68 replies to this topic

[nishishei]

I don't watch the Spring Festival program either. I heard Shanghai, as a major city, has the lowest viewership rating for the program. It reeks of Northern cultural imperialism, and the skits are really lame. You only hear Mandarin dialects in the skits, but never any of the Southern dialects.

Personally I think Shanghai and surrounding cities should combine to make our own New Year's program in our own dialect, but that of course will never see government approval.

About blue and white. That is indeed the consensus I think. We even have a minimalist flag to represent Wu-Yue.

2:3 ratio, equal width bars

The goal was to reveal a strong and immediate emotion from an object in nature that has almost divine characteristics. It wasn't too hard picking the object: the Yangtze River. Though we do not always see the actual object as "divine," the simple representation by the flag accents the object's magnificence and defies the rational worldliness. This flag is more than just a symbol of the object, it is able to allude beyond our daily and ordinary conception of the object; instead of nature, it alludes to the creator of nature. The Yangtze River is our natural  Great Wall; there is a purpose in its existence, guardian of a land and its people and culture. The white space above and under the blue bar, as in aware, obviously focuses the object; but by its void also provides a feeling of fluidity to the blue (as if the water is moving!): perpetual (the blue bar stretches all the way to the edges) yet never still. White is a gentle yet melancholy color and suggests a touch of sadness that is felt with any pure emotion. Rather than imposing, the flag has the capacity to reveal our identity.

[Yun]

I am of Shanghainese ancestry as well, and have less affinity to southern Chinese culture than my countrymen in Singapore who are mostly descended from people of the southern coast. But I find that I am able to appreciate northern culture somewhat - that has more to do with my interest in history than anything else. Certainly the aspects of Chinese popular culture that I see today (i.e. the dragon dancing and gold/red at the Spring Festival) are rather gaudy and campy, but I don't associate that with any particular region.

I feel that to dismiss plains, hill minorities, the Yellow River, the Great Wall, and even perhaps the panda as being irrelevant to one's experience and identity because one does not live in those areas is unfortunately rather parochial and provincial. There is a history of interactions of various kinds between the Wu-Yue region and those other regions, and they were for many periods part of the same state. I do recognise that Wu people find themselves caught somewhere in between the north and the south (northerners think they're southerners, southerners think they're northerners), but Jiangnan culture has had a huge amount of influence around China for more than a thousand years, and there is no need to feel alienated.

BTW, this poll doesn't allow people to choose more than one option that they identify with if they want to. The multi-choice polls on CHF didn't use to work, but I'll try again to see if that's changed.

[Edit: Nope, it still doesn't allow multi-choice. Members who want to vote more than one choice can pick one in the poll and write your other ones in a post.]

Edited by Yun, 18 April 2005 - 08:48 PM.

[nishishei]

I agree with most of Yun's post. However, I do indeed associate Northern Chinese with dragons, red, yellow and the Yellow River, Yellow Earth. Which is why I found this topic kind of interesting in a way. The Yangtze River flows right by Shanghai; we until this century really had no identification with the Yellow River/Earth. It was part of Northern China's identity, something that didn't carry down to Jiangnan. Red is indeed the color of Jiangbei and Northern China. It has always been used everywhere in the north and is now considered the color that defines the Chinese ethnicity. I think I understand walnut's selection choices; they are what foreigners perceive of China, they are the initial common cultural snapshots that foreigners have when they learn about China. In that perspective, indeed China seems to be defined by the culture in the north and far south (Guangdong and Fujian), with little to no representation of Jiangnan. The quiet Venice-like canalways 水乡 of Jiangnan is utterly forgotten or ignored, even by most Chinese. The tendency to categorize Northern and Southern Chinas have indeed succeeded in eliminating Jiangnan from China in most people's minds. Even from the posts here, with plenty of representation from the Jiangnan area, I feel that when Northern Chinese speak of South China, they mean Guangdong and Fujian; and when Southern Chinese speak of North China, they mean either the Central Plains or Hebei/Shandong and Manchuria.


Hehe, some photos of Suzhou-Wuxi-Shanghai area

[AhMan]

Ah, I've just learnt a new thing about JiangNan. Indeed I never questioned why buildings in Jiangnan lack the colourful features of chineseness.
Hey but when I think about true China origin I associate it with ShaanBei region. I guess I've watched Yellow Earth by Chen KaiGe too many times.

[AhMan]

hey, talking about love between scholars and prostitutes I remember a story about a prostitute called 10th Xiang and a Jiangnan scholar. I hope this can ring a bell to you already. The point I want to make is that Jiangnan scholars are often too indecisive and too timid. I really don't have sympathy for Jiangnan scholars. I always like the type of Chinese guys who are ShanDong Da Han type like WuSong in ShuiHu, eat 2 kilos of beef and drink 20 bowls of wine...never hesitate to do good deeds, always ready to help people...etc.

