The Cultural Elite’s Aesthetic Mentality Toward Western Music In Late-qing Dynasty By Analyzing The Visiting Diaries

After the second Opium-War, there were increasingly number of ambassadors assigned by Qing-government who went to western countries to learn advanced civilization and technologies. In this way, they could reach the goal of enriching the country and empower the military force aiming to save the dominant of Qing-government. Apart from ambassadors, there were some open-minded intellectuals who went to Western privately. Many of them had written down dairies in the journey. The diaries referred to all aspects of western society at that time, such politics, economic, military, laws, education, religion, art, etc. I have chosen and sorted out more than ten kinds of the dairies systematically with part of music. My purpose is to research the aesthetic mentality of the cultural elites in western cultural environment and provide historical materials with Chinese and Western music study. These visitors’ distinctive cultural status and appreciative situation lead to subtle and complex aesthetic mentality. During the appreciation, they understood western music by the version of Chinese traditional perspective and aesthetic standard.We can still find, however, that they did not refuse western culture when they were in that environment. but accept it continually. This situation helps us to understand the turning point of Chinese music history in modern times.