Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar
Encyclopedia
The Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar, otherwise known as siyi (四藝), is a term used to describe four main accomplishments required of the Chinese
scholar gentleman
. They are qin (琴 qin
), qi (棋 qi), shu (書 calligraphy
) and hua (畫 painting
).
's Fashu Yaolu from the Tang Dynasty
.
. Although it exclusively meant this instrument in ancient times, it has now come to mean all musical instruments, but essentially it refers to gǔqín only considering the context.
The gǔqín is a seven-stringed zither that owes its invention to the Chinese society of some 3,000 years ago. During the reign of the imperial China, a scholar was expected to play the gǔqín . Gǔqín was explored as an art-form as well as a science, and scholars strove to both play it well and to create texts on its manipulation. Gǔqín notation was invented some 1,500 years ago, and to this day it has not been drastically changed. Some books contain musical pieces written and mastered more than 500 years ago. Gǔqín is so influential that it even made its way into space: the spacecraft Voyager
launched by the U.S. in 1977 contained a vinyl style record of a gǔqín piece named 'Flowing Water'. The fact that the gǔqín's name breaks down to 'gu' (old) and 'qin' (musical instrument) reveals the instrument's great antiquity.
, which is now called wéiqí (圍棋) in Chinese (go in Japan and the West), literally meaning "surrounding game". Current definitions of qí cover a wide range of board games and, given that in Classical Chinese
qí could also refer to other games, some argue that the qí in the four arts could refer to xiangqi
although that is considered more a popular "game of the people" than weiqi, which was a game with aristocratic connotations. Qi of Siyi may appoint to xiangqi in the Tang Dynasty
.
Many theories exist regarding the origin of wéiqí in Chinese history
. One of these holds that was an ancient fortune-telling device used by Chinese cosmologists
to simulate the universe's relationship to an individual. Another suggests that the legendary Emperor Yao invented it to enlighten his son. Certainly wéiqí had begun to take hold around the 6th century BCE when Confucius
mentioned wéiqí in his masterpiece Analects 17:22, sometimes erroneously translated as "chess."
Wéiqí is a game in which two players alternate placing black and white stones on a playing surface consisting of a grid of 19x19 lines. Stones are placed on the intersections of the grid, rather than inside the squares as in chess. Stones surrounded on four sides by those of the opposing color are removed from play, and the overall arrangement of stones must never be repeated twice in one game. The game concludes when both players agree that there are no moves left to play, and so pass. The game is then scored by way of counting the empty playable points that each player has encircled, with captured pieces filling in territory of the same color.
Unlike in chess
, complete dominance is not required for victory — the victor is the player with the higher score. The opening stages of the game are known by the Japanese term "fuseki
", and often contain the standard corner sequences that are known by the Japanese term "joseki
". Good moves usually have several different purposes and create more opportunities than can be blocked by the opponent in a single response. Wéiqí texts of both modern and ancient kinds are prized among modern Chinese wéiqí professionals
, as seen below in the translation of an ancient Chinese wéiqí strategy book:
"The most celebrated (though not the oldest) go manual is the Chinese Xuanxuan Qijing. It was published in 1349 by Yan Defu and Yan Tianzhang. The former was a strong go player and the latter (no relation) a collector of old go books. They made a perfect team. The title of the book is literally The Classic of the Mystery of the Mysterious, but it is an allusion to Chapter 1 of Lao Zi's Dao De Jing where the reference goes on to say that the mystery of the mysterious is 'the gateway to all marvels'. I prefer that as a title, especially as it is made clear in the preface that this latter phrase is meant to be called to mind, and is meant to imply that the book offers the way to mastering marvels in the form of go tesuji
s." (Defu & Tianzhang & Fairbairn, 1)
nature, as well as a significant test of manual dexterity. Chinese calligraphy has evolved for thousands of years, and its state of flux stopped only when Chinese characters were unified across the empire. Chinese calligraphy differs from western calligraphic script in the sense that it was done with a brush instead of metal implements or a quill. Calligraphy was the art by which a scholar could compose his thoughts to be immortalized. It was the scholar's means of creating expressive poetry and sharing his or her own learnedness.
Calligraphic process is also structured in the same way as wéiqí. A minimalist set of rules conveys a system of incredible complexity and grandeur. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Only three basic forms are used in the creation of the character, those being square, triangle and circle. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes, none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect or individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.
