On Lying

Woyou is an aesthetic activity of China in ancient times. From creation angle, it is the preparation stage of creation for the image synthesis which contains the appreciation of Shanshui; from appreciation angle, it is an aesthetic activity from appreciating beauty to achieving Dao. Woyou had a long history, it first appeared in the Taoist classics Wenzi, which used it to describe a state of integration with Dao. The ancients reckon that human being’s life were manipulated by Jing, Qi and Shen, and the posture of lying was easy for them to wander around by spirit. So Taoism created cultivation techniques like Cunsi and Shouyi to keep concentration and prolonging life. Images were needed during the process, which included the hung paintings inside the room and imagination of the gymnosophists. It edified the Woyou of Zong Bing at his old time, who was a painter in Jin Dynasty. He was too old to collect energy, so he kept his spirit to resist aging by Woyou, which became his chance and preparation for creation of pastoral paintings. However, later artists misunderstood the meaning of Woyou and made it a pure spiritual adventure of Shi to appreciate Shanshui paintings. Therefore, Woyou began to express the function of helping Shi traveling by spirit, and its aesthetic significance and value were being illuminated. After Zong Bing, the connotation of Woyou had been enriched constantly, and its media overflowed from painting and emerged in poetry and prose, even became the subject of writing and singing of Shi. Apparently, these series of changes resulted from the pursuing for ZongBing’s personality and painting theory. Actually, the living attitude longing for free of Shi came from the philosophy of Lao Zhuang, who generalized and naturalized human being’s life to establish an open mind. In the practice of living, this attitude evolved into an intuitive pursuit for free life gradually, peripateticism turned into the ideal living state of Shi. Frankly, aesthetics of Woyou started with the aesthetic tradition of "Tour". For example, the Peripateticism of Zhuangzi was an extremely ideal of aesthetic, and the opinion in art of Confucius reflected Confucian identification with the dedication to perfect personality and suitable life. Besides, tour with spirit specified the object of tour, so that tour had a specific aesthetic object finally, and the object of Woyou was Shanshui. Shanshui became Dao from the media explaining Dao, and turned into beauty by casting off Dao. The accompanying paintings of Shanshui regarded Shen, Qi, Yun and Yi as the intuitive pursuit of aesthetics and aesthetic personality. Shi in Woyou achieved their pursuit for Dao and gained the aesthetic pleasure in Shanshui.