Games - Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar

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	Games - Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar

The Four Arts of the Chinese Scholar, otherwise known as siyi, is a term used to describe four main requirements of the Chinese scholar gentleman. They are qin (guqin), qi (the game of go), shu (calligraphy) and hua (painting).

Origin of the concept

Although the individual parts of the concept have very long histories indeed as activities befitting a learned person, the earliest written source putting the four together is Zhang Yanyuan's Fashu Yaolu from the Tang dynasty, and as "the four arts" the concept is first found in the Xianqing ouqi by Li Yu (1610 - 1680).

Outline

In china to be a scholar is to be an artist. Chinese culture insists that the marks of an educated and 'Proper' individuals classical training has in it components of what they call qin, qi, shu, and hua. These are translated roughly into "Instrumentation, Chess, Calligraphy, and Painting. For one to be considered scholarly, or a man of the arts, then those are in fact the arts in which to immerse ones self. The chinese ideals of an educated man are a test and demonstration of the individuals strength in reason, creation, expression and dexterity, and thus rate highly in china both today and in ancient times.

All of these arts combined made for a platform by which scholars could compete against each others creativity, expression, ideas, and thinking power. They created a means by which men would judge each other beyond the worth of their possessions. A chinese pauper who excelled in the arts was as respected as the noble who equalled him. These four arts created a culture in which art flourished freely among the populous.

Qin

Qin 琴 refers to the musical instrument of the literati, the Guqin. Although it exclusively meant this instrument in ancient times, it has now come to mean all musical instruments, but essentially it refers to guqin only considering the context.

The guqin is a seven string zither that owes its invention to chinese society of some 3000 years ago. During the reign of the Imperial china, a scholar was expected to play the guqin. Guqin was explored as an art-form as-well as a science, and scholars strove to both play it well and create texts on its manipulation. guqin notation was invented some 1500 years ago, and has too this day not drastically changed. Some books contain musical pieces that were written and mastered more than 500 years ago. Guqin is so influential that it even made its way into space. The spacecraft voyager launched by the U.S. in 1977 contained a vinyl style record of a guqin piece named 'Flowing Water'. Guqin is so ancient that in fact its name breaks down to 'gu' (old) 'qin' (musical instrument).

Qi

Qi 棋 refers to a board game, which is now called WeiQi, literally meaning "surrounding game". Current definitions of Qi covers a wide range of board games and given that also in Classical Chinese qi could refer to other games, some argue that the qi in the four arts could refer to xiangqi which is, however, a much less popular game.

The game of go is perhaps even more ancient in China than even the ancient buskers of the empire. Go's early history is highly spectacle but some myths do exist about its existence. One of which assumes that Go was an ancient fortune telling device used by chinese cosmologists to simulate the universe's relationship to an individual. Another suggests that emperor Yao (approx. 2255 BCE) invented it to enlighten his son. There is even a comical reference to go made in encyclopedia Britannia that says little more than go was invented in 2306 BCE. Certainly go begins to take hold around the 6th century, when Confucius mentioned go in his masterpiece 'Analects'.

Go is a game in which a pair of players alternates placing black and white stones on a playing surface of 19x19. Certain rules govern the plane of the board and make for a game that has a complexity that is unmatched to date. The rules are, that surrounded stones will be removed from play and that the game must never repeat a position twice. The game is then scored by way of counting the empty playable points that each player has encircled, with captured pieces filling in territory of the same color. The nature of the game leads to a different place than western chess does, and lends to a game that is more about mutual survival than complete dominance. Importance is placed on remembering local board situations that result in a neutral position. Players opt to make moves named "Joseki's" that result in equal gain for both sides instead of seeking dominance and destruction of the opponents side. Advantages are gained subtly, by placing the opponents in situations that result in him or her having to concede some points in favor of avoiding complete destruction. Go texts of both modern and ancient kinds are prized among modern chinese go professionals, as seen below in the translations of an ancient chinese go strategy book.

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