looking east

The argument that there is no culture of innovation in China is quite often cited in the literature. For the purpose of my thesis, I am mainly using this argument to provoke a discussion. However, the observation itself is not totally arbitrary. Many Westerners in China seem to perceive that there is a great interest in copying and adopting Western standards, often without respecting international copyrights. Although there are many ways how this can be discussed, most of which using the importance of piracy for economic development as their central argument, I would like to use Chinese art as an example to show that there is actually a Chinese tradition of copying and repeating as a way of self-improvement.

Have you ever asked yourself why many Chinese paintings tend to look similar?

(Image source: www.chineseartpaintings.com)

“Many of Wang Yuanqi’s compositions resemble one another closely, and his repertoire of motifs is rather limited. Almost invariably, he used a group of trees on a riverbank in the foreground, a bridge, groups of buildings between trees, or a flight of steps leading up to a monastery in the saddle of a high mountain. The size of his motifs hardly increased with the size of his scrolls. In large paintings he simply added more motifs. Yet the master never worked mechanically. Seamlessly joining the parts of his composition together, he turns each one into an individual creation. The greatness of his art lies not in novel formal inventions but in the endlessly varied execution of familiar motifs. ” Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things (p. 205)

Chinese art is not mainly about the big picture, but about the details, the control of the brush, the concentration of ink, or the absorptivity of the paper. The artist is free to produce a variety of styles and forms of a repeating subject. Children learning calligraphy, are usually encouraged to copy the calligraphy of one of the great masters like Wang Xizhi over and over again to their improve proficiency. For Westerners, this migh look like a lack of innovation-mindedness, for the Chinese however, the innovation lies in the details.

I believe that a similar pattern can be observed in technology today. Viewed from the West, it seems that there are a lot of copycats of Western innovations produced in China. Since Chinese traditionally believe that copying great examples is the best way to learn and improve themselves, this is not much of a surprise. However, dont’t forget that the innovation might lie in the details.