Life aesthetics has become a key hot word nowadays, tea ceremony, flower way, incense way, piano way, calligraphy and painting, food, Hanfu, Ming style furniture, collection, homesthouses and community planning, etc., all reflect the elements and fashion of Chinese life aesthetics, which is a kind of consciousness and conscious reproduction of Chinese life traditions.

Liu Yuedi is an advocate of life aesthetics, a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In the newly published book "The Aesthetics of Chinese Life", Liu Yuedi shares the creative aesthetic experience of Chinese people in food, leisure, appreciation, utensils and other aspects, and analyzes their internal pursuit of love, morality, etc. The author also presents the experience of Chinese paintings, solemn rites, exquisite ornaments and other contemporary life with 150 pictures. Responding to the theme of "aesthetic is life". The author also returns to the classical literature, from the collection of classics, hundreds of schools, to the metaphysics of the Wei and Jin dynasties, the short works of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the poems of the Tang and Song dynasties, and even the miscellaneous books, discovering the long tradition contained in food, leisure, appreciation, and artifacts.

Recently, "Living Color and Fragrance: The Aesthetics of Chinese Life" New book sharing meeting was held in Beijing. Scholar Gong Pengcheng, Vice President of Chinese Writers Association Li Jingze, editor-in-chief of China Book Review Yang Ping, and actor Li Yapeng shared the meeting.

What is life aesthetics and why should we advocate life aesthetics in China?

Liu Yuedi said: "A good life is two kinds of life, one is a good life, one is a beautiful life, a good life is a quality of life, but a beautiful life is a quality of life." Life aesthetics hopes to use the beautiful life to improve the good life, so it is not only a knowledge of aesthetic life, but also a happy way to pursue a good life. In recent years, the life aesthetics in tea ceremony, incense, flower, Qin, Hanfu revival, Chinese clothing tailoring, delicious food, classical furniture, ancient and modern collection, travel, homestayings, intangible heritage protection, public art, aesthetic education, art authorization, creative industry, games and animation, interior design, real estate development, community planning and even a city's top-level design, There have been many aestheticians of life. Chengdu, for example, has put forward a slogan since 2018, called "There is an aesthetic of life called Chengdu", and 100 beautiful communities will be evaluated every year. After 2005, the latest trend of international aesthetics is "aesthetics of life", that is, aesthetics of everyday life. When I say that we can all be artists of life, it is to pull art down while pulling our life up, and I think that is the fundamental purpose of the aesthetics of life."

Gong Pengcheng reviewed the short history of life aesthetics: "In the late 1970s, Taiwan began to promote the aesthetics of life, consciously to find 'what kind of beauty belongs to a Chinese style', such as flower arrangement, in the early days, we only looked at Japanese flower arrangement, when the Chinese people had not arranged flowers for a long time, our generation then returned to the Ming Dynasty Yuan Zhonglang's 'Bottle History', and then combed the history of Chinese flower arrangement from documents and ancient paintings." It also includes the New Year Festival - how do Chinese celebrate the New Year? So we know that the Spring Festival has special humanistic significance, and how to present this meaning, etc., all belong to the category of life aesthetics."

"Chinese aesthetics, compared with Western aesthetics, has several outstanding characteristics. First, natural beauty is more certain than Western aesthetics; The second is the beauty of humanity, the beauty of humanity is the beauty of speech, the beauty of clothing, the beauty of horses and chariots, the beauty of etiquette, which has long been seen in the pre-Qin literature. Of course, the aesthetics of life also need to look at the customs in society to see whether it is elegant. However, in the past, our aesthetic training was Western-style, so there was little progress in aesthetic theory, and another situation was that "from concept to concept, from literature to literature", our scholars could not know and do the unity, he in addition to reading, he was extremely picky about dressing and eating, not to mention playing, singing, riding and archery. So it's important to re-establish a kind of learning about life that can be grounded, that can really grow out of our lives." Gong Pengcheng talk.

Li Jingze believes that this book really opens up a life that includes each of us, and at the same time is a very broad thing in the academic sense - that is, the so-called "Tao" of things. Li Jingze said that the "Tao" revealed and summarized in the book "The Aesthetics of Chinese Life" is "on our land, between the huge landscape, between the diversity of things", so the Chinese people say that the Tao is everywhere, "you eat very delicate things, is the Tao, but in fact, there is also a 'Tao'". Li Jingze said that adding life behind aesthetics makes it "life aesthetics", "this is indeed the creation of the Chinese people, and to a certain extent, it is the creation of Yue Di." And the Chinese "life aesthetics" way, because it is itself the unity of knowledge and action, so on the talk and talk, down is grounded, "at the same time is digging the root, but also toward the future."

Thus, Li Jingze said, "What is a beautiful life, a good life?" This is a small topic, but it's also a big topic. In fact, many, many things and many, many phenomena of life are actually a consequence of not learning life aesthetics well, or not thinking well about life aesthetics."

Book critic Yang Ping, vice president of China Book Critics Association, defines the aesthetics of life as a spirit, an idea, and a state.

In the 1980s, Yang Ping had already participated in the process of contemporary aesthetic translation and construction. He said, "The first meaning is delicacy, which is how to live delicately." It is a refined person in life, and it will certainly reflect this spirit of refinement in work; The second is philosophy. What philosophy? It's the idea of a slow pace. If we do and live according to the book "Chinese Aesthetics of Life", our pace of life will definitely slow down; A state of directing your life away from practical troubles, thus achieving a kind of spiritual freedom. Because everyone has that inner drive and inner disposition of grace. These are the three meanings that we can take from this book and use to educate ourselves."

So, as a way of daily life, how to implement the aesthetics of life into people's lives? Li Yapeng said: "About 11 years ago, that is, in 2010, I completely laid off from my previous performing arts industry and retired from the circle. In 2012, we registered and established the Academy Chinese Culture Development Foundation in the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau. One of our aims is to revive traditional culture in life and revive the influence of traditional culture. In my opinion, the highest manifestation of culture should be literal, which can directly affect people's life, words and deeds, and the aesthetics of life is a cultural scene that he wants to pursue."

Liu Yuedi also shared the case of practicing the aesthetics of life that he encountered: "A scholar went to France, met a sweeping worker, and the sweeping worker invited the scholar to visit his attic, and the scholar saw that all the places in his attic were pasted with the paintings he bought by the Seine River, which was such a noble sweeping worker." And I myself was in a small town in the south, and I suddenly entered a small courtyard of an old man. Every day, the old man collected beautiful stones by the river to decorate his own small space, so the aesthetics of life is not the aesthetics of luxury goods. And the more a society and economy goes down, the more the aesthetics of life develop, like Muji, which was originally a small room in a shop in Japan, maybe at that time Japanese people liked luxury goods, no one liked the simple style of Muji, but now times are different."

Among the students are doctors, architects and people from all walks of life. Through these practice processes, people can "see a little bit of the beauty of building and structuring life from these projects that contain beauty and wisdom of the ancients". To enjoy the beauty of life, you need to practice kung fu.