What\u2019s in a name? On the concept and the ways of naming ART in Chinese

Before the beginning of China\u2019s large-scale development of Western scientific standards, the notion of art in China had been exclusively included in the categories of traditional philosophy, which created a double barrier to its understanding in the West, as it was impossible to recode the Chinese philosophic categories directly into their Western analogues, and also because the Chinese aesthetic and art history terminology and their issues were never delineated. The western meaning \u2018art\u2019 was originally assigned to several binominals inherited from w\ue9ny\ue1n \u6587\u8a00\u2014 y\uecsh\uf9 \u85dd\u8853 in a narrow sense, whereas in a broad sense expressed by the terms j\uecy\uec \u6280\u85dd, j\uecsh\uf9 \u6280\u8853, j\uecqi\u1ceo \u6280\u5de7, j\uecg\u14dng \u6280\u5de5, j\uecd\ue0o \u6280\u9053, y\uecd\ue0o \u85dd\u9053, and y\uecy\ue8 \u85dd\u696d. The term m\u11bish\uf9 \u7f8e\u8853, lit. \u2018beauty + technique\u2019 was used to indicate only fine arts, until in 1936 the C\uedh\u1cei defined the disyllabic y\uecsh\uf9 \u85dd\u8853 as standard. The coinciding parts of semantic fields of the above terms reveal the following fundamental attributes of Chinese art: virtuosity, erudition, technique, canonicity, wisdom, craftsmanship, abstractedness and functionality. The traditional Chinese art concept aestheticized both the literati\u2019s abstractedness (in calligraphy and poetry) and the earthy routine (in crafts and techniques), and evolved from the inseparability of wisdom and skills, philosophical content and decorative forms