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Culture
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The people of
Wenzhou are equipped with business sense and a commercial culture more dominant
than anywhere else in China. Wenzhou has two economic characteristics: it was the
first to launch a market economy, and it has the most active and develop-
ed private economy in China. In the process of developing its economy, its people
have survived economic adversity without co-
mpletely relying on the Chinese government.
Wenzhou is a city
with profound and brilliant cultural background. It has given birth to many outstanding
people and great scho-
lars. Among them were Wang Shipeng, Chen Fuliang, Ye Shi, Huang Gongwang and Liu
Ji during the South Song Dynasty, as w-
ell as Sun Yirang, Xia Nai, Xia Chengtao and Su Buqing and others of the modern
era. All of them have exerted significant influe-
nce in the history of Chinese philosophy, literature and science. Wenzhou is also
the originating place of China’s landscape poetry, the founder of which, Xie Lingyun,
was the chief of Wenzhou’s Yongjia Prefecture in Nan Dynast. In Song Dynasty, there
were 4 distinguished poets from Yongjia representing the River and Lake Poetry.
Besides, Wenzhou is home to Nan Drama of China. For instance, “Tale of Lute”, a
play by Gao Zecheng of Ming Dynasty, is renowned abroad as one of the most outstanding
works of Chinese drama along with Kun Opera of Yongjia which is recognized as the
verbal and non-material human heritage. Wenzhou is also the birthplace of China’s
Mercantilism. From the Southern Song Dynasty, in contrasted to the Confucianism
represented by Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan in China urging people to study to be officials
in the future, the theory of Wenzhou’s Yongjia School repr-
esented by Ye Shi, emphasized the importance of business. The theory has an enduring
impact on the Wenzhou natives and has become the “cultural gene” in the economic
development of Wenzhou ever since.
Renowned as the
cradle of mathematicians in China, the city has teemed with over 200 mathematic
professors in the recent 100 years, among whom Su Buqing, Gu Chaohao, Jiang Lifu
and other mathematicians have enjoyed great fame both at home and a-
broad. Furthermore, Wenzhou is also reputed as the “Home of Swimming in China”,
“City of Chess” and “City of Poetry in China”.
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