delay in recording the ancients is not well known, and may leave forever unanswered questions. The Book of Rites. Qu Li" a "common people for no reason not to eat Jane", from ancient to modern, read through the history and wild history can not figure out the pre-Qin common people in the end can not have meat to eat? Although the matter of etiquette and the status of the common people, that also love can not help, only not very good. Ancient legacy of the material is incomplete, the descendants can not be demanding. In the newspaper, publishing media business has been quite developed in modern times, newspapers and magazines, publishing books, there are quite a large part of the content has been oriented to the emerging civil society, this kind of record can not be said to be not much, but how many modern history of the writings to reflect their ecology and willingness? So it is not that this is unknowable and unknowable, but that no such search, discovery and reflection has taken place, and a change in perception is essential.

The classical writers had many insights to say about social life. Marx pointed out:

"All the real progress in modern historical writing has been made when the historian has penetrated from the outward appearance of political forms to the depths of social life." (4) Marx gave such a high evaluation of the value of historical writings that penetrate y into social life because he consistently emphasized that changes in the mode of production, in the relations of production, are in the final analysis manifested in changes in the mode of life, and changes in the mode of life in turn drive changes in social relations. Therefore, changes in the way of life are the ultimate goal of the development of the productive forces and the irreplaceable material force that drives changes in social relations. (5) Li Dazhao puts it well: "History as such is the itinerary of human life, the continuity of human life, the transmission of human life, something alive, something living, something progressive, something developing, something changing in circumference." (6)

According to Marxist thought, historiography not only cannot downplay the study of social life, but is also a manifestation of the deepening of historical writings. But after the founding of the country, no history of social life was published until the late 1980s, a delay of exactly 40 years. The publication of these works is a welcome sign that historical writings have come closer to the people, and that the value of history lies in enabling human beings to understand their own past, and to realize that modern society and the character of the nation are closely related to the past and the future.

Social life is a social as well as a cultural phenomenon. Humans come to this world, the first thing to eat, wear and use, this is the basic way of survival of the nation, but also the basic starting point of the materialist concept of history. It is only in the aspect of what to eat, what to wear, what to use, how to eat, how to wear, how to use to show all kinds of differences, to develop their own wisdom, so as to create a unique cultural forms and national traditions. Recovering the original appearance of the life of the predecessors is the basic requirement of the history of social life, but the study of social life cannot stop at this step. Social and cultural history requires that life be examined in the context of certain social and cultural phenomena, and that the development of national cultural psychology and social consciousness be recognized through changes in lifestyles.

Wearing shoes and hats, for example, is a purely personal act of life, but it has caused a great uproar in modern China, and has become the precursor to the enlightenment of a generation of forefathers and the goblet of the internationalization of lifestyles.

After the Opium War, people felt that the weakness of the country is due to the people's wisdom is not open, to start the people's wisdom, we must first get rid of the bad habits of the people's confinement, especially opium smoking, foot-binding has become the destruction of the people's body, insulting to the country's character of the two major public nuisances. The advanced intellectuals are all verbally attacked this.

The opposition to women's foot-binding and men's pigtails inevitably led to the reform of footwear and clothing. As early as during the Hundred Days' Reform, Kang Youwei wrote a petition "please prohibit women's foot-binding folding" and "please break the hair and easy to dress to change the folding", that women's foot-binding, can not work; braided hair hanging, not conducive to the production of machines; wide clothes, long train and elegant step, not easy to compete in the era of the world, and request to release the foot, break the hair, easy to dress in order to "the same with the European and American customs," which will change the dress as a study of Western civilization. This is to change clothes and crown as an important content of learning Western civilization, which has the significance of opening up the people's wisdom. There were two major groups of people, those who cut their pigtails and those who kept their pigtails, from top to bottom. The main stay certainly have the upper class of the stubborn faction, and the lower class of the people, especially in the closed rural areas of the anti-cutting force is greater, although the braid is not Han Chinese attire, but has been passed for hundreds of years, by the long-term accumulation of life formed by the psychological habits have been accumulated and difficult to come back. Some for the loss of pigtails crying, cursing the mother, calling mother of all kinds, some spontaneously organized to protect the braid will protest, and even a strike. The main cut more this action as a call to support the revolution, to the eve of the Xinhai Revolution to form a climax, people rejoice in the choice of auspicious days, worship ancestors, firecrackers, cut pigtails. In some places, "braid" has also become a curse word, to say a "you really braid! "as being scolded" is not something ". The attitude towards the braid, the polar opposites of right and wrong and the rapid transformation of honor and disgrace, reflects the ups and downs of social customs in the revolutionary tide with great sensitivity.