[wuTao]

Those pictures are awesome! Those ancient buildings are very beautiful! I was wondering... those aspects of Chinese culture that are gaudy and garish... is that more predominant to North China, South China, or the Jiangnan region discussed here? How about the more austere aspects of Chinese culture? From the pictures above, it would seem the Jiangnan region's culture is the more austere and stately...

[Yun]

Actually, I have a feeling that the Japanese aesthetic (including the architecture, which also has very subdued colours) is more influenced by Wu-Yue culture than by any other region in China. There is, of course, a lot of difference between the Suzhou gardens and the Zen gardens in Japan, but both aim for an orderly and understated look that still serves as a microcosm of nature - rocks representing mountains or islands, for example. That said, I'm no fan of Suzhou gardens; I prefer my greenery to be wild and unmanicured.

I've been to Suzhou, Wuxi and Ningbo, and I really love the many canals, bridges and wutong trees. It probably is the most romantic region of China. The Grand Canal is incredible too. Too bad the Taihu has not been better protected - there are ships carrying construction materials plying the lake all day.

[wuTao]

Actually, I have a feeling that the Japanese aesthetic (including the architecture, which also has very subdued colours) is more influenced by Wu-Yue culture than by any other region in China.

It's been mentioned several times that some elements of Japanese culture are influenced by the Wu-Yue culture, like kimonos. Has this acutually been verified, or is this just conjecture? Is there irrefutable historical proof that kimonos, architectural styles, etc., are influenced by Wu-Yue?

Also, when one talks about Wu-Yue, what are exactly are they talking about? Do they mean the culture of the states of Wu and Yue during the Warring States period, or the state of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, or some other state in a different time period called Wu or Yue?

And just curious... how old are those buildings in the first three pictures that nishishei posted?

Lot of questions, I know...

[Yun]

My view is that Wu-Yue culture already existed in the Spring and Autumn, but only became firmly defined in relation to the north in the Sun-Wu, Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties. It is a culture that values literature and aesthetics, and is comparatively liberal and free-spirited. For example, Lu Ji of the Wu (who went north to serve the Western Jin and was killed in the War of the Princes) wrote his famous Rhyme-Prose on Literature (Wen Fu) that argues that literature should be first and foremost for expressing one's emotions, and not for statecraft or education. This contrasts with the northern scholarly tradition that emphasises political ideology and moral education.

Indeed, throughout history from the Southern Dynasties onwards, the Jiangnan area has been condemned by the conservative northern literati for producing frivolous and smooth scholars who were good at poetry and writing but useless in ruling the empire or propagating Confucian ethical virtues. It was this same Jiangnan elite that always dominated the jinshi examinations, precisely because they were so brilliant at writing poems and essays. In contrast, the northern elite focused on memorising the Classics, just as their ancestors had in the Han.

The Southern Dynasties were known for their Palace-Style (Gongti) erotic love poetry, which even emperors were accomplished at writing. For that reason, southern rulers have been stereotyped as decadent, soft and hedonistic - for example, Chen Shubao of the Chen and Li Yu of the Southern Tang. It's also claimed that Yang Guang (Sui Yangdi) was corrupted by his taste for Jiangnan culture - either that, or Jiangnan culture fit perfectly with a sensuous personality that he already had, hence his ability to appreciate it so much.

[ren]

There are some really good points in this thread, really thought provoking.

The identification with the phoenix more so than with the dragon could be an archaic left over from when the people of the region had the bird as their totem, as opposed to the dragon totem of the north.

Use of sugar in cooking is reminiscent of SE Asian cooking, but then again, Wu-Yue people don't use some of the more pungent ingredients, such as fish sauce.

Linguistical phylogeny-wise, the Wu branch was already a separate branch when Cantonese and Mandarin were the same northern language. If Sinitic can be divided into the first two branches, it would be Wu-Xiang and "Northern Chinese", which would include all southern Chinese dialects except Xiang and Wu and perhaps Min. What this means is that the identity is deep and well established, with the layer of the original Wu and Yue (likely non-Sinitic) and a layer of Chu settlers, and a later migration from the north. By the time northern migrants came into the south enmass, the Wu-Yue region was already heavily populated and so the main thrust of those waves went further south into Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong.

We are a people dying to burst out onto the scene. I too favor a federal system for China where the Wu-Yue region can have it's own political say. The irony of the Chinese nationalists (heavily northern) is that the more they spew their intolerance and arrogance towards non-northern cultures, the more they push others away. I see "CNA" has done a complete make-over, but it's too late.

[AhMan]

so you Wu Yue people are actually proud of your feminine male character? I guess an outsider will have trouble understand this.
What I usually associate with Wu Yue males is that they are completely dominated by their wives.