Page 270 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

post-and-frame structure which, unlike the roof, is readily adapt-
able to modern needs and materials.
After liberation in 1949, Chinese official architecture came for a
time under the influence of the Soviet wedding-cake style, which
left its mark on a group of public buildings put up in the 1950s, no-
tably the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution.
This style has since been repudiated on economic no less than ide-
ological grounds. Movement toward acceptance of what is
loosely called the international modern style has been slow and
cautious. Beginning with the Peking Children's Hospital (1954),
it has been most successful where a major structural challenge had
to be met, for instance in the Peking Workers' Gymnasium (1961)
and the Capital Gymnasium (1971). The Great Hall of the People
in Peking, seating ten thousand and completed in 1959 in the as-
tonishingly short time of eleven months, is less remarkable for its
style, which is conservative, than for its vast size, the classical
dignity of its proportions, and its success as a symbol of the en-
during strength of the new China.
DECORATIVE ARTS The decorative arts of the last hundred years reveal the same un-
resolved conflict between new alien styles and stagnant traditional
ones. Although the level of craftsmanship remained high, the por-
celain, lacquer, and carvedjade produced before 1950 was deriva-
tive and uninspired. Liberation, however, brought with it a vig-
orous revival of traditional crafts, fostered initially by the Peking
Handicrafts Research Institute. To take but one example, in the
Peking Jade Studios alone there are today fifteen hundred carvers
at work; young apprentices learn secrets once jealously guarded
by old master craftsmen, and together they are producing work of
a technical quality probably higher than at any time since the reign
of Ch'ien-lung.
Much of the output of these workshops is produced for the ex-
port market, which demands chiefly traditional designs such as
the ivory carving of Ch'ang O flying to the moon (Fig. 305) with
the elixir to become a goddess—a technical achievement to match
any in the Ch'ing Dynasty. Under Mao we were told that the leg-
endary heroine was "rebelling against feudal oppression and long-
ing for a good life, as she flies skyward." In the post-Mao era these
well-loved themes no longer require such a crudely politicaljusti-
fication. Ch'ang O can be admired for her own sake—by women
especially, who see her as a symbol of their liberation. At the same
time some craft industries, such as the great ceramics factory at
Ching-te-chen, are being increasingly mechanised, creating the
same sort of design problems that faced Europe and America in
the nineteenth century.
PAINTING The painting of the last hundred years presents perhaps the most
vivid illustration of the tensions between old ideas and new, native
styles and foreign, that arc shaping modern China. By the nine-
teenth century, the court painters, once so highly honoured, had
sunk to a status hardly higher than that of palace servants, and
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