Scholar-official by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The "Chinese scholar" is one of the traditional male ideals of Chinese culture.
Particular attributes the ideal Chinese scholar would have include:
It is in a sense sad (or awesome) that the computer has essentially replaced, or one may argue, enhanced beyong recognition, all of the traditional four arts, to the point that Ciro can't touch anything that is not a computer. Sometimes the old arts live on particularly closely though, e.g. in computer music, computer graphics and computer Go.
Chinese scholar house by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Video 1.
Confucian Scholar's House by Asian Art Museum (2009)
Source. The only video on YouTube showing the house of a scholar!? It is alas about Korean scholars, but the concept is basically the same.
Big collection of a bunch of ghost stories. 90% of them involve some dude dating a beautiful ghost woman or animal that can shapeshift as a woman.
Organized into 12 chapeters as seen on the Chinese wiki: zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/聊齋志異#章節
Figure 1.
1935 edition of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
. Source.
Erhu by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
A blind erhu street performer playing in Jingzhou, Hubei (2006)
Source. Playing the erhu is a traditional occupation for blind people in China, a notable example being Abing.
Video 1.
Suwu herding sheep played by Song Fei (2017)
Source.
Video 2.
The 12 Most Famous Erhu Melodies in China (2021)
Source. TODO transcribe list.
Video 1.
High Mountain and Flowing Water performed on the guzheng by Xiang SiHua (2000)
Source.
Video 2.
Suwu herding sheep performed on the erhu by Song Fei (2017)
Source.
Video 3.
Ambush from ten sides performed on the pipa by Jiaju Shen (2017)
Source.
Video 4.
White snow in sunny spring performed on the pipa by Liu Dehai
. Source.
Video 5.
Dance of the Yi People performed on the pipa by Liu Dehai
. Source.
Video 6.
Wang Jin beats Gao Qiu theme music from The Water Margin featuring a suona solo
. Source.
Guqin by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 2.
11th century painting of a guqin recital
. Source.
Figure 3.
Stringless guqin fan painting by Feng Chaoran (1943)
Stolen traight from www.silkqin.com/10ideo.htm on silkqin.com:
Wind in the pines and a babbling brook are nature's melody. A qin was brought along, but there is no need to play it
The The Gateless Barrier vibe and Chinese naturalism is just awesome.
Four Beauties by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
A modern rendition of the four beauties
. Source. TODO we need a decent older one with CC BY-SA, and illustrating their attributes! Wikimedia failed me.
Dragon boat by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Things to do:
Video 1.
Dragon Boat Festival race day in Hong Kong by South China Morning Post (2018)
Source.

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