Flower and Bird: Aesthetics of Domestic Nature

In I.-Yi Hsieh, Flora & Fauna: Domestic Nature and Private Collecting in Reform Era Beijing. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 93-125 (2025)
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Abstract

The fourth chapter points to the resuscitation of the flora and fauna aesthetics, the hua-niao aesthetics, encompassing brush painting and other literarus hobbies beyond the human. It centers on the devoted cultivation of these urban hobbies in relation to one’s identity of the figure of a Chinese literatus whose aesthetic propensities are attuned to the seasonal, historical, and more-than-human changes in the city. The revival of this literatus domesticity of nature speaks to the reconfiguration of collecting as well as the literatus in China, transitioning from the cultural collecting once exclusively indicating the fame of male literati and urban elite households in the imperial period to a newly-minted middle-class in the 2000s—who are desperately in need of something to express their new urban identity.

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