Inside and Outside the Four Seasons: The Seasonal Dimension of Living Aesthetics and Its Modern Construction

Abstract

Chinese living aesthetics encompasses a broad domain and manifold dimensions. Weather-and-seasonal aesthetics occupies an important place within Chinese living aesthetics. As part of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage,” the twenty-four solar terms manifest the ethnic character and civilizational value of Chinese solar-term aesthetics. In the face of natural weather, the solar-term culture created by Chinese ancestors embodies not only a distinctive aesthetic taste attuned to the four seasons but also the singular quality of emotion moving in step with the seasons. It displays both an aesthetic contemplation grounded in assimilation with things and appreciation of things in their seasons and gives rise to a seasonalized living aesthetics. In the face of daily life, the seasonal festivals created by Chinese ancestors reveal a temporal existence structured around seasonally established observances, while also disclosing the cultural depth of solar-term customs. They display both a vigorous, overflowing zest for life and a philosophical wisdom that unites Heaven and Earth. In the face of the changes of the times, people today uphold ideas such as following nature, cherishing time and things, revering life, and transcending the mundane. They rely on new technologies and new designs and employ new methods and new modes of expression, generating new meanings while continuing the cultural lineage and opening new chapters while advocating tradition. By doing so, they provide intellectual support for constructing a new discourse system of living aesthetics and building a modern Chinese civilization.

Keywords

living aesthetics / solar-term culture / inside and outside the four seasons / discourse system

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