Between tradition and modernity: Emotional changes and expressions of Chinese society

Introduction

Culture is an important spiritual support for the continuous growth and development of a country and also a nation, and its ideological concepts, humanistic spirit and moral standards provide people with profound spiritual nourishment. As an important way to carry forward tradition and maintain cultural heritage, cultural inheritance plays a key role in building cultural consciousness and cultivating social emotions. Traditional Chinese interpersonal relationships form the trinity of ‘good fellowship’(人缘), ‘human feelings’（人情）and ‘ethics’（人伦）, which are not mutually exclusive (Fei Xiaotong, 2006). Among them, ‘human feelings’ is the core concept. All of these embrace the traditional Chinese psychological and behavioural model of ‘kinship’. Their unity comes from the view of destiny in the backdrop to traditional Chinese society and culture: the family system and Confucian ethics (Zhai Xuewei, 1993).

We can observe that from the very beginning of Chinese culture, ‘emotion’ is put in first place. In the classical materials of the ‘Guodian Chu Slips’ ¹ we can find concepts such as ‘Tao begins with emotion’ (道始于情), ‘the beginning is close to love’ (始者), ‘Ritual is based on human love’ (礼生于情), and so on. The philosopher Liang Shuming regards the greatest virtues of the school of Confucianism to be filial piety and all kindness (仁) (Liang Shuming, 1987).

On the other hand, emotions change along with the development of society and big historical events. In modern China, the leader Mao Zedong placed the revolutionary emotional value onto the whole Chinese nation. The Thoughts of Mao, with Mao Zedong as the main founder, made Marxist beliefs into a truly national belief, contributed a new theory of belief to the Chinese nation, and thus became the most popular and complete belief system since Confucianism. The reason why the Communists could succeed is that ‘they do “emotion work” through reconsideration of the major mass campaigns of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras’ (Perry, 2002: 112).

With the founding of the People’s Republic of China, among the many subsequent political movements, such as Land Reform (土地改革), ² The Great Leap Forward (大跃进), ³ the People’s Commune (人民公社) ⁴ and so on, emotional works have been largely used and promoted among the masses continuously. The individual emotions are converted into collective revolutionary emotions, which were the productivity and power of society in that period. In that way, it’s not hard to imagine the problems and social consequences that arise when the emotions conquer reason. ‘Mao Zedong’s brilliance lies in that he is not just conforming to the people’s will but also actively guiding and transforming people’s hearts. Mao believes that it is necessary to achieve unity, purity and excitement of thought and emotions through continuous movement, and to maintain high morale in order to realize the revolution’ (Cheng Boqing, 2011: 48).

After the reform and opening-up policies, Chinese society began to concentrate on the development of its economy. The people’s political passion was transferred to the pursuit of economic interests, from collective life to private daily life. But interest is not the best way to tame passion (Hirschman, 1997). As Cheng (2011) considered, when people enthusiastically devote themselves to the activities of making a fortune, they are not always satisfied, especially when the uneven distribution of benefits and rapid changes lead to the rootless state of the spirit. The market economy causes indifference, dissatisfaction, anger and resentment.

So, what are the emotional changes apparent during the long history of China? What are the collisions of tradition and modernity at the emotional level? Nowadays, what are the main emotions of the Chinese people? Especially since COVID-19 emerged, what emotions have been expressed in Chinese society? Are there any universal values that we could reflect on for people of all countries? These are some of the points that we will analyse in this article. These emotional issues require appropriate theoretical perspectives to explain them. With the ‘emotional changes’ of contemporary theory, emotion is gaining more and more attention. When reason is replaced by sensibility, when material production turns into emotional production, and when emotion is separated from the individual and becomes a social constructive element, we need a theory about emotion to understand how people are touched, affected, stimulated and at the same time to understand how people feel and act when faced with various ‘encounters’. Raymond Williams uses the theory of ‘structure of feeling’ to provide us with an appropriate theoretical perspective. The structure of feeling is the culture of every specific era.

