More on Chinese art

I would like to add something to Liem Sian Tie`s letter to The Jakarta Post, entitled Chinese art resurfaces on March 9.

According to Carl Jung, there is a collective unconscious called racial memory. Wave after wave of violence cannot erase it, but would instead reinforce it.

That memory, combined with the long tradition of more than three millennia of documented artistic experiences, could never be suppressed, only supplanted easily by decree.

As early as the Zhou dynasty (1045 BC), there had been six recognized arts, or LiuYi -- music, ritual, archery, charioteering, writing, and arithmetic, with music at the highest point as a vehicle for self realization.

Since the Tang dynasty (618 AD-906 AD), poetry was considered the highest art form, along with another four arts or Shiyi -- namely, calligraphy, painting, lute, and the game of weiqi, or chess.

But poetry as a literary art can be traced back to the early Zhou dynasty in the classics of poetry, or Shijing, with 305 poems and a later collection of southern areas called ZhuCi (around three centuries BC).

In 725 AD, Tang emperor Xuanzong established Hanlin Yuan, or Hanlin Academy, a scholarly meeting place for scholars, artists and religious leaders.

Since then, Northern Song (960 AD), painting manuals had been published. The painting and calligraphy have been, until now, considered higher forms of liberal visual arts, as opposed to arts like sculpture, created by the hand of an artisan.

But the highest place is for poetry as literary art.

An all-round well-educated idealized gentleman -- whether a merchant, a Buddhist monk, a communist politician or a scholar -- is supposed to master, or at least to recite, quite a few of the classical poems especially from the Tang and Song dynasty period.

While the Chinese and Japanese might share some of the same civilizations, it is quite revealing to notice that, while President Jiang would love to display his mastery of poetry to foreign dignitaries, President George W. Bush was entertained by a show of archery by Prime minister Koizumi.

And while the Chinese political elite would love to recite poetry at their leisure, the British royal elite would prefer fox hunting.

SIA KA-MOU

Jakarta