| Such illustrations about "Wen" as "Wen is the flower"(Wang Kan) and "Wen is the beauty" (Zheng Xian) reveal a piece of important information: the miscellaneous and attractive nature has greatly inspired the Chinese people to create the civilization which reflects a certain aesthetic consciousness. The creation of all the civilization is not only the materialized state of human beauty, but also promotes the betterment and development of human beauty itself."Wen" was originally defined as interlaced beauty, with somewhat of a meaning of beautification. The ancient Chinese people, through careful observation of the world, discovered the law of beauty. According to the law, everything in the universe interlaces with one another in various forms, which has formed certain visual images of shocking beauty. Therefore, the ancient Chinese people came to form an aesthetic concept "interlacing makes Wen", which is greatly different from the concept held by the Western people that geometric figure is beauty.In the pre-Qin period, people enlarged the pure visual image of "Wen", even including all the things and human activities into the limits of "Wen", and classified it into three groups: "Wen of Heaven", "wen of the Earth" and "Wen of Man"."Wen of Heaven" and "Wen of the Earth" refer to the natural phenomena existing either in heaven or on the earth, in other words, the beauty of nature which embodies the universe itself. The theories and sayings like "the theory of the origin of Qi", "All things come from the same origin", "Nature and man have the same construction" and "Nature and man combine into one" have been having profound influence on the traditional Chinese culture. The ancient Chinese people believed that All Nature derived from Qi and Dao, and man, who was the living spirit of All Nature, surely had the same origin as it. Therefore, the Chinese people always hold a sense of harmony towards nature, involve their feelings in the beautiful natural sceneries while enjoying them, and take making as their aesthetic pursuit."Wen of Man" is the general designation of the social beauty and artistic beauty. The ancient people, through careful observation of the things in the world, discovered the law of beauty and generalized as the aesthetic concept "interlacing makes Wen", with which they portrayed the colorful social beauty and reflected the artistic beauty of the social and natural beauty. The so-called "Wen of Xing", "Wen of Sheng" and "Wen of Qing" are the various forms of artistic beauty.Artistic beauty is the main researching subject of the classical Chinese aesthetics. There are two characteristics about the miscellaneous artistic factions in China: One is "the same origin" considering art as the outcome of "nature and man combine into one", which can be seen in the saying "the poetry is the combination of nature and man" (Liu XiZai). The other is that art serves for the reflection of vigor and vitality of nature and society and the expression of living spirit of the universe, which can be illustrated by the saying "inner feeling and understanding comes from the influence of the exterior world" (Zhang Zao). These two distinct characteristics make the Chinese art occupy a very important position in the art of the world.Just as "Wen is man" said by Wang yuqian, "Wen" is the symbol of beautified man. So the Chinese aesthetics is the study of man, which always bases on man, refers to man and is always concerned about the spirit of man. The Chinese artistic beauty, which can never exist without the involvement of human feelings,always insists on taking "Wen of Qing" as the highest rank.In short, "Wen" expresses both the aesthetic consciousness of the Chinese people and their discovery, pursuit and creation of beauty.In the past, "Wen" was generally considered as a common Chinese character, whose deeper meaning was not explored yet. And the previous researches and expositions, which seldom dealt with "Wen" as an aesthetic concept and theory, did not give a systematic exposition of the infl...
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