Guanxi Master

Square Within and Round Without

The Chinese have historically obsessed over being the center of the universe.  This “totem of centrality” started in the Zhou dynasty, and is still important to the Chinese, much like the American concept of “freedom”. It eventually became the axis for all social and philosophical justification (The Chinese believed that man’s basic nature was a search for balance, rather than a search for liberation; a search for a central axis). The character for “Center” represented the importance of centrality and timeliness in an agrarian society, and the first sage king, Zhou Wen, was believed to have established the moral as well as calendrical mean in the setting up of a giant sundial pole in the center of his kingdom. The metaphor for centrality in a natural lifecycle eventually became the philosophical concept of “Zhong Yong” (中庸) or “The Way of Moderation”. This is misunderstood by the West as a way of non-religious morality, or situational ethics, in which all things are equal and empowered with the ability to create imbalances (which are thought of by humans as evil because of their negative repercussions). But this Chinese concept is different to the Platonic situation of a virtue between to vices of extreme; instead this standard is always thought to be flowing, moving, escaping definition through any means other than intuition. In reality, this is a commitment to the due course of nature, and not doing what is unnatural in order to insure survival and the blessing of life.

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A Contrastive Look into the Meaning of North Korean Paintings

A few years ago, I remember looking on in anticipation as a batch of paintings from several North Korean “National Treasures” artists, slowly slid from their protective coverings to form a small pyramid of scrolls on a white sheet spread out on my apartment floor. My best friend from college, Mike, art dealer and media producer in China, brought them back to the US, partly as a gesture of good will and partly to show the American art community the unexpected serendipity of having a North Korean communicate over the gulf of ideology and politics that separates our two nations through the flimsy elements of water, soot, and rice paper. I don’t know what I was expecting, but as scroll after scroll was unfurled before me, the swirls of color and bold brush strokes seemed to catch me off balance and lodge in my mind’s eye in a profoundly simple expression of joy. A kind of joy unexpected from a land associated in the media with terror, famine, and deprivation. I had not expected to be moved by art from the most narrowly defined ideological genres in existence… instead I was overwhelmed.

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How the Chinese Ideal of Virtue Transmits to an Ethereal View of Business

On a delightful fall day a few years ago, while with my family on a Sunday jaunt in the rural Songjiang area of Shanghai, we pulled over to look at a roadside stall selling beautiful flowers in narrow pots, hanging from a rack. I was intrigued by the elaborate rig for these simple-looking, grassy plants, and was even more captivated by the smell of their little green flowers. I was hooked. I bought two pots and brought them home, and it was the start of my two-year, love-hate relationship with Chinese orchids.

Doing some preliminary research, I found that the cymbidium (our Latin name for the Chinese orchid) was one of the “Four Sacred Flowers” of Chinese tradition. One of the original features of the “Crystal Palace” of the first World Expo in 1851, it was notoriously hard to grow in hothouses in Victorian England, but its flowers are regarded as one of the most rewarding of the orchid species. Its delightful fragrance fills a room for weeks at a time.

And then, by chance, I stumbled upon an even more interesting fact. After seeing the orchids in my office, a painter friend immediately commented that I was “becoming a Chinese scholar”. “There is no flower that represents the scholar and his life better than the orchid”, he said with a wistful smile on his ancient face. “Why?” I asked innocently. “For that, you must look to Confucius!” he replied, in a mysterious way, and then changed the subject. This peaked my interest, and I started looking into it more. Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding one of the most important aspects of Chinese culture

The Chinese can be very generous people. In fact, they are some of the most generous people I know. They never arrive empty-handed, and won’t let you leave without taking gifts or food. From fighting for the check at a restaurant to playing the gracious host, the Chinese’ spirit of generosity is one of their greatest cultural treasures. Stemming from the old village traditions, this attribute continues to impact everything from the birthday of an Anhui farmer’s baby to Foreign Ministry negotiations in western Africa. Read the rest of this entry »