Origin of the concept
Although the individual parts of the concept have very long histories indeed as activities befitting a learned person, the earliest written source putting the four together is Zhang Yanyuan's ''Fashu Yaolu'' from the Tang Dynasty, and as "the four arts" the concept is first found in the ''Xianqing ouqi'' by .
Outline
In China to be a scholar is to be an artist. Chinese culture insists that an educated and 'proper' individual's classical training has components of what in Chinese are called ''qin''琴, ''qi''棋, ''shu''书, and ''hua''画. These are translated roughly into "Instrumentation, Board Game, Calligraphy, and Painting. For one to be considered scholarly, or a man of the arts, then those are in fact the arts in which to immerse ones self. The Chinese ideals of an educated man are a test and demonstration of the individual's strength in reason, creation, expression and dexterity, and thus rate highly in China both today and in ancient times.
All of these arts combined made for a platform by which scholars could compete against each others' creativity, expression, ideas, and thinking power. They created a means by which men would judge each other beyond the worth of their possessions. A Chinese pauper who excelled in the arts was as respected as the noble who equaled him. These four arts created a culture in which art flourished freely among the populace.
Qín
Qín 琴 refers to the musical instrument of the literati, the . Although it exclusively meant this instrument in ancient times, it has now come to mean all musical instruments, but essentially it refers to gǔqín only considering the context.
The gǔqín is a seven-stringed zither that owes its invention to the Chinese society of some 3,000 years ago. During the reign of the imperial China, a scholar was expected to play the guqin. Gǔqín was explored as an art-form as well as a science, and scholars strove to both play it well and to create texts on its manipulation. Gǔqín notation was invented some 1,500 years ago, and to this day it has not been drastically changed. Some books contain musical pieces written and mastered more than 500 years ago. Gǔqín is so influential that it even made its way into space: the spacecraft voyager launched by the U.S. in 1977 contained a vinyl style record of a gǔqín piece named 'Flowing Water'. The fact that the gǔqín's name breaks down to 'gu' and 'qin' reveals the instrument's great antiquity.
Qí
Qí 棋 refers to a board game, which is now called wéiqí , literally meaning "surrounding game". Current definitions of ''qí'' cover a wide range of board games and, given that in Classical Chinese qí could also refer to other games, some argue that the qí in the four arts could refer to xiangqi although it is considered more a popular "game of the people" than weiqi, which was a game with aristocratic connotations. Many theories exist regarding the origin of wéiqí in Chinese history. One of these holds that wéiqí was an ancient fortune telling device used by Chinese cosmologists to simulate the universe's relationship to an individual. Another suggests that the legendary emperor invented it to enlighten his son. Certainly wéiqí had begun to take hold around the 6th century BCE when Confucius mentioned wéiqí in his masterpiece Analects 17:22, sometimes erroneously translated as "chess."
Wéiqí is a game in which two players alternate placing black and white stones on a playing surface consisting of a grid of 19x19 lines. Stones are placed on the intersections of the grid, rather than inside the squares as in chess. Stones surrounded on four sides by those of the opposing colour are removed from play, and the overall arrangement of stones must never be repeated twice in one game. The game concludes when both players agree that there are no moves left to play, and so pass. The game is then scored by way of counting the empty playable points that each player has encircled, with captured pieces filling in territory of the same color.
Unlike in chess, complete dominance is not required for victory—the victor is the player with the higher score. The opening stages of the game are known by the Japanese term "fuseki", and often contain the standard corner sequences that are known by the Japanese term "joseki." Good moves usually have several different purposes and create more opportunities than can be blocked by the opponent in a single response. Wéiqí texts of both modern and ancient kinds are prized among modern Chinese wéiqí professionals, as seen below in the translation of an ancient Chinese wéiqí strategy book:
"The most celebrated go manual is the Chinese ''Xuanxuan Qijing''. It was published in 1349 by Yan Defu and Yan Tianzhang. The former was a strong go player and the latter a collector of old go books. They made a perfect team. The title of the book is literally ''The Classic of the Mystery of the Mysterious'', but it is an allusion to Chapter 1 of Lao Zi's ''Dao De Jing'' where the reference goes on to say that the mystery of the mysterious is 'the gateway to all marvels'. I prefer that as a title, especially as it is made clear in the preface that this latter phrase is meant to be called to mind, and is meant to imply that the book offers the way to mastering marvels in the form of go tesujis."
Shū
Shū 書 refers to Chinese calligraphy, which dates to the origins of recorded Chinese history, in essence ever since written characters have existed. Chinese calligraphy is said to be an expression of a practitioners poetic nature, as well as a significant test of manual dexterity. Chinese calligraphy has evolved for thousands of years, and its state of flux stopped only when Chinese characters were unified across the empire. Chinese calligraphy differs from western calligraphic script in the sense that it was done with a brush instead of metal implements or a quill. Calligraphy was the art by which a scholar could compose his thoughts to be immortalized. It was the scholar's means of creating expressive poetry and sharing his or her own learnedness.
Calligraphic process is also structured in the same way as wéiqí. A minimalist set of rules conveys a system of incredible complexity and grandeur. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Only four basic forms are used in the creation of the character, those being square, triangle and circle. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes, none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more precious treasures that can be found from ancient China.
"The most valued of all art treasures in China have been examples of the writing of certain aristocrats from the fourth century CE, including casual notes exchanged between them. The process whereby this came about is a lengthy one. It had to do with religious developments in the third-seventh centuries. It was also connected intimately to the role of writing in upper class life, to notions of personality, and the visible expression of personality. The notion of writing as an art form however probably does not appear until the early centuries of the common era. It is linked to the emergence of the idea of the artist as an individual whose personal qualities allow command of the technical resources to produce work of a higher quality and greater value than that of the common run of writers."
Huà
Huà 畫 refers to Chinese painting. Brush painting is the final of the arts that a scholar is expected to learn, and is unarguably the greatest measure of individual creativity. Through painting a Chinese noble would demonstrate his mastery over the art of line. Often Chinese paintings would be produced on a sheet of plain white rice-paper or silk using nothing but black ink and a single brush. These paintings were made to demonstrate the power of a single line, and in them was reflected a skill that valued intentional and calculated strokes over instinctual erratic creation. In a Chinese painting was reflected the artist's ability to evaluate his own imagination and record it clearly and concisely. Chinese painting can be traced back even farther than calligraphy. Some examples date back to the decorative paintings that were emblazoned on neolithic pottery. To add tonal quality to paintings the artists would often paint portions of the subject then wash the cloth before continuing. This made for beautiful landscapes and depictions of ritual. Painting was the art by which a scholar could separate him of herself from the others and take a name.
"The growing complexity of society at the end of the sixteenth century was reflected in an enriched cultural life in which heterogeneous tastes supported a wide variety of artists and craftsmen: the presence of foreigners at court and increasing affluence, which made the merchants independent of the court and of the official class, were only two of the many factors which nurtured artistic diversity. Individuality also began to be considered an important quality in the painter; indeed, a small group of artists were even known as the 'individualists'."
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