In addition to these three items, martial arts, Chinese medicine, Chinese painting and so on can actually be regarded as national quintessence. I remember reading an article saying that there are more than ten kinds of national quintessence recognized by China.
Let's take a look at the three national quintessences:
1, Peking Opera
Peking Opera has the greatest influence and the widest audience among all kinds of operas in China.
Peking Opera was formed during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. In the fifty-five years of Qianlong, four Huizhou classes went to Beijing. They cooperated with other artists and absorbed some local folk tunes. Through constant communication and integration, Peking Opera was finally formed.
During the Republic of China, Peking Opera reached its peak, and the four great Hua Dan, represented by Mei Lanfang, had a wide influence in that year, and were called "national operas" at that time. Even at that time, the influence of Peking Opera had gone abroad, and the Peking Opera performance system named after Mei Lanfang was regarded as the representative of the oriental drama performance system and one of the three major performance systems in the world.
Step 2 cut paper
Paper-cutting is a folk culture and art, which uses scissors or carving knives to cut and carve patterns on paper for decoration. China people are obsessed with paper-cutting because it is a part of Spring Festival culture. Every year before the Spring Festival, the general public will stick paper-cut works on the windows, which are called window grilles by the people.
Paper-cutting has a broad mass base among the people, and almost all ethnic groups have paper-cutting art in their lives. Paper cutting has a long history. It is generally believed that folk paper-cutting was formed in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The custom of paper-cutting at that time was somewhat different from today. Mainly used for evoking souls, it is a kind of yellow paper money used by modern people to go to the grave. After continuous development, paper-cutting was fully mature in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and both the government and the people had the habit of paper-cutting decoration.
3. Calligraphy
Literally, calligraphy means the stipulation of writing, which is a rule of writing method. Chinese characters have a long history in China. It is said that Cang Xie created Chinese characters, and then our civilization continued.
Calligraphy is mainly written with brush, which has a great influence, and neighboring countries such as Japan and South Korea are also deeply influenced by it.
Calligraphy has certain regularity, including writing, brushwork, stippling, structure and layout. The whole calligraphy works pay attention to brushwork and artistic conception, and sometimes even the overall layout is more important than words.
There are many traditional arts in China, but few of them can be called national quintessence. In some places, distinctive ones, such as changing faces, unfortunately lost because the audience was not wide enough. What can really be called the quintessence of China must be influential and well-known.