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Information on Chinese Arts and Crafts

The fifth aspect is "to convey truth with skills." It implies that skills also contain ideological factors and attention should be paid to both ideas and articles so that the functional operation and technical labor that seem inferior can be combined with doctrines and theories that seem superior. As early as in the pre-Qin Dynasty, this concept was formed, of which the influence of the Taoist School thought was the greatest. The Confucian School had similar ideas, such as "to convey truth with writings." Though the relationship between theory and practice was often not properly dealt with in the Chinese history and the trend of looking down upon practice and stressing on theory was widely spread, theory has never been more important than practice in the daily life of ordinary people.

The sixth aspect is "to balance outward grace and solid worth," which means the unification of content and form in nature as well as the unification of function and decoration in handicraft articles. Many examples can be found in the traditional arts and crafts of China. Viewed from the general development of man's culture, decorative art is an aspect of great importance. However, the emphasis of the unification of content and form on the on the one hand and the unification of function and decoration on the other can avoid the trend of dropping into formalism of paying attention to function exclusively. This is the outcome of the Confucian influence of "balancing out ward grace and solid worth." It requests people to maintain forever the orientation of balancing outward grace and solid worth in the respects of way of life, code of conducts and the relationship between man-made articles and man.

What is mentioned above is the wisdom of the traditional arts and crafts basically summed up from the mainstream thoughts of imperial nobles or scholars. However, the wisdom of the handicrafts of ordinary people is more excellent and richer. It has its own independent system often contained in man-made articles, pithy formulas (often in rhyme), legends and stories. Viewed from the process of the ancient history of China, the development of traditional arts and crafts is basically normal and healthy. Though some over-elaborated tastes and likings did occur during some periods in the history, the traditional arts and crafts of China, from the viewpoint of the whole history, were all in conformity with the development of the productivity at that time and expressed temperance and real aesthetic quality and style.