A Tapestry of a Legendary Land: the Flow and Fluidity of Beauty of Chinese Culture

Haizhou Wang

doi:10.1515/jcfs-2025-0020

Article

A Tapestry of a Legendary Land: the Flow and Fluidity of Beauty of Chinese Culture

Haizhou Wang
Haizhou Wang is a professor of Film Studies at Beijing Film Academy. He serves as the Dean of the Postgraduate Department and the Head of the Library of Beijing Film Academy. He is the deputy president of Chinese Collegial Association for Visual Art and is the chair researcher of the China National Social Science Major Project “The Inheritance and Development of Chinese Artistic Traditions in Contemporary Chinese Films.” His monographs Imagined China: Research on Chinese Film Culture of the 1980s and 110 Years of Chinese Films (1905–2015) have won numerous research awards in film studies in China, including the Outstanding Research Awards in Humanities and Social Science of Institutions of Higher Education by Ministry of Education.

Published/Copyright: May 6, 2025

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From the journal Journal of Chinese Film Studies Volume 5 Issue 1

Abstract

The creation of the dance drama film A Tapestry of a Legendary Land (zhici qinglv, 2024) was inspired by the painting Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains (qianli jiangshangtu). Combining artistic expression means such as dance and film, it promotes the beauty of Chinese culture. Based on the aesthetics in the Huizong period of the Northern Song Dynasty, the film renders the main color tone of “green and blue,” creating a new realm for the modern presentation of the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty on the screen. The film also makes a vivid and elaborate display of splendid chapters like “painting study” and “listening to the rain” with the help of Cai Jing’s postscript and the lifestyle preference of ancient scholars for “listening to the rain,” conveying the concept of the symbiosis of Tian, Di, Ren (heaven, earth and humanity) contained in Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains.

Keywords: Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains ; Song Dynasty; culture; aesthetics

Corresponding author: Haizhou Wang, China Film Culture Institute, Beijing Film Academy, Beijing, China, E-mail: wanghaizhou@bfa.edu.cn

Translated by Xiaolei Yu: School of Foreign Language, University of Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing, China, E-mail: yuxiaolei212@163.com

About the author

Haizhou Wang

Haizhou Wang is a professor of Film Studies at Beijing Film Academy. He serves as the Dean of the Postgraduate Department and the Head of the Library of Beijing Film Academy. He is the deputy president of Chinese Collegial Association for Visual Art and is the chair researcher of the China National Social Science Major Project “The Inheritance and Development of Chinese Artistic Traditions in Contemporary Chinese Films.” His monographs Imagined China: Research on Chinese Film Culture of the 1980s and 110 Years of Chinese Films (1905–2015) have won numerous research awards in film studies in China, including the Outstanding Research Awards in Humanities and Social Science of Institutions of Higher Education by Ministry of Education.

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the major project of the National Social Science Foundation of China in 2020, “Research on the Value Inheritance and Innovative Development of Chinese Artistic and Cultural Traditions in Contemporary Chinese Films” (Project No.: 20ZD18).

References

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Postscript

The originally article entitled 《只此青绿》: 舞动的中华文化之美 was published in Dangdai Dianying 当代电影(Contemporary Cinema) 2024, (12): 31–34Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2025-03-17

Accepted: 2025-03-19

Published Online: 2025-05-06

Published in Print: 2025-04-28

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcfs-2025-0020

Keywords for this article

Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains; Song Dynasty; culture; aesthetics