"The most valued of all art treasures in China have been examples of the writing of certain aristocrats from the fourth century CE, including casual notes exchanged between them. The process whereby this came about is a lengthy one. It had to do with religious developments in the third-seventh centuries. It was also connected intimately to the role of writing in upper class life, to notions of personality, and the visible expression of personality.[...] The notion of writing as an art form however probably does not appear until the early centuries of the common era. It is linked to the emergence of the idea of the artist as an individual whose personal qualities allow command of the technical resources to produce work of a higher quality and greater value [...] than that of the common run of writers." (Clunas, 135)
. Brush painting is the final of the arts that a scholar is expected to learn, and is unarguably the greatest measure of individual creativity. Through painting a Chinese noble would demonstrate his mastery over the art of line. Often Chinese paintings would be produced on a sheet of plain white rice-paper or silk using nothing but black ink and a single brush. These paintings were made to demonstrate the power of a single line, and in them was reflected a skill that valued intentional and calculated strokes over instinctual erratic creation. In a Chinese painting was reflected the artist's ability to evaluate his own imagination and record it clearly and concisely. Chinese painting can be traced back even farther than calligraphy. Some examples date back to the decorative paintings that were emblazoned on Neolithic pottery. To add tonal quality to paintings the artists would often paint portions of the subject then wash the cloth before continuing. This made for beautiful landscapes and depictions of ritual. Painting was the art by which a scholar could separate him of herself from the others and take a name.
"The growing complexity of society at the end of the sixteenth century was reflected in an enriched cultural life in which heterogeneous tastes supported a wide variety of artists and craftsmen: the presence of foreigners at court and increasing affluence, which made the merchants independent of the court and of the official class, were only two of the many factors which nurtured artistic diversity. Individuality also began to be considered an important quality in the painter; indeed, a small group of artists were even known as the 'individualists'." (Tregear, 168)
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
scholar gentleman
Scholar-bureaucrats
Scholar-officials or Scholar-bureaucrats were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. These officials mostly came from the well-educated men known as the...
. They are qin (琴 qin
Guqin
The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...
), qi (棋 qi), shu (書 calligraphy
East Asian calligraphy
East Asian calligraphy is a form of calligraphy widely practised and revered in the Sinosphere. This most often includes China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The East Asian calligraphic tradition originated and developed from China. There is a general standardization of the various styles of...
) and hua (畫 painting
Chinese painting
Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. The earliest paintings were not representational but ornamental; they consisted of patterns or designs rather than pictures. Early pottery was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals...
).
Origin of the concept
Although the individual elements of the concept have very long histories indeed as activities befitting a learned person, the earliest written source putting the four together is Zhang YanyuanZhang Yanyuan
Zhang Yanyuan , courtesy name Aibin , was a Chinese art historian, scholar, calligrapher and painter of the late Tang Dynasty.-Biography:Zhang was born to a high ranking family in present-day Yuncheng, Shanxi...
's Fashu Yaolu from the Tang Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
.
Qín
Qín 琴 refers to the musical instrument of the literati, the gǔqínGuqin
The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...
. Although it exclusively meant this instrument in ancient times, it has now come to mean all musical instruments, but essentially it refers to gǔqín only considering the context.
The gǔqín is a seven-stringed zither that owes its invention to the Chinese society of some 3,000 years ago. During the reign of the imperial China, a scholar was expected to play the gǔqín . Gǔqín was explored as an art-form as well as a science, and scholars strove to both play it well and to create texts on its manipulation. Gǔqín notation was invented some 1,500 years ago, and to this day it has not been drastically changed. Some books contain musical pieces written and mastered more than 500 years ago. Gǔqín is so influential that it even made its way into space: the spacecraft Voyager
Voyager program
The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s...
launched by the U.S. in 1977 contained a vinyl style record of a gǔqín piece named 'Flowing Water'. The fact that the gǔqín's name breaks down to 'gu' (old) and 'qin' (musical instrument) reveals the instrument's great antiquity.
Qí
Qí 棋 refers to a board gameBoard game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
, which is now called wéiqí (圍棋) in Chinese (go in Japan and the West), literally meaning "surrounding game". Current definitions of qí cover a wide range of board games and, given that in Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
qí could also refer to other games, some argue that the qí in the four arts could refer to xiangqi
Xiangqi
Xiangqi is a two-player Chinese board game in the same family as Western chess, chaturanga, shogi, Indian chess and janggi. The present-day form of Xiangqi originated in China and is therefore commonly called Chinese chess in English. Xiangqi is one of the most popular board games in China...
although that is considered more a popular "game of the people" than weiqi, which was a game with aristocratic connotations. Qi of Siyi may appoint to xiangqi in the Tang Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
.
Many theories exist regarding the origin of wéiqí in Chinese history
History of China
Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...
. One of these holds that was an ancient fortune-telling device used by Chinese cosmologists
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
to simulate the universe's relationship to an individual. Another suggests that the legendary Emperor Yao invented it to enlighten his son. Certainly wéiqí had begun to take hold around the 6th century BCE when Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....
mentioned wéiqí in his masterpiece Analects 17:22, sometimes erroneously translated as "chess."
Wéiqí is a game in which two players alternate placing black and white stones on a playing surface consisting of a grid of 19x19 lines. Stones are placed on the intersections of the grid, rather than inside the squares as in chess. Stones surrounded on four sides by those of the opposing color are removed from play, and the overall arrangement of stones must never be repeated twice in one game. The game concludes when both players agree that there are no moves left to play, and so pass. The game is then scored by way of counting the empty playable points that each player has encircled, with captured pieces filling in territory of the same color.
