Tea, Fragrance, and Music

Ephemeral Arts and the Formation of Scholar-Artist Communities in Northern Song China
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-90-04-52890-1
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 9, 244 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 531 g

Reihe: Ancient Languages and Civilizations

This book explores one of the central questions among many disciplines: how communities are formed. It investigates this question through the perspectives of scholar-artist communities in Northern Song China. You will learn how some of the then popular ephemeral artistic practices, such as whisking tea, burning aromatic substances, and playing and listening to qin music, were performed. Through these practices related sensory experiences were generated. The formation process of communities invovled many other aspects such as the interplay among people, materials, ephemeral arts, and sensory experiences, which is hard to identify in pure textual sources.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Li, Kin Sum

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of maps, figures, and tables

Abbreviations

Chronology, dating, protagonists, and conventions

Introduction

1 Cultures of tea, fragrance, and qin music today

2 Key terms, main arguments, and approaches

3 Community formation and scholar-artists

4 Community formation involving people, materials, experiences, and ephemeral practices

1 Cultural construct

1 Relationship between tea, fragrance, and music

2 Tea

3 Fragrances and aromatic substances

4 Music from the qin and the prosody

2 Economic construct

1 Tea and utensils

2 Aromatic substances

3 Qin

4 Transportation

3 Artistic construct

1 Literati gatherings as constructed in paintings

2 Forming their own visual language

3 Tea in literary works

4 Aromatic substances in literary works

5 Qin in literary works

Conclusion

1 Summary

2 The formation of scholar-artist communities

3 Methodological reflections on the history of art

4 Impact on contemporary issues

Bibliography

Appendix 1: Tea utensils

Appendix 2: Images of water at different temperatures

Appendix 3: Process of one of the simulation experiments of tea-tipping

Appendix 4: Length of time, whisking frequency, and angle of inclination of whisking

Glossary

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Kin Sum (Sammy) LI, PhD (Princeton 2015), is Associate Professor at the Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University. He has published articles on the history of mass production in the ancient world and he attempts to study industrial art with the assistance of modern technology. Recently he develops an interest in the history of tea cultures.