Chinese artistic culture profoundly ranges from its infamous literary and poetry classics, to its Yaju opera, to its revered craftmanship. 

 

Literary epics of the time include ‘Nüwa Mends the Sky depicting Nüwa’s saving of humanity from flooding and ‘The Journey to the West detailing Xuan Zang’s (玄奘) search for Buddhist scriptures in India in the Tang Dynasty. Other major classics include ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms, ‘Dream of the Red Chamber, and ‘Water Margin.

 

‘The Book of Songs’ was China’s first poetry collection written between the early Western Zhou Dynasty (beginning 1100 BCE) to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period (roughly 620 BCE) and used by Confucius in his teachings. 

 

Calligraphy is the philosophical art of written characters while Chinese painting is possibly the world’s oldest artistic discipline. China music has a history of 8,000 years with the use of bone flutes, bamboo pipes, guqin, kong zhu (also wuling), and guzheng all particularly prominent. 

 

Earthenware and jade can even be dated back 10,000 years ago to the New Stone Age along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Lacquerware and silk emerged in the Han Dynasty and porcelain in the Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. 

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