Breaking hair and changing clothes is a custom improvement under the guidance of anti-feudal ideology, unlike the change of clothes in the past generations, the change of clothes and crowns in the history of the change of the form of the system, the unchanged is the ethical and hierarchical, the Republic of China at the beginning of the promulgation of the "uniform system" stipulates that the officials, regardless of the level of the Western-style big fashion and swallow-tailed clothes for the dress, is the complete rejection of the feudal dress hierarchy. Sun Yat-sen also put forward the idea of "suitable for hygiene, convenient for movement, suitable for economy, and strong for appearance." (7) as the guiding ideology of improved dress, this concept of clothing in China with modern civilization, the implementation of the concept of clothing, so that everyone can not be separated from the body of the clothing, completely free from the norms of feudal ethics, to the practical, economic, health, beautiful direction of development, which is an important turning point in the history of clothing.

In the clothing changes, wearing foreign clothes is a major fashion, which can not be simply attributed to the tendency to worship foreigners. The establishment of democracy has inspired people to the Western democratic society, people are fascinated by the idea of freedom and equality, the idea of natural human rights, that the way of life established by this idea represents the direction of society, the dress is a symbol of civilization, by the people's favorite. The result of social practice is that the popularity of foreign clothes in China did not replace Chinese clothes, but promoted the improvement of Chinese clothes. The emergence of Zhongshan clothes is the product of the combination of East and West. It is modeled after the Western-style clothes, changing the large lapel collar to a stand-up collar, four patch pockets, five buttons, and removing the belt. Women's clothing changed from the wide straight type of full dress, in accordance with the Western human body curves to be cut, evolved into today's cheongsam. This is along the aesthetic and values of Western-style clothing, combined with some of the traditional Chinese form and create a new style of clothing, can be called the most successful work of the Western body in the use. What to wear, what not to wear is personal behavior, some advanced thinkers are the freedom of personal arrangement of life as an inseparable part of individual freedom, is sacrosanct personal power. The call for personalized emancipation and the development of commodity economy stimulate people's desire to live in the dress code to pursue new and different, reasonable, unreasonable waves of rapid tide. Suits, robes and coats, bare chests and backs, long leaning and short hitting, old and new, soil and foreign, strange and strange, the real beginning of the era of free wear of clothing. In the drastic social changes, the change of clothing has been the first of the trend, sensitive to the direction of the performance of the cultural climate.

From the point of view of social, ideological and cultural changes, the change of clothing, then clothing has become a window to examine the social and cultural changes. Therefore, an excellent history of social life must be a social and cultural history; an excellent social and cultural history must make specific and detailed cultural and social interpretation of social life. This is a description and analysis of the same subject from different directions, and it is also the connection and difference between the history of social culture and the history of social life.

The content of social and cultural history is not limited to social life, but popular culture and social customs are the main subjects of study, which have become clearer and clearer after the rise of popular culture in the 1990s.

The most striking phenomenon in Chinese academia in the 1980s was the persistent cultural craze, which started from cultural reflection and included a series of major cultural topics such as cultural history, cultural theory, cultural construction and outlook, etc. The development of which had already transcended the traditional field of literature and history and penetrated into various disciplines, and became a part of the trend of social change. It has developed beyond the traditional field of literature and history into various disciplines, and has become a part of social change. Undoubtedly, the needs of the times were the decisive factor in the rise of cultural history. To be more precise, the cultural reflection in the early 1980s began with a deep introspection of the Ten Years' Catastrophe and the "left-leaning" mistakes since the founding of the country. In the mid-1980s, with the full implementation of economic reforms, the issue of conceptual change was emphasized, and cultural discussions were integrated with the consciousness of social reforms, promoting the revival of social history. Exploring the formation, development and transformation of national cultural psychology from the field of social history, touching the deep structure of conceptual change, is also a trend of further deepening cultural history. From the introspection of traditional culture, the comparison of Chinese and Western cultures, and the dissection of national cultural psychology, people have explored factors conducive to modernization, discarded old concepts, and absorbed new ideas, in order to establish cultural concepts and mentality compatible with the socialist commodity economy throughout the cultural fever. The strong ideology and strong utilitarianism made the cultural fever of the 1980s more meaningful in terms of ideological liberation than in terms of academic significance.