The culture of an era can be comprehended from three aspects. One is the culture experienced and understood by people living in that era; the other is the culture recorded by texts including literature, architecture, clothing and other texts; and the third is the culture selected by later generations. Williams (Williams and Orrom, 1954) believes that people can only experience the culture of the era who are living in that era. The culture recorded in text has actually lost its vitality. It is similar to the relationship between the art world of Plato and the real world. Documentary culture just remains the recorded images of the era, and when later generations read these cultures, they have actually been affected by the interest system and value system of the time, and cannot really touch the real culture of that era. Emphasizing that the structure of feeling is special and alive means paying attention to the subject’s vivid and subtle changes in personal experience, rather than abstracted ideologies, cultural patterns and social characters. Therefore, the investigation of the structure of feeling is actually an investigation of history and present. Every generation has its own special structure of feeling. In this article, we define three types of emotional structures: traditional emotional structures, revolutionary emotional structures and consumerist emotional structures. These divisions do not mean that we have a rough cut of history, but attempt to grasp the characteristics of emotions in historical context through combing different structures of feeling.

Confucian-centred emotional structure in traditional Chinese culture

The word ‘Qing’ (情) in Chinese is broader than emotion: it embraces feeling, affection, desire, favour, nature, situation, the state of matter, reason or passion. China does not have the conceptual background of Plato-Aristotle's ‘two worlds’. Plato has the ‘rational world’, Aristotle has the ‘immobile mover’, while China is ‘Wu Wei’, ‘the way is not far away’. In the Chinese philosophical tradition, it is more abstract and is hard to separate everything from people and interpersonal relationships, just like Yin (阴) and Yang (阳). Just the single word ‘Qing’ contains emotions, love, affections, even situations, which not only means the sentiments that we express but also the situation where we may produce emotions. So the system of emotions is difficult to understand and feel for the Western world.

There are scholars who believe that traditional Chinese culture defines happiness from multiple angles and levels, and provides various ideological foundations for achieving happiness, helping people from all walks of life in their own lives. ‘The traditional culture provides the Chinese with a comprehensive and harmonious happiness, helping Chinese people maintain a positive and future-oriented optimism in different environments. This is also the spiritual motivation for Chinese people to remain calm and optimistic for a long time, which is different from the source of happiness for Westerners’ (Zeng Hong and Guo Siping, 2012: 992).

The concept of ‘structure of feeling’, a key theoretical concept first coined by Raymond Williams, runs through the whole of his thinking system and narrative works. In The Long Revolution (1965 [1961]), Williams believes that the emotional structure is deeply embedded and common in all types of society, precisely because it is on it that communication depends and the new generation will have its own structure of feeling (Williams, 1965 [1961]). Chinese society is not an exception and the structure of feelings transformed dynamically with social development. Yu Zhao (2015) concludes the system of affect in Chinese thought has three main parts: ‘firstly, the structure of feelings is based on the concept of ch’i, the substance and medium of the whole universe, including the human body. Secondly, affect is not radically separated from the intellect, but these are considered as two parts of a single process. Thirdly, the confusion between affect and intellect, between the cultural part of this coupling and the natural part, of affect, determines the development and sense of Chinese arts’ (p. 263). That is, traditional Chinese culture always searches for the balance, the ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, which is referred to as the ‘the golden mean’ (中庸之道) in Confucianism.