Unlike in chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
, complete dominance is not required for victory — the victor is the player with the higher score. The opening stages of the game are known by the Japanese term "fuseki
Fuseki
Fuseki is the whole board opening in the game of Go.-Less systematic:Since each move is typically isolated and unforced , patterns for play on the whole board have seen much less systematic study than for Joseki, which are often contact moves which require specific and immediate responses...
", and often contain the standard corner sequences that are known by the Japanese term "joseki
Joseki
In Go, are studied sequences of moves in the corner areas of the Go board, for which the result is considered balanced for both black and white sides. Because games typically start with plays in the corners, players often try to use their understanding of joseki to gain local advantages in the...
". Good moves usually have several different purposes and create more opportunities than can be blocked by the opponent in a single response. Wéiqí texts of both modern and ancient kinds are prized among modern Chinese wéiqí professionals
Go professional
A Go professional is a professional player of the game of Go. The minimum standard to acquire a professional diploma through one of the major go organisations is very high. The competition is tremendous, and prize incentives for champion players are very large...
, as seen below in the translation of an ancient Chinese wéiqí strategy book:
"The most celebrated (though not the oldest) go manual is the Chinese Xuanxuan Qijing. It was published in 1349 by Yan Defu and Yan Tianzhang. The former was a strong go player and the latter (no relation) a collector of old go books. They made a perfect team. The title of the book is literally The Classic of the Mystery of the Mysterious, but it is an allusion to Chapter 1 of Lao Zi's Dao De Jing where the reference goes on to say that the mystery of the mysterious is 'the gateway to all marvels'. I prefer that as a title, especially as it is made clear in the preface that this latter phrase is meant to be called to mind, and is meant to imply that the book offers the way to mastering marvels in the form of go tesuji
Tesuji
A Japanese term used in the games of go or Shogi. A tesuji is a clever play, the best play in a local position, a skillful move. Tesuji is derived from suji , which means "line of play"....
s." (Defu & Tianzhang & Fairbairn, 1)
Shū
Shū 書 refers to Chinese calligraphy, which dates to the origins of recorded Chinese history, in essence ever since written characters have existed. Chinese calligraphy is said to be an expression of a practitioner's poeticPoetic
Poetic may refer to:* Poetry, or a relation thereof.* Too Poetic, a deceased rapper and hip hop producer....
nature, as well as a significant test of manual dexterity. Chinese calligraphy has evolved for thousands of years, and its state of flux stopped only when Chinese characters were unified across the empire. Chinese calligraphy differs from western calligraphic script in the sense that it was done with a brush instead of metal implements or a quill. Calligraphy was the art by which a scholar could compose his thoughts to be immortalized. It was the scholar's means of creating expressive poetry and sharing his or her own learnedness.
Calligraphic process is also structured in the same way as wéiqí. A minimalist set of rules conveys a system of incredible complexity and grandeur. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Only three basic forms are used in the creation of the character, those being square, triangle and circle. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes, none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect or individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.
"The most valued of all art treasures in China have been examples of the writing of certain aristocrats from the fourth century CE, including casual notes exchanged between them. The process whereby this came about is a lengthy one. It had to do with religious developments in the third-seventh centuries. It was also connected intimately to the role of writing in upper class life, to notions of personality, and the visible expression of personality.[...] The notion of writing as an art form however probably does not appear until the early centuries of the common era. It is linked to the emergence of the idea of the artist as an individual whose personal qualities allow command of the technical resources to produce work of a higher quality and greater value [...] than that of the common run of writers." (Clunas, 135)
Huà
Huà 畫 refers to Chinese paintingChinese painting
Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. The earliest paintings were not representational but ornamental; they consisted of patterns or designs rather than pictures. Early pottery was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals...
. Brush painting is the final of the arts that a scholar is expected to learn, and is unarguably the greatest measure of individual creativity. Through painting a Chinese noble would demonstrate his mastery over the art of line. Often Chinese paintings would be produced on a sheet of plain white rice-paper or silk using nothing but black ink and a single brush. These paintings were made to demonstrate the power of a single line, and in them was reflected a skill that valued intentional and calculated strokes over instinctual erratic creation. In a Chinese painting was reflected the artist's ability to evaluate his own imagination and record it clearly and concisely. Chinese painting can be traced back even farther than calligraphy. Some examples date back to the decorative paintings that were emblazoned on Neolithic pottery. To add tonal quality to paintings the artists would often paint portions of the subject then wash the cloth before continuing. This made for beautiful landscapes and depictions of ritual. Painting was the art by which a scholar could separate him of herself from the others and take a name.
"The growing complexity of society at the end of the sixteenth century was reflected in an enriched cultural life in which heterogeneous tastes supported a wide variety of artists and craftsmen: the presence of foreigners at court and increasing affluence, which made the merchants independent of the court and of the official class, were only two of the many factors which nurtured artistic diversity. Individuality also began to be considered an important quality in the painter; indeed, a small group of artists were even known as the 'individualists'." (Tregear, 168)