The great development of the socialist commodity economy and the orientation of market economy in the 1990s made people's social psychology transformed from caring about ideology to paying attention to economic life, and the cultural fever cooled down and the cultural people were marginalized. In fact, this cooling is only from the fading of political color and the diversification of cultural perspectives. Especially the rise of popular culture, the kind of modern media technology, for mass consumption and the manufacture of cultural products, a change in the traditional didactic face, towards commercialization and entertainment, the elite culture to form a small impact. Originally, in any era, there are big and small traditions, elegant and popular culture and main subculture, and popular culture is small tradition and popular culture, which does not begin in modern times. However, popular culture really shows its important social value and impresses people, but it is the product of modern industrial civilization, which has a process of adaptation and adjustment in Chinese academia. This is because, for a long time, the study of the history of civilization over the past several thousand years has been divided into the respective fields of spiritual culture and material culture, and lacks a comprehensive study of the mutual influence, constraints, and penetration of the two. Spiritual culture, in turn, takes the thoughts of a few elites as the object of study, especially the thoughts of thinkers, which are the spiritual resources that dominate the great traditions, and a history of culture is actually a history of intellectual and cultural academic sources and flows. A cultural history is actually a history of intellectual and cultural scholastic sources and flows. The ideas of thinkers are certainly the essence of the culture of a generation, but they are often higher than the people, and may not be understood by the people, and may not even be passed on to the later generations, which is not uncommon in the history of culture. Since ancient times, the division between elegant and secular culture has made the cultural people have the tendency to look down on the secular culture with pride. The literati and elegant people advocate the great elegance to get rid of vulgarity and have a certain degree of detachment from the secular life, and the learned people also tend to look at the secular culture with the attitude of the great elegance to vulgarity and the mentality of indoctrination of the mortals from a lofty position. The wise words and refined propositions of the thinkers contain profound cultural connotations, but they are the fruit of abstract thinking after discarding a large number of living and breathing concrete phenomena. It is often said that the theory is gray, life is evergreen, this gray means that the highly condensed theoretical form has a rather simple program, only by the theoretical interpretation and expression, it is difficult to fully reflect the rich and colorful actual life, the general public can only look up, unattainable. The gap between large and small traditions, and the distance between upper and lower cultures, is a usual and unavoidable phenomenon in the cultural structure dominated by elite culture. Socialist culture, which is oriented towards the working people, has greatly narrowed the gap between the upper and lower cultures. However, whether it is the feudalist tradition or traditional socialism, the guiding ideology, though different in its fundamental nature, and the monolithic structure with elite culture as the mainstream, have not changed much, which is about the basic pattern of pre-modern social culture.

The socialist market economy and the development of modern science and technology have promoted the development of a new generation of cultural markets, and the rise of popular culture in the 1990s has changed the traditional stereotypes of elegant and popular culture with an unstoppable momentum. The new culture industry, which produces and disseminates information and high technology, is flooding the market with a large number of films and television, audio, multimedia and electronic reading materials. At the same time, the popularization of academic achievements has become a trend, turning professional knowledge for the enjoyment of a few into reading materials for the appreciation of the general public. Cultural consumption is no longer the privilege of the elite, but also the needs of the common people. Modern industry and urban civilization have created a vast consumer class of citizens, whose choices determine the orientation of the cultural market. In the face of this change, modern scholars have a high evaluation. Some say: "The popular culture that rose in the nineties has been completely different from the previous kind of marketplace culture or folk culture, but is a kind of popular culture directly related to urban life. .... Whether we are willing to accept it or not, as long as the process of modernization is not reversed, I am afraid that the mainstream position of popular culture will be difficult to shake for quite a period of time." (8) Some think: "Popular culture reflects the spiritual demands of the common masses, represents the interests of the majority, and is the main constituent of realistic Chinese culture." (9) Some emphasize: "The development of popular culture and popular culture reflects, within certain limits, the cultural needs and cultural rights of the people. It is in the field of culture, the formation of diversified and multi-level situation, thus providing the people with the conditions of choice" (10)

