When I was a child, I read a story in which a man sold ancient paintings. One of the paintings he was selling was of a shepherd boy trying to pull a buffalo across a bridge.
Facing toward the buffalo and tilting his body backward to pull the buffalo, the shepherd boy's strength was vividly depicted. A passerby appreciated this painting very much, but the asking price was quite high. He did not have enough money with him at the time, so he asked the vendor to put the painting aside, so that he could buy it after going home to get the rest of the money.
After hanging the painting and taking a closer look at it, the vendor found that the painting lacked the rope that the boy needed to pull the buffalo. He regarded it as a defect and picked up a brush pen to paint a rope on the painting.
As soon as the customer came back, he noticed the rope added by the vendor and did not want to buy the painting anymore. He said to the vendor, "The reason I wanted to buy this painting was that I could feel the existence of the rope without it having been painted on the painting."
About a year ago, I visited "The Collection of Renowned Contemporary Chinese Painters and Calligraphers' Works Exhibition" held by Ms. Dai Meiling and her son Dai Dongni.
At the exhibition, I was very impressed with a piece by Li Keran depicting a buffalo. With just a few strokes, a shepherd boy riding on a buffalo's back was painted vividly. Although the painter did not use a single stroke to paint the water, observers could truly feel that the buffalo was crossing a brook and was just coming out of the water.
It dawned on me that the Chinese have a unique way of thinking, which has led to large differences between Eastern and Western thought and logic.
When studying trigonometry in junior high school, I learned that there was no need for us to draw every point of a sine curve.
When applying the "Five-point Construction Method," one could simply use five points to construct the curve. In college, while studying signal processing, I learned the Nyquist theorem which states that one needs only two points and the frequency to reconstruct a sine curve. This sampling theory is the foundation for signal digitalization and telecommunication with telephones and mobile phones today.
Since ancient times, the Chinese have had "discrete" thinking. The structure of Chinese language and thought do not follow Western formal logic. Instead, one simply describes several points. As to how to connect the points to form the curve, that would be the reader's business. As an old Chinese idiom states, "one should say what one is supposed to say, and nothing more."
Therefore, in terms of information theory or computer jargon, it can be said that the structure of Chinese language and thought belongs to the category of "compressed codes." As a result of this characteristic, among the documents printed in the five official languages by the United Nations, the Chinese version is always the thinnest.
Anyone who has studied modern science should know that when describing something, the more specifically it is described, the narrower its scope becomes.
For instance, when describing "hot water," in addition to "water" one adds another word to modify its attribute. As a result, "hot water" is more specific than "water," but the scope it covers is much narrower, and thus excludes "warm water" and "cold water."
The Classic of the Way and Virtue ( Dao De Jing ), the foundation of the Daoist (Taoist) religion, consists of 81 chapters in which each chapter only talks about one point. Superficially, it seems as though there is no connection among the points in chapters and sections. Readers are thus required to construct continuity through their own enlightenment. The same can also be said for Confucius' Analects.
With regard to these examples, one can see a similar concept in traditional Chinese paintings, in which some spaces are left blank purposely so as to allow viewers to construct a complete picture by their own imagination and enlightenment. However, it is very rare to see any blanks in Western oil paintings.
If we do not try to understand the characteristics of Chinese thought based on this culture of spiritual cultivation, the divine beauty of Chinese culture will never be presented.
In other words, to showcase the essence of Chinese culture, which is full of myths and legends, we cannot simply rely on the perfection of technology on the surface. We need to further understand the cultivator's way of thinking and the content of spiritual cultivation that intertwines with the culture.
Traditional Chinese paintings are made up of lines, while oil paintings rely on the contrast of brightness. In depicting the same thing, people of the East would focus on the expression of connotative meanings, while Westerners would pay more attention to outward beauty and technical perfection.
Western dance requires strict accuracy of movements, while traditional Chinese dance actually requires something different—something difficult to put in words. The requirements on movements in traditional Chinese dance may not be as strict as those of Western dance, but perhaps this leaves more room for the imagination. On the other hand, the performer's state of mind is revealed through the demeanour of his or her face and body movements.
Upon watching the New Tang Dynasty TV's New Year Spectacular, I was fascinated by the magnificence of the backdrops, the splendor of the costumes, and the actors' great skill. I often associated it with the Chinese nation's 5,000-year civilization and its traditional culture—a culture full of myths and legends, and based on morality and compassion.
The abundant imagination and the marvelous music, as well as backdrops surging on the stage, made me feel lost in time and space, as if I had returned to the splendid Tang Dynasty and flown up to heaven to pay tribute to the Buddha in the dignified divine world.
The impact of the Spectacular did not merely penetrate my senses, but went much further, resonating deep in my soul. The Spectactular revives our intrinsic human nature—something difficult to describe with words. Aside from the New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) performers, I have never seen any other artistic group express such a profound and vivid understanding and interpretation of traditional Chinese culture.
I think this is why the NTDTV New Year Spectacular can uniquely help those who really want to understand Chinese culture.
