Customer Reviews

Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art.

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This is one of the clearest and most insightful examinations of ancient Chinese aesthetics and related philosophical and philogical materials that has been produced in the English language. We owe Prof. Ledderose a great debt of gratitude for having taken the care to lay out in such a readable volume the gist of a pragmatic approach to the creation of art and artifact that came to predominate throughout thousands of years of Chinese culture. His examination of the modular construction of the Chinese written language is compelling. The book should be required reading for students of any and all disciplines that begin with the phrase "traditional Chinese", be they students of medicine, martial arts, meditation, music, painting, or any other of a long list of subjects that have been influenced by the approach to thought and logic that is revealed in its pages.

To a reader not from China, Ledderose gives an eloquent and graceful exposition of thousands of years of Chinese art. Within this, he considers Chinese script to be an intrinsic art form. Millennia ago, China made this decisive choice for the written form of their language. Whereas in the Middle East and thence in Europe, alphabets were the other preference. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage of the script is that each symbol must be memorised for its meaning and pronunciation. But by decoupling a symbol from its sound, Chinese scripts from centuries or millennia ago can still be mostly correctly read. Ledderose makes the point that as pronunciations change, or political boundaries change, alphabet-based writings tend to undergo changes. Hence the fracturing of Latin into the various European languages after the Roman empire fell. These are good points that Ledderose makes. Though he also acknowledges that alphabets are far easier for the user to learn.

Most of the book describes other art forms in China. Accompanied by many photos, including several in colour, that illustrate examples of these forms. Examples shown date back to the Bronze Age, as in seals used by nobles. Even then, the artistry was intricate and meticulous.