Title: 衔青美学论集
Description: National Examination System and Social Stratification in China explores one of the most consequential issues in contemporary Chinese society — the intricate relationship between education, social mobility, and structural inequality. Written by Dr. Wang Peng, a leading researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, the book provides both a theoretical reflection and policy-oriented analysis of how education functions as a mechanism of opportunity and stratification in China’s rapidly transforming society.

At its core, the book is organized around three interrelated themes: educational equity, educational involution, and the construction of an education powerhouse.

1. Overview of the Volume
This book brings together over twenty essays written during the author’s early academic years, including both published and previously unpublished works on aesthetics and criticism. The volume traverses multiple fields—classical Chinese drama, contemporary film aesthetics, musical style and typology, and cross-media cultural criticism. Anchored in a triadic framework of text–performance–social context, it combines the rigor of textual scholarship with the sensitivity of aesthetic reflection. By integrating fragmentary studies into a coherent intellectual narrative, the collection aspires to construct a living dialogue between historical exegesis and contemporary artistic experience. The essays range from close readings of Tang Xianzu’s dramas to analyses of modern directors and musicians, offering a spectrum that spans from classical poetics to experimental media.

2. Themes and Core Concerns
Several interrelated questions run through this collection.
First, how does traditional Chinese drama generate meaning in the interplay between text and performance, particularly through recurring motifs such as “dream,” “emotion,” and “identity”?
Second, how do image and sound shape the cultural imagination of modernity, and how are existential or metaphysical questions expressed through filmic narrative, sound design, and visual rhetoric?
Third, how are musical and cross-media arts re-coded in the contemporary context of global circulation—both as genres and as modes of affective resonance?
Fourth, what tensions emerge between aesthetic experimentation and social ideology—how can art reveal, resist, or transform structures of power and subjectivity?
Each essay stands alone, yet together they form an interwoven network of aesthetic inquiry that moves across time, medium, and discourse.

3. Structure and Reading Guide
The book is organized into three interrelated sections:

    Classical Drama: Text and Stage

    Focusing on Ming–Qing theatrical texts, character typologies, and performance aesthetics;
    Image and Contemporary Aesthetics

    Addressing modern film, sound narrative, and the philosophical dimensions of visual culture;
    Music, Media, and Cultural Criticism

    Extending the discussion to musicology, media art, and the semiotics of artistic communication.

Readers may follow the order of the sections to grasp the intellectual evolution of the author’s thinking, or approach individual essays thematically. Each essay is accompanied by a brief summary of main arguments, key references, and suggested further readings, making the book suitable for both teaching and independent study.

4. Scholarly and Practical Value
Academically, this collection exemplifies a balanced methodology that bridges close reading with interdisciplinary analysis. It combines the evidential precision of philology with the theoretical insights of film studies, semiotics, and performance studies. Practically, it pays attention to the craft of artistic production—directing, acting, sound design, and stage composition—offering insights relevant to theater practitioners, filmmakers, and cultural curators. Selected essays can serve as pedagogical resources, providing case studies and discussion prompts for university-level courses in literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies.

5. Author and Intellectual Background
The author was trained in both classical literary scholarship and contemporary media theory, forming a dual sensibility that merges historical consciousness with modern critique. The early essays reflect deep engagement with classical texts and their interpretive traditions, while the later works show a turn toward contemporary artistic practice and aesthetic theory. The current volume revises and annotates several early manuscripts, supplementing them with contextual notes and background information to enhance their clarity and relevance for present-day readers.

6. Intended Audience and Suggested Use
This book is intended for scholars, students, and general readers interested in Chinese opera, comparative literature, film studies, musicology, and cultural criticism. In academic contexts, selected essays can be integrated into syllabi for courses on drama theory, film aesthetics, or cross-media art. Researchers may draw upon the bibliographical and conceptual materials for case studies on textual variants, performance history, or directorial style. Practitioners in the performing and visual arts may also find inspiration in the discussions of aesthetic form, performative energy, and sensory experience.

7. Concluding Remarks
More than a retrospective compilation, this book represents an experiment in cross-media criticism and an intellectual journey through multiple aesthetic traditions. It seeks to open channels of dialogue between tradition and modernity, text and embodiment, individual perception and social imagination. Ultimately, the collection invites readers to reconsider how art—across forms and epochs—continues to mediate the tension between inheritance and innovation, offering new possibilities for meaning and human connection.