Two-way metaphors
The two stories – Tartar-style costumes, horse-riding and archery, and elegant music and Confucian costumes – show a two-way style of opening Chinese culture: openness from the inside out and acceptance from the outside in. It is like a Tai Chi of mutual generation with a powerful mechanism to stimulate and interact with each cultural endpoint. It makes the interior of the culture energetic and lively, and the cultural extroversion open and inclusive.
Chinese civilization has no outward expansion or aggression. But how can it develop inward coherently without getting stuck in the block and keeping stillness in the culture evolution? Such a unique cultural gene is hidden in the narration of the two historical stories.
Why does China converge and move toward a higher-level unity and closer integration again and again after several historical confrontations and splits between the North and the South? Such a magic historical key is also hidden in the two-way metaphors of the two stories.
After 300 years of divergence in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties(AD 220-598), China finally healed the division and rebuilt a stronger unity in the Sui (AD 581-618) and Tang (AD 618-907) dynasties that greatly enriched Chinese civilization. The dynasties established by the northern ethnic groups are an indispensable chapter of Chinese history. Different ethnic rulers did not cut off tradition, but rather became co-creators and co-owners of Chinese culture.
