Study On Scribes’Leisure Culture Of The Tang Dynasty

It is the scribe class that mainly dominated the social leisure culture of the Tang Dynasty. And leisure culture created by the scribe class was an important part of the Tang Dynasty culture. With social stability and economic prosperity, scribes lived a comfortable life. The open atmosphere of the society and the diverse ideology and culture provided scribes with a rich spiritual life. What’s more, the perfect vacation system, plenty of space for leisure, as well as prosperous leisure consumer market provided a necessary condition of the leisure life. All of these factors made a prosperous leisure culture of the scribe class during the Tang Dynasty became possible.The way of leisure for scribes could be divided into individual leisure and group leisure according to its participants. Individual leisure consisted of literary leisure, arts leisure and health leisure, which focused on self-cultivation and moulding a person’s temperament. The group leisure included travel leisure, sports leisure and entertainment leisure, which focused on enjoying oneself and relax. All kinds of ways of leisure adopted by the Tang Dynasty’s scribes paid attention to inner leisure motivation, combination of the three religions leisure ideas and leisure mode suits both refined and popular tastes, which set a good example for the leisure life of scribes in Song Dynasty and later.Because of the special status, scribes’ leisure culture had a dominant position in the Tang Dynasty’s leisure culture, and the scribe class had a great impact on other social classes, including ordinary people, monks and even prostitutes. To some extent scribes’ ways of leisure determined their ethos, and scribes ethos and the whole social atmosphere interact with each other. Therefore after the Middle Tang Dynasty, the social upheaval greatly changed scribes ethos. With ways of scribes leisure became extravagant, social atmosphere became depressed and the Tang Dynasty’s prosperity went away forever.The leisure culture of the Tang Dynasty also made a profound impact on Japan, Silla and other countries which maintained a close cultural relation with the Tang Dynasty at that time. At the same time, it makes us to reflect on today’s leisure culture.