Chinese scholar by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
On Wikipedia we only find the term Scholar-official. But the idea of the ancient Chinese scholar is a bit wider as a concept, and even people who were not trying to be officials could thrive to follow certain aspects of the scholar way of life.
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.

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