Popular culture from the small traditions, subculture jumped to the main composition of Chinese culture, history has lost the sacred halo, from the high cabinet of the world, down to the desk of the common people, and even into the leisure reading after tea and dinner. Historical researchers from the saints on behalf of the words, "emperor teacher", reduced to a pen of the people. This is a challenge to specialize in the study of the rise and fall of dynasties, the laws of human social development, the kind of big ambitions, big events, big deeds of the tradition of history. Historical writings from the state of the country to the study of the world to know the transformation of people, not only to open up the historical wilderness that no one has ever been involved in, but also in the direction of changing the subject of the study. The clothes and food of the people, marriage and funeral, leisure and entertainment, have been put into the hall of elegance, and some of them have even become the key projects of the National Social Science Foundation. From the edge of the cultural history and social history of the intersection of social and cultural history and the emergence of social and cultural history, because the perspective down to the people, open up new areas, to the construction of historiography and bring new opportunities for development.

Cultural history and social history were the wings of the new historiography in modern times, but both of them were interrupted after the founding of the PRC, which led to the disorder in the construction of historiography. Their destinies are similar to each other, and their prosperity and decline are connected, which is the same trend of the development of these two disciplines***. This is mainly manifested in the fact that the prosperity of social history is often preceded by cultural controversy, and the depth of cultural history has to be developed from within the field of social history. The introduction of sociology at the beginning of the twentieth century and the opening up of the study of social history were due to the controversy between the middle school and the western school, between the new school and the old school at the end of the nineteenth century; the prosperity of social history in the thirties originated from the cultural polemics of the twenties, and the revitalization of social history in the later part of the eighties directly benefited from the impetus of the cultural craze. The historical process of China's modernization has repeatedly demonstrated that reflection on the real society cannot be separated from introspection on traditional culture, and that the transformation of China's society will inevitably begin with cultural change. It is a common phenomenon that social and cultural issues are intertwined, overlapped and accompanied by each other. (11)

However, cultural history and social history are independent disciplines that are adjacent to and intersect with each other, but do not belong to each other. The study of cultural history covers all levels of material, spiritual, and institutional aspects, and its outreach can be extended to all departments of philosophy, economics, literature, and history, but it is not an encyclopedia, and it centers on exploring the formation, development, and evolution of traditional cultural traits from all sides. Therefore, it is only natural to emphasize the upper culture and elite culture in order to grasp the pulse of cultural development. As a result of ignoring the lower culture, the mutual influence and constraints of elite and popular culture, as well as the process of socialization of elite culture become a major omission. This kind of cultural history can only be a specialized history of uplifted culture, not the whole history of Chinese culture. Social history takes the development of social life, social structure and social problems as its object of study, and restores disappeared social forms through specific and detailed research, pragmatism, truth-seeking, and descriptive portraits are the basic requirements. What is upward needs to be downward, examining Chinese culture from the field of social history; what is descriptive needs to be upward, interpreting the content of social history from the perspective of intellectual and cultural history. This borderland of upward and downward movement is a fertile ground for the growth of new disciplines. The dominance of popular culture over cultural structures calls for the creation of its own theories and academic systems, despite the fact that cultural sociology, social and cultural history, and the historiography of public **** have already been accomplished overseas. However, Chinese social and cultural history will open up new horizons with its own characteristics and traditions that are different from those of other countries.

This is another rich mine to be mined in China. This is not only because of the vast history books and countless cultural relics and sites, providing inexhaustible historical materials, but also because the Chinese people have a strong sense of history, to see the problem focus on tracing the roots of the story of the past, so that people attach importance to the absorption of historical experience, leaving a large number of wild history, notes. These materials outside the official history are the richest and most vivid, and need to be organized and explored. The modern press, which is a gathering of popular culture, has accumulated a staggering amount of information for more than a hundred years, and there is a great contrast between the weak research and the rich resources. Once this treasure trove is opened, it will open people's eyes, and may even cause part of history to be rewritten. Therefore, Chinese social and cultural history is the position with the most potential for development.

Three: Secular Rationality, Socialization of Elite Culture

When we designed the topic, we looked downward, focusing on the small traditions, but how the big traditions, as the elites' culture, influenced and constrained the development of the small traditions, is a very important issue in understanding the interaction between the upper and lower cultures. This is a very important question in understanding the interaction between the upper and lower classes of culture. It is our way of thinking to reveal the process and characteristics of the socialization of the elite culture along the line of cultural traditions.