On the other hand, the word ‘Ren’ (仁) appears more than a hundred times in the Analects (论语), and its meaning is broad and varied, and each explanation is not completely consistent. In ‘Confucius Re-evaluation’, the philosopher Li Zehou believes that the Confucian thought of benevolence is based on an ‘overall model’. It is composed of four aspects or factors, which are all interdependent, permeable or restricted. The four factors of the Confucian benevolence structure are: (1) blood basis; (2) psychological principles; (3) humanitarianism; and (4) individual personality. The overall characteristic is practical rationality. These are not simple concepts, and would needs to be studied in greater detail (Li Zehou, 1980). In this article, Li mentioned the theories of emotional ontology. Since 1990, he has expanded the concept of emotional ontology as a structure of feeling. ‘The emotional ontology does not just talk about how important emotions are, but rather that human emotions are formed because of rational participation, forming a structure of emotion and reason, and then they may become the “ontology” of human beings, different from animals’ (Li Zehou, 2018: 2). In the long history of China, the importance of emotion is also related to the fact that Chinese culture attaches great importance to ethical principles and social ethics (礼教). Kemper (1981) stresses the importance of culture in the study of emotions, which plays a crucial role in the generation of authentic (not managed) emotions and specifies the power and status-related significance of occasions. In traditional Chinese society, Confucianism forms the essential part which influences people’s structure of feeling. It is in favour of the imperial state and embedded in social institutions and rituals. Haiyan Lee (2006) analyses the concept of ‘Confucian sentimentality’, which sanctifies a hierarchical mode of cathexis centring mostly on two of the Three Bonds – the bonds between lord and subject and between parent and child. ‘Within each bond, the emotional cathexis or investment is reciprocal: the lord bestows benevolence (仁 or 恩) in return for loyalty; the parent exudes kindness (恩 or 慈) in return for filial devotion. However, reciprocity is secondary to hierarchy, and it is loyalty and filiality that constitute the foundational moral sentiments in orthodox Confucianism’ (p. 27). This means that the emotions are rooted in China’s traditions and cultures. With the influence of Confucianism, the emotional systems are also developed according to its principles.

The sense of happiness of the Chinese people is closely connected with the concept of happiness in traditional Chinese culture. In traditional culture, there is no specific definition of happiness. They use the word ‘Le’ (乐)as the expression of happiness. In Chinese characters, ‘Le’ has multiple meanings. Among the two more important, one means joy, happiness, optimism; and the other, music or harmonious sound. So, from the other side, this could confirm that in Chinese culture, music is closely related to emotions.

What’s more, the sense of happiness of the Chinese people values the harmony between interpersonal and collective and spiritual feeling. Such characteristics of happiness are largely influenced by the concept of happiness in traditional culture. Studies have found that the happiness of Chinese people is more affected by the relationship between people and the environment; more emphasis is placed on spiritual enrichment, and spiritual satisfaction is an important content of happiness; moreover, for Chinese people, luck and misfortune form a mutual and interdependent backdrop to life (Lu and Gilmour, 2004). Li Zehou called Chinese culture the ‘musical culture’ (乐感文化), and proposed that music culture is the cultural psychological structure of the Han nationality, that is, the accumulation of cultural traditions in it, or the sense that music is the culture of the Chinese nation’s character (Li Zehou, 2005).

Zhang Shuping (2020) defines the logic of Chinese traditional social governance as ‘the governance of balanced emotions’ (平情之治), which realizes the harmony of politics and people by means of peace and balance. It supports a series of administrative orientations of ethical politics and moral politics. China’s political structure includes the overall political structure of the emperor, scholars and people. The political system based on the emperor system, election system, official system, and supervisory system related to the formation and management of bureaucratic groups, etc. Maintaining the virtuous circle and positive interaction of political emotions under the traditional political system is the foundation of long-term stability in Chinese society. The structure of feelings of traditional Chinese society is to maintain the emotional exchanges of scholars, farmers, workers, and business classes with the regime and monarchs. Although China’s social governance cannot be separated from the rule of law, it is often accompanied by emotional politics with Confucianism as its core.

Anger, love and compassion: The structure of feeling in the revolutionary age

The Chinese style of rule, in addition to natural justice and national law, emphasizes human kindness and compassion. But in the traditional emotional regime, only those emotions that are conforming to constant virtues and ethics are recognized and reinforced. Since the encounter with the Western world, in the revolutionary process of getting rid of the colonial powers and striving for national independence, on the one hand, individual consciousness of rights was awakened and romantic lyricism was revived by the enlightenment of modern thought. On the other hand, state-national identity and emotion were also gradually formed in a series of sufferings, and eventually merged into revolutionary romanticism.

