The 3,000-year-old Yi’Jing – Book of Changes, the oldest and most influential of the Chinese classics, is unquestionably one of the most important books in world literature. The central concept of the Yi’Jing is “Heaven and Humanity as One”. It delineates the principles behind how man can live in harmony with nature by emulating the precepts of heaven and earth. This idea became the cornerstone of China’s traditional culture, the root source of all branches of knowledge and the most unique feature of Chinese civilization. From its original text of about 4,900 characters emerged the two main pillars of Chinese philosophy – Confucianism and Taoism.Although it began life as a book of oracles, and still remains a remarkable tool for divination, the Yi’Jing has evolved over the long years of Chinese history into primarily a book of wisdom. For more than 25 centuries Chinese emperors, statesmen and scholars have consulted the book as a standard resource on matters ranging from statecraft, wa
The Universal Scream project began as a promise Basil Pao made to his then six-year-old daughter that he would photograph her favourite toy with children he met around the Pacific Rim during his yearlong journey with Michael Palin for the travel series Full Circle. The toy in question was a five-foot tall inflatable doll based on Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream of Nature and the first pictures were taken with a group of Inuit children on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Straits in August 1995. Eighteen years have passed and his daughter Sonia is now almost 25, but a version of the inflatable Scream still travels with Pao―and he continues to photograph it whenever he gets a chance. From the Sahara to the Himalayas, with novice Buddhist monks in Bhutan to Yanomami warriors in Amazonia, the doll has been photographed in hundreds of locations with a cast of thousands from all around the world.
Shan Shui Mountain|Water is the term we generally associate with the school of Chinese landscape art that many art historians around the world believe to be China’s most important contribution to the art of painting. Rooted in the philosophy of Daoism, the Shan Shui art movement - which first gained prominence during the waning years of the Tang dynasty (618-907) - actualizes its central precept that humans are but one of myriad manifestations of the Dao, and are therefore no more nor less significant than any other beings, and our destiny lies in abiding by the Way of Nature and living in harmony within it with humility, compassion and moderation. Using the three compositional principles of Shan Shui painting - Paths, Threshold and Heart - as his structure, Basil Pao assembled this collection of landscapes gathered during more than twenty years of travelling around the world into his latest book.
The 3,000-year-old Yi’Jing – Book of Changes, the oldest and most influential of the Chinese classics, is unquestionably one of the most important books in world literature. The central concept of the Yi’Jing is “Heaven and Humanity as One”. It delineates the principles behind how man can live in harmony with nature by emulating the precepts of heaven and earth. This idea became the cornerstone of China’s traditional culture, the root source of all branches of knowledge and the most unique feature of Chinese civilization. From its original text of about 4,900 characters emerged the two main pillars of Chinese philosophy – Confucianism and Taoism. Although it began life as a book of oracles, and still remains a remarkable tool for divination, the Yi’Jing has evolved over the long years of Chinese history into primarily a book of wisdom. For more than 25 centuries Chinese emperors, statesmen and scholars have consulted the book as a standard resource on matt
