A Cultural Survey Of The Luxury Ethos Of The Han Dynasty

As an important part of the social ethos,the luxury ethos reflects people's psychology and behavior of squandering money in pursuit of material and spiritual enjoyment under specific historical conditions.The evolution of luxury culture is closely related to the level of economic development and social conditions.Generally speaking,in the context of low level of economic development and social unrest,the majority of the society takes frugality as the mainstream,and the scope and degree of extravagance are small and light.With the economic recovery and development,social stability,more easily lead to the emergence of luxury,than before the scope and degree of luxury significantly expanded.The evolution of the luxury ethos in the Han Dynasty followed such a law.At the beginning of the regime,the economy was broken and the social ethos was about frugality as the mainstream.From the late years of emperor,with the economic recovery and development,luxury gradually rose,until the end of the eastern Han Dynasty is still not reduced.As far as the main body of luxury behavior in Han dynasty is concerned,not all people can enjoy luxury and have the conditions to enjoy luxury.The objects of luxury are mainly princes,princes,princes and ministers,and rich merchants.As superior people in the upper class,they have enough power,status and wealth to support luxury consumption.Most of the people at the bottom of the pyramid work all day long,but can only scrimping to meet basic needs.Chao cuo,a political theorist in the western Han dynasty,really revealed the living conditions of this class.Mr Lin has calculated that,under normal circumstances,a family of five in the Han dynasty would often live beyond their means.This is just a normal year,in the flood and drought disasters,plague diseases,wars and other crises,its difficult situation can be imagined.Accordingly,the objects of luxury in Han dynasty that this paper intends to discuss are mainly emperors(empresses),nobles,bureaucrats,landlords and rich merchants.In the feudal society,anything to make up lessons to avoid the zone has the brand of class.In the class society,everyone's social status,income status and consumption level are all linked with the class.Under the influence of class status,people in the same class or similar class have similarities between economic income and consumption level,and are obviously different from people in different classes.Therefore,combining with the theory of social stratification,the author divided the objects of luxury in the Han dynasty into three classes:emperors(empresses),nobles and bureaucrats,landlords and rich merchants.Aiming at the phenomenon of luxury in Han dynasty,this paper is divided into four parts.The introduction makes a brief introduction to the connotation of luxury,the reason of the topic selection,the current research status,and the research methods.The first chapter discusses the performance of luxury culture in Han dynasty,mainly from the food,clothing,living room,carriage,marriage,funeral,entertainment and other seven aspects.The second chapter discusses the cultural factors that influence the luxury culture in Han dynasty by using the theory of cultural factor analysis.The emergence of any cultural phenomenon is the result of the interaction of various cultural elements,the development of luxury culture in the Han dynasty is the result of the comprehensive action of the increase of economic income,model politics,conspicuous consumption psychology and so on.The third chapter discusses the measures against extravagance in Han dynasty and discusses the reasons for its failure.The growing trend of extravagance caused great damage to politics,economy and society,so the rulers mainly took two measures to curb extravagance.On the other hand,we will continue to improve the system of abolishing luxury and prohibiting it,and ensure its implementation at the institutional level.On the whole,the measures against extravagance in the Han dynasty were not effective,and the extravagance in the society was not stopped,but became more and more serious.This is closely related to the defects of the feudal hierarchy,the limitations of the rulers' measures against extravagance,the restrictions of the literati and the literati,and the lax implementation of the prohibition on extravagance.