In a certain sense, the collective action of human beings cannot be separated from the key role of emotions, which profoundly shape and rewrite people’s cognitive logic and social action. James Jasper (2008) points out that emotion plays an extremely important role in social movements: the first is to initiate the mobilization; and the second is to provide the goals for the collective action. Emotion comprises those psychological experiences that let people start to pay attention to the world around them, either defeated or attracted by the outside world. Therefore, the effective organization of social mobilization cannot ignore the activation, recruitment and production of specific emotions (such as love, hate, anger, self-esteem, shame, sadness, trust), so as to understand the logic of social action in the emotional sense.

In understanding the complicated relationship between the emotional types in the revolutionary age and the traditional Chinese emotional patterns, Raymond Williams’s theory of ‘structure of feelings’ provides us with an appropriate theoretical perspective. Structure of feelings refers to the characteristics of social experience and social relations, which are quite different from other characteristics in history, thus creating a certain sense of intergeneration or era. This concept allows us to avoid the invalid dichotomy of social foundation versus superstructure and society versus individual. His original intention of putting forward this concept was to tie two seemingly opposite concepts together, so as to emphasize that emotion is not blind physiological impulse, but ideological, and can be analysed, judged, cultivated, modified and sublimated. He points out that every generation will have its own structure of feelings. It seems that their structure of feelings does not ‘come from’ anywhere. The organization of change comes from the organism: the new generation will respond in its own way to the unique world they inherit, absorb many traceable continuities, reproduce many contents of the organization that can be described separately, but feel their whole life in some different ways, and shape their creative response into a new structure of feelings (Williams, 1977). On this basis, the ‘subject’ of cultural life that Williams attaches importance to is not the elite ‘minority’, but the ordinary men and women in daily life, the social masses. Therefore, for the revolutionary party as the organizer, the most important thing is to excavate and utilize the traditional emotional patterns (such as anger, hatred, fear) rooted in the social masses themselves, so as to arouse their emotions.

Looking back on the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution in the twentieth century, we can find that a series of special emotional forms (such as hatred of the enemy, loyalty to the party, and trust in the state) are continuously produced. Through the reconciliation and transformation of special contexts, emotions had been deeply involved in social vicissitude and the as a productive element of the grand narrative. Elizabeth J Perry convincingly pointed out that one of the reasons why the Communist Party of China defeated the powerful Kuomintang and won the support of the Chinese people is that it attaches importance to emotional work (Perry, 2002). Through the successful transformation, the Communist Party achieved the direct integration of the revolutionary self and the collective, and generated an overwhelming degree of class emotion. The emotional fervour of ‘love/hate’ (love our revolutionary comrades, hate our class enemies) once dominated the whole social space.

From the perspective of micro sociology, Barbalet (1992) discusses the relations between social class and emotions and believes the class resentment is a collective action. The Communists were not the first to launch a vigorous mass movement by igniting the emotional flame in ordinary people. In the history of China, for more than 2000 years, peasant rebellion has a long tradition. In ancient days, leaders of the peasants would cleverly create a series of dramatic scenes, such as martial arts performances, amazing magic tricks and cunning disguises, to produce their own legitimacy so as to attract the followers and win their loyalty. We don’t know whether the peasant rebels in ancient China clearly perceived the important role of emotions in arousing the enthusiasm of the masses, but the Communists clearly understood this very well and carried it out with their own innovation. With the growth of the Communist Revolution, the leaders of the Communist Party paid more and more attention to the emotional works among the mass movement, and regarded it as one of the most important weapons to achieve victory. Mao Zedong had long been the leader of the Communist Movement in China. He was very familiar with these political strategies, and creatively copied and popularized them. Unlike the ancient peasant leaders, Mao invented many new technologies and discourses and gave this ancient tradition a revolutionary meaning.

