The Anglo-Japanese Style of Botanical Aesthetics and Li Shutong’s Botanical Writing

At the beginning of the twentieth century, China was poor and weak, and surrounded by foreign powers, the situation was as critical as eggs stacked. Like many aspirants who chose to study abroad in the hope of “learning from the barbarians to control the barbarians”, Li Shutong also chose to study in Japan with a view to saving the country through literature and art. The botanical aesthetics of Anglo-Japanese Style represented by Christopher Dreiser profoundly influenced Li: from the original sorrowful reference to “suitability”, “variety” and “vitality”, Li Shutong shifted to the fusion of practical aesthetics, artistic aesthetics, and theological religions in both east and west. This harmonious aesthetics is not only an amelioration toward his teacher Cai Yuanpei’s “the substitution of aesthetic education for religion”, but also an enlightenment of his own “freedom” and “spirituality”. This “desire for life” of botanical aesthetics led Li Shutong to seek the truth inwardly and to benefit all beings beyond. In the end, he “spits out a piece of fragrance in the frost” on top of the emptiness and vulgarity of the world, and “leaves it for the future generations to come”.