Critical Studio: Culture part2

Starting from part2 of this culture exploration journey, I changed my topic to Tang Dynasty of China. Below are the pictures I found iconic of this period of time.


 

This is the one of the four remained architecture from Tang dynasty. The features I found from all museum websites or comments from scholars about this temple are pretty subtle, “giving the feeling of giant and solemn.” Well, basically every temple or place is giant and solemn in China. But it makes sense because architecture is not what we often talks about Tang Dynasty.

Move on.

 

 

This is how the capital city structured in Tang, grid based. This might seems weird but businessmen always have the lowest social hierarchy, “governor, farmer, worker, businessmen.” The reason why this is a big thing is that in Tang, cities begin to have morning markets and evening market for business and trade, meaning that policies are going to be fairer for business. Even though there were still limited places to be used for business.

 

 

The picture above is the calligraphy that was used a lot in Tang. Dynasties afterwards use it as well but it is in Tang that this calligraphy developed to a mature phase. It is called “Kai Ti 楷体”.

 

Moving on from calligraphy to poem, because we have to recite these famous poems so I am pretty familiar with all these. This piece is the from the most famous poet called Li Bai(last name first). The middle of the picture above is the poem and the upper right clean seven characters are the name of Li Bai. I think, possibly, that the stamps varies from dynasty to dynasty as well but I have to look about that more.

 

 

Here comes the most impressive part of aesthetic of Tang. Through Chinese history, Tang is famous for loving women who were “fat.”  We use the word fat in Chinese but we don’t mean overweight but rather plump chests and butt. My shape would be consider a maid shape who have been starved for years.

Also, consider about the clothing, these pictures are depicting late Tang because at the very beginning, Tang is as conservative as the last dynasty before Tang. It wasn’t until all things settled and the silk road connected more between China and other counties that women wear clothes like these that exposed more on their neck.

 

All in all, pictures above showed that Tang Dynasty is a period of time when people settled and can have time to develop its own cultural feature, aesthetic and economy. There wasn’t any war on the huge land of China. It also shows that Tang is a rich dynasty because the concubine can dressed this fancy in the last picture and chatting or relaxing with tons of maids.

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