‘Speaking bitterness’ (诉苦) is one of the most important devices of the revolution (Guo Yuhua and Sun Liping, 2002). The Communists would conduct a detailed investigation into the current situation and history of the villages to determine who was the ruling class and who was exploited and oppressed. In the meetings attended by all villagers, the landlords would be required to kneel on the ground to receive the complaints and beratings from those who had been oppressed and exploited by them over the years. Finally, the Communist Party cadres would give a passionate speech, denouncing the evils of the landlords, praising the power of the people, declaring to all the establishment of the revolutionary regime, and the end of the era when a small number of people could exploit the majority. The Communists carefully planned this micro-mechanism to establish a glorious public space for ‘speaking bitterness’ in order to dispel the concerns of the ordinary peasants through collective meetings and typical demonstrations. They planned to arouse the people’s anger and hatred through these scenarios. The Communists had not come solely to listen to complaints, but also planned to redistribute the property of the landlords. This hugely stimulated the enthusiasm of the peasants to actively participate in revolutionary activities. In order to determine the goal of revolutionary action, it was necessary to condemn the landlord morally. Through ritualized techniques such as ‘speaking bitterness’, ‘denunciation’ (控诉), and ‘recalling bitterness and realizing sweetness’ (忆苦思甜), the peasants’ personal sufferings had turned into their class suffering, and thus formed a national identity naturally based on the combination of gratitude and reverence.

This kind of emotional work was also widely used in the army. Inspired soldiers would recall their sufferings ferociously, resulting in anger against the enemy and gratitude for the revolution. ‘Through these speaking bitterness meetings, we feel that we can play an important role in inspiring class hatred and improving vengeful emotions. The purpose of the war was clear, and the mood of the army improved’, a Communist propaganda cadre recalled.

The Communist Revolution was clearly launched as a popular emotional drama. Through these dramatic activities, the peasants’ revolutionary enthusiasm was fully mobilized, so as to achieve the long-term revolutionary goal (Chen Yongfa, 1986). The drama of ‘speaking bitterness’ is not only a strategy in an arsenal full of weapons of mass movements, in a sense, it is also a metaphor for the revolution (Foucault, 1975). Through the public space created by the contrast between suffering drama and a happy life, ordinary individuals with the same fate are condensed into a class with common emotions. In this process, the memory of the masses and their relationship with the new political regime, and also with the Party, can be reshaped (Ying Xing, 2016). Therefore, national identity and emotional mobilization can be realized in a very efficient way.

We call these emotional patterns based on traditional ethics, traditional structure of feeling. An interesting point is that although the purpose of the revolution is to oppose the oppression of human beings by traditional social structures, the emotional work produced in the new radical revolution is often consistent with the traditional structure of feeling. One of the most important, specific emotions is love. In the logic of revolution, love is extended to the intimate relationship between all the supporters of revolution. Those involved in the revolution are taught to love all their revolutionary comrades. This reminds us of the famous saying by the ancient philosopher Mencius: respect the elders of other families as our own, and care about the children of others as our own. To some extent, the revolution did not oppose the tradition, but transformed and expanded it. Many scholars have noticed the close relationship between Communist principles and traditional Chinese ethics (Liu, 2010; Perry, 2002; Pye, 1992).

At the same time, revolution means new social relations and thus new emotional patterns, which we define as the revolutionary structure of feelings. The novels and dramas with the theme of pursuing free love became the vanguard of the revolution to enlighten the society. At that time, Chinese people broke away from the bondage of family and ushered in individual liberation. Romantic love is associated with radical revolution and becomes an important force to promote social progress. Love reshapes the relationship between individual and society. For example, the confrontation between romantic love and filial piety has become an important space for practising the new model of subjectivity and sociality (Lee, 2006).

