Guanxi in China

October 18, 2010

I first learned about Guanxi from the China Law Blog, which quoted the Silicon Hutong Blog.

After reading the post at the China Law Blog, I did more research and also watched a few videos on the subject.

I learned that Guanxi is one of those complexities of Chinese culture that does not translate easily.

There are several elements and layers to Guanxi. First, Guanxi are based on a Confucian hierarchy of familial relationships, long-term friendships, classmates, and schoolmates and to those no stranger – Chinese or foreign – will ever have access. Source: Silicon Hutong

Guanxi developed over the millennia because China did not have a stable and effective legal system. 

In fact, the legal system in China today is relatively new and made its appearance after the 1982 Chinese Constitution was written as the law of the land.

Since 1982, there have been several amendments to the Constitution as China adapts its evolving legal system.

In time, this legal system may replace Guanxi since business law modeled on Western law with Chinese characteristic has developed faster than civil law.

There are a several opinions about Guanxi.  I learned that Guanxi is similar to a gate that opens to a network of human beings but it isn’t that simple.

Merchants in China needed a way to avoid disputes and problems in the absence of a well-developed legal system. To survive, this complex system called Guanxi developed with many components such as partnerships, trust, credibility, etc.

Maintaining Guanxi is different than how relationships are maintained in other cultures. The embedded video with this post offers a more detailed explanation.

The China Law Blog copied the post from the Silicon Hutong Blog.  The post on the China Law Blog had more than twenty comments and it was a lively discussion worth reading if you are interested in discovering more on this topic.

To learn more about Chinese culture, see Honor

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Quyi – Chinese Singing and Storytelling

October 17, 2010

As one of the older performing arts in China, Quyi is rooted in China’s history and culture, which developed during the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty.

 Chinese Quyi focuses on how the “Body Talks”. 

 During a performance, the actors pay attention to the use of the hands, eyes, body and step.  The focus of this performing art consists of narrative storytelling using staged monologues and dialogues.

It is mostly a spoken performance from one to four people. Do not confuse it with Chinese opera.

Hand gestures are used to present the story’s plot while the eyes are the most important part of a Quyi performance. The eyes show anger, sorrow and joy. Using the eyes in this way is an art in itself.

Since there are different schools of Quyi, the hand, eyes, body and steps are used differently from school to school.

There are fifty-six minorities in China and minority produced Quyi varies and is different from the Han majority.

In fact, since Quyi is a vital part of China’s minority culture, soon after the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Chinese Quyi Association was organized. Today, more than 3,500 members belong and the association publishes a Quyi magazine.

Sources: Cultural Traditions of China, China Fact Tours, and the Ministry of Culture of the PRC

Also see Jingyun Dagu, Beijing’s Story Telling Opera

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 5/5

October 16, 2010


A few Chinese intellectuals pleaded for a more open approach for knowledge. This took place a few decades before the clash between China and the West during the Qing Dynasty.

One Chinese scholar, Chiang Siu Chung, said that the Confucian texts were history and Confucius may be a true guide to life but the time was past to continue following this old curriculum of study.

Two years before this scholar’s death in 1799, he wrote a letter that said that history should no longer concern itself merely with the past but should use the past to reform the present and to look into the future. He predicted the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

Near Chiang Sui Chung’s death, China was about to come face to face with another culture whose view of history was diametrically opposed to Chinese tradition.

The Europeans with their Judea-Christian heritage believed that history had a purpose — that it was leading toward an appointed end and they would be the winners.

When The Chinese first met the Westerners, the Chinese had a dark description of the Europeans as a savage people who didn’t just come to sell but came to impose their ideas, their religions and their will on everyone they met.

This era culminated in the Opium Wars, which meant the Europeans wanted to get as many Chinese addicted to Opium as possible.

China was defeated by the very technology they had developed centuries earlier because they had stopped in their development. Unable to cope with the pressure from the West, the Chinese government collapsed and the Western Imperialists treated the Chinese people as if they were animals in their own land.

Then a great time of revolution had arrived as the I-Ching, the book of changes, says. In the I-Ching, there is a hexagram titled revolution.

In a revolution, the I-Ching says there are two mistakes that must be avoided. You must not move with excessive haste nor use excessive ruthlessness against the people.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 4

 

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 4/5

October 16, 2010

Marco Polo had no doubt that China was the world’s greatest civilization. He wrote that if the Chinese were war like, they would conquer the world.

He said, “Thank goodness, they are not.”

During the Song Dynasty, the standard of living in China was the highest in the world.

The key concept of Chinese civilization was the search for harmony and during the Song Dynasty this balance was achieved for a few centuries.

Writing was considered a tool that provided access to the ancestors until writing became civilization itself.

 

However, the way China saw the world started to change after Chinese Admiral Zheng He sailed from China with a huge armada in the fifteenth century.

Zheng He’s ships were eventually broken up and the logbooks destroyed.

Western thinkers have a simple explanation that the end of Zheng He’s explorations was proof that the Chinese were backward and ignorant and had no desire for new knowledge.

However, there is another explanation.

After all, at the time, the Chinese were the most advanced technological nation on the globe.

Therefore, perhaps it is a difference of how different civilizations believed technology should be used and the Chinese may have realized that their real interests were in China — not in the world.

In Europe, however, Western philosophers, leaders and writers were not concerned with perfecting the past but how to control the world’s future.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 3

 

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

History’s Meaning of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 3/5

October 15, 2010

In the eighth century AD, all roads in Asia led to Xian. It was the greatest city in the world. Rivaled only by Bagdad and Constantinople.

At this time, foreigners were allowed into China for the first time and they were kept in their own area away from the center of power.

In the western part of Xian in the foreign enclave, there was a great mix of cultures.

To the Chinese, the Tang Dynasty was the most golden of all ages for Chinese poetry.

For the Chinese, composing poetry is one of the central ideas of civilization.

A famous Silk Road poet talked about in the video said that the people of China could face any test as long as their leaders treated them humanely.

The Tang Dynasty ended in chaos and anarchy like so many in China’s history but was followed by an even greater Dynasty.

Four hundred miles from Xian lay Kaifeng. In the 11th century AD, this city was the capital of what is considered the peak of Chinese civilization, the Song Dynasty.

During the Song Dynasty, the invention of printing and inward development changed China. This would guide Asia for another thousand years.

In Kaifeng, as everywhere in China, several decades of Communist rule have not cut the ancient beliefs.

Reverence for ancestors, filial piety, and Confucian virtues are all coming back into the open now that freedom of worship (of the old ways) is guaranteed.

Like its medicine, Chinese cooking is based on harmony and balance – the old themes of Chinese culture. In fact, the oldest restaurant in the world first opened in 1153 AD and is still open for business in Kaifeng.

Return to History of the Mandate of Heaven – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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