ABSTRACT
Chinese aesthetic culture changed significantly in the 1990s. It was different than enlightenment, linguistic purism, or the rational criticism of the 1980s, and it emphasized rhetoric: the modification, elaboration, and adjustment of language to contexts and circumstances. In the 1990s, popular culture had a nearly ubiquitous influence through advanced mass media, which demonstrated the power of movies, TVs, computers, and commercials. Elite and mainstream cultures even competed with each other in rhetorical terms so as to gain the attention of the distracted public. The chapter introduces rhetorical aesthetics by way of reflection on the twists and turns of Chinese aesthetics during the early twentieth century. Rhetorical aesthetics inquire and set discursive operations or historical iterations relationship in a specific cultural context in this chapter.