The major tradition of ancient Chinese society was expressed in the ideology of ritual and the social system, which was the earliest and most complete social norms, and was also used by the ancients to cultivate themselves, manage their families, and govern the country. Small traditions were expressed as "common" in ancient times, and the so-called "common" was "practice". Zheng Xuan, in his commentary on the Rites of Zhou, said, "What is born of the land is also learned." This is the spontaneous formation of customs and habits from life experience, with localization and diversity. There is a life before there is a life to regulate the rites, so the custom is preceded by the rites, the rites are based on the custom. Once a custom is formed into a rite and rises into a system of rules and regulations, it has the function of standardization, requiring the custom to be indoctrinated and integrated. From the book of "Zhou Li" emphasizes the "rites and customs, in order to control the people". To ritualize the common that is, for the ritual of the common, which is the ruling strategy to control the people, but also to the people's life of the adjustment. Ritual as a conceptual form, with the dominant advantage of penetrating into the secular life, so that the dispersed small traditions of the same large traditions to get the maximum range of identity. Ancient people said: "The rites of the world, can not be one day without the person, the rites of the line is a moral one. Morality is one, then the customs are the same." (14) The values of elite culture penetrate into secular life, thus rationalizing secular life, which is secular rationality. Elite culture is pushed to the lower class people through the process of ritualizing secularism, so it is again the result of the socialization of elite culture.

Secular rationality has caused the remarkable feature of Chinese society and culture that ethical concepts and cultural awareness have penetrated into all fields of daily life, which is most frankly put forward by the Ming and Qing rationalists as the ideological proposition of "the people's daily life is the way", which requires people to observe daily life by the ethical way; and to experience the humanistic matters from the body of daily life, which provides us with an opportunity to understand the humanistic matters. This provides us with an important way of thinking to understand traditional culture. In terms of the most common behavior that everyone has to eat, the tendency of ethical consciousness to infiltrate into dietary activities can be seen everywhere, from the invention of cooked food, the mixing of raw materials, cooking skills, the selection of eating utensils, seasonal food to the symbolism and aesthetics of the dish names, none of them are free from ethical influence, and the list here goes on and on. The ancient people regarded as the country's important tripod, this is a rice pot, it bulging belly, large capacity; two ears, easy to move; three-legged tripod, easy to burn. Cooking utensils and cutlery in one, more practical than kettle, wok, bean and gui. The Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining and Analysing Characters) says that it is "a precious vessel for harmonizing the five flavors". With this treasure, offerings to ancestors and gods, perform major rituals, which makes the daily rice pot is covered with a mysterious color, respected as a ritual. Legend has it that the Yellow Emperor cast three tripods to symbolize heaven and earth. Xia Yu cast nine tripods, as a national treasure. After Zhou destroyed Shang, he moved the nine tripods to Haojing and held a grand ceremony of fixing the tripods. Since then, fixing the tripods is a metaphor for laying the foundation of state power, moving the tripods refers to the demise of the state, and asking for the tripods is an act of peeping into the regime, which has led to the deduction of many historical stories. In the ancient West and Egypt, the power of the monarch was represented by the scepter and the yoke, which evolved from the tools and weapons of production and are more intuitively understandable, while in China, the rice pot was used as a symbol of power, which is a unique phenomenon among ancient civilizations. From here, we can also understand that the other side of "food for the people is heaven" is "food for the people is power", food and power, heaven and earth as a whole, this ordinary things rise to ideology. The practical value of the tripod as a cooking pot has been eliminated in the long history, but the ethical significance it carries has become an agreed cultural symbol, which has been accumulated in the national psyche for a long time. The Century Treasure Tripod presented by contemporary China to the United Nations and the Shenghe Treasure Tripod commemorating the return of Hong Kong to China have been recognized both at home and abroad as symbols of traditional Chinese culture. From food utensils to treasure utensils, it demonstrates the process of becoming ritual utensils from mundane objects and transforming the mundane into the mundane by rituals. Secular rationality, so that ordinary daily necessities rise to the "Tao",

The ancients said that the metaphysical is called Tao, which is the concept; the metaphysical is called ware, which is the daily use of the people. As everyday objects can be changed and renewed, through which the concepts once linked to the ethical will remain unchanged. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, when the tide of Western commodities was surging in, even the hard-line opponents of foreign affairs did not oppose the introduction of daily utensils

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