Nature Is Mankind's Teacher from Which Both Culture and Civilization Originate

When we try to study the culture of a certain place, we naturally turn to its architecture because this is a visible part of the culture which requires no translation. Architecture showcases the characteristics and connotations of a local culture most directly and vividly. Amongst architectural styles, the historic and local folk ones are the most noteworthy; from these we may detect the cultural genes of a region or a nation tracing back to the source of the locality or its national culture.

In Zimbabwe, one must-see is the Ruins of Great Zimbabwe, a UNESCO world hheritage site. The place was once the capital city of the Monomotapa Empire, in whose history the Zimbabwean people take great pride, it being the oldest historical site in southern Africa. Great Zimbabwe is 350 kilometers from Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. It takes an entire morning to drive there.

Standing on top of a high hill, most of what remains is ruins or desolate and broken walls. The only well preserved element is a stone fortress that once was the palace for the emperor's wives - from this one can imagine the past magnificence of the whole. It is said that the palace, looking like a Roman coliseum or amphitheater, used to be the home for the empress and concubines. The palace was built of grey granite. Tall and strong, it has neatly lined stone chambers inside. The most impressive sight in it is a 30-meter high stone tower, also of grey granite, still smooth and shiny as if freshly carved and chiseled in spite of thousands of years of winds and rains. It is shaped like a plump bamboo shoot, with a tapering spire rising up to the sky. Its elegance and long history, and the legends that surround it have made it a symbol of Zimbabwe. The local people call it the Zimbabwe Tower, and it can be found on the country's banknotes and stamps, and all sorts of promotional objects or souvenirs.

All arts are created by the people. In a valley near the Ruins of Zimbabwe lies an ordinary village, with dozens of circular thatched cottages like a cluster of brown-grey mushrooms, uniform in style and color. Though superficially shabby, the cottages impress the viewers with a prehistoric charm. With a closer look, the visitor discovers that they are just like the Zimbabwe Tower in the stone palace, the former being miniatures of the latter. It is quite conceivable that the cottages were the source of inspiration for the architect of the Tower, or in other words that the Tower is a larger copy of the cottages.

The thatched cottages remind me of the yurts of my homeland, Inner Mongolia. The conical houses of the Ewenki and Oroqen huntsmen in the Great Xing'an Mountains all feature this circular shape. From the perspective of cultural diversity, the thatched cottages of the African aboriginals, the yurts of the Asian herdsmen, and the tree-bark houses of the Great Xing'an Mountains huntsmen would all appear to be unrelated, and it is hard to tell which came about first.

But why did all these peoples build their shelters in circular forms? This reminds me of an aesthetics book I came upon a few years ago by Mr. Zhao Xinshan, who is a writer from Shanghai. The book talks about why mankind prefers circular shapes when building shelters. He believes that human beings were imitating nature, and I think this surmise is reasonable. In Africa or Asia, whether living on a plateau or in a forest, the first thing one sees when born into this world is the circular blue sky, the sun or the moon. Our existence determines our consciousness and common existence makes for common awareness.

A well-known line in a poem goes, "The sky is like a dome covering the fields". However, it would be better expressed as the dome looking like the sky, as the sky was there before the dome existed. The thatched cottages of the African aboriginals, the yurts of the Asian herdsmen and the tree-bark houses of the Great Xing'an Mountains huntsmen must all have used the sky as their reference. That is why nature is mankind's teacher. The development of culture and the progress of civilization are all based on the existence of nature. All our thoughts, ideas and consciousness are determined by our being. Mankind's wisdom, intelligence, and material or spiritual wealth are all bestowed by nature.

A few years ago, there was a controversy about the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing and the focus of the debate was around whether an ultra-modern egg-like glass architecture in the heart of the ancient capital would undermine the character of the city. Nonetheless, since its completion, the building has won ever greater admiration. A growing number of people praise its circular shape in particular. Many visitors, Chinese or foreign, are keen to take pictures at the Performing Arts Center when in Beijing. This highly fashionable architecture has become one of Beijing's modern landmarks.

I think form should not be the only criterion to judge whether architecture is modern or not. Circular structures like the Performing Arts Center have existed in ancient, recent, and current eras. When one looks at a selection of renowned works of architecture around the world, one sees numerous landmark buildings with circular elements in their shapes, like the Pantheon in Rome, the Maria Church in Florence, the New Church in Paris, the Hagia Sophia Church in Istanbul, the Vasile Assumption Cathedral in Moscow, the Taj Mahal in India, and the Capitol in the United States. Is not the Temple of the Heaven in China a circular structure? It seems that the circle is the most beautiful of architectural idioms, primitive and yet modern.

All peoples pursue a common desire for beauty, as we find similar criteria everywhere in determining what is beautiful. Be they ancient or modern, be they peoples of the East or West, all bow down before beauty.

The author is Minister of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China