China has the Asiatic background and horrible colonial history
China has been the goal of European merchants and adventurers since ancient times. Civilization arose in China for the first time c. 3500 BC. not long before city states and the written word also appeared in India and the Middle East. The first coherent Chinese Empire was founded about 1500 BC. Chinese religious ideas are in some ways similar to those of India, in that they too were based on ancient animistic beliefs that center around the cycles of seasons and fertility of plants, animals, and human beings. The sun was seen as the center of worship, and the Emperor came to be sanctified as the descendant of the Sun. Reverence for ancestors was and is an important feature of Chinese beliefs. This link will take you to an image of an archaeological site in Shanxi, where an imperial grave containing terra cotta effigies of the entire royal entourage has been uncovered.
Confucianism developed around the 6th c. BC. It was centered around the idea of duty and right behavior, a philosophy that recognized and supported the hierarchical nature of Chinese society. Confucianism emphasized a complex bureaucratic and social class system of the Chinese Empire through a systematic moral and social code. One's personal salvation could be achieved by submerging the individual good in the greater good of the family and the State. It also stressed the family, particularly elders and ancestors, as one's tie to the sacred. This emphasis on deference to ancestors and the state is a profoundly conservative factor in Chinese culture, making tradition, and established ways of expressing and structuring ideas almost irresistible.
Confucian visual symbolism drew upon ancient interpretations of plant and animal imagery and mythology. This can be seen, for example, in the stylized animal and plant images seen on the rank badges of civil servants, or on imperial robes.
Taoism, also dating from about the 6th century BC, taught that the individual should surrender himself to the vastness of nature in order to find his true place in the world. By learning to move with rather than against the forces of nature, it would be possible to find one's "way," or Tao. The achievement of balance of natural forces is represented by the Yin-Yang symbol, a preeminent Taoist image. The Tao Te Ching is the primary document of Taoist teachings. The I Ching, or book of Changes, is a collection of moral teachings and commentaries still widely read. It is popularly used as the basis for a system of divination. There have been a number of translations of the I Ching, which has been popular in the West.
The preoccupation with nature, and the submerging of the individual in the whole of the natural flow in the world had a profound effect on the development of painting in China. Chinese landscape painting differs in many ways from Euro-American painting. For example, the small scale of human figures in the landscape tends to emphasize the power of nature, and the smallness of the individual in the natural world. This idea of the submersion of individual will to the whole is shared by both Confucianism and Taoism, and the two philosophies have coexisted comfortably.