Mei's Journey (Revised and Illustrated Edition)

Author: Li Zehou
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-01
Features: This book is a classic work of Chinese aesthetics. It embodies the years of research by the author, Li Zehou, who vividly presents the Chinese people's ancient and modern sense of beauty. With such sensibility and closeness. It is now accompanied by exquisite illustrations, making the book more vividly reveal the tumultuous journey of beauty in China. The Journey of Beauty offers a macroscopic perspective to summarize and aesthetically grasp Chinese art and literature over thousands of years. It introduces important concepts such as the "Dragon and Phoenix Dance" of primitive and ancient art, the "fierce beauty" of Shang and Zhou bronze art, the "Confucianism-Daoism complementarity" of the rational spirit of the pre-Qin period, the "romanticism" of Chu Ci, Han fu, and Han stone carvings, the "awakening of humanity" in the Wei and Jin artistic style, the Buddha sculptures of the Six Dynasties, Tang, and Song periods, the landscape paintings of Song and Yuan, as well as the three distinct aesthetic categories of poetry, ci, and qu, and the transition from romance to melancholic realism in Ming and Qing period novels and dramas. Many of these ideas were first proposed by the author and broke new ground. The book was first published in 1981 and has been reprinted numerous times, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. It has also been translated into multiple languages, including English, German, and Korean.