We have noticed that many scholars have questioned these two kinds of structure of feeling in the revolutionary era. But what we want to emphasize is that the structure of feelings that are stimulated and created in the revolution are not merely false and hollow. The particularity of human emotion is the coexistence of contradiction and adaptation. The brilliance of these methods created by the Communists under the leadership of Mao lies in that they can fully realize the fundamental authenticity of human emotion and make use of it perfectly.

What is discussed above is just a cursory analysis of the structure of feeling emerging in the Chinese Communist revolution. Revolution, like fireworks, is always full of fervent emotions, which ignites the inner flame of ordinary people and brings them into historic events. Mao’s dictum states: ‘Love happens for a reason in this world. So does hatred’ (Mao, 1971 [1942]). The Chinese revolution led by Mao is probably the most complicated and fascinating drama in human history, and worth further study.

Consumer society: ‘A community with shared emotions’

The market-oriented reforms that began in 1979 and a series of subsequent reforms have brought about tremendous changes in China’s social structure, from a single and closed Communist country to an open, pluralistic society in line with modern capitalism. China’s economy is growing rapidly, the appearance of its cities has undergone earth-shaking changes, the era of material shortages has gradually faded away, and replaced by the endless myth of wealth. In this process, people’s cultural concepts and emotional structure have also undergone tremendous changes and impacts. The passion for life of the Chinese is no longer a fierce revolutionary act, but has transformed into a fascination with material and fanatical consumption. In Marxism and Literature, Williams argues that ‘structures of feeling can be defined as social experiences in solution, as distinct from other social semantic formations which have been precipitated and are more evidently and more immediately available’ (Williams, 1977: 134). In China, the expressions of ‘structure of feeling’ are transformed in the process of the change of social structures and people’s behaviour.

Nowadays, China’s economic achievements are huge and its global influence is also rising. However, China’s social development has lagged far behind its economic growth. Although it is the second largest economy in the world, its ranking on the Human Development Index has been hovering in the middle (Lu Xueyi, 2010). As Zygmunt Bauman states, the very volatility of consumption ‘which results in the perpetual insecurity of actors’ has been made ‘into the most reliable of pattern-maintaining factors’ (Bauman, 2001: 17). This is the paradox of consumption: on the one hand, it motivates production, provides the opportunity for wealth and employment, transforms culture and lifestyle; on the other hand, ‘insecurity’ appears. In Chinese modern society, there are now also many negative influences in this consumer society. Cheng Boqing (2009) argues that while there are many great developments and achievements in contemporary Chinese society, it is also facing many problems, one of which is the resentment reflected acts of social violence and hate crimes. These malicious crimes include assaults on police, explosions on buses, driving into people on the street or even driving into schools, a mass killings, and so on. ‘What is even more strange and chilling is that many netizens and spectators have been enthusiastic about the above phenomenon, without empathy – especially when the person attacked is a government official’ (p. 59).

These negative emotions show the social problems of modern China. Over 40 years of reform and opening-up have brought tremendous changes to the entire society. People’s ideology, means of earning a living and lifestyle have become more diverse. Correspondingly, the social structure has also undergone tremendous changes. New social classes continue to emerge, and the original social classes have also undergone violent differentiation. There has emerged more social injustice and this has led to negative consequences. ‘The development of modern society uses interests to tame passions, reject emotions in the system, especially expelling them from the public domain – although this expulsion cannot be successful’ (Cheng Boqing, 2011). Social anxiety is an unavoidable social psychological problem during the transition period of contemporary China. At present, this phenomenon pervades almost every aspect of the entire Chinese society, and has become a relatively obvious sign of the times in China today. Social anxiety will trigger many deviant behaviours, aggravate people’s unrealistic high expectations and corresponding short-term behaviours, while individual anxiety is caused by the rapid change of society, the lack of social security, the confusion of values which is specifically manifested as anxiety in employment, identity, wealth or social relationships. On the other side, with the new technology, ‘in the human–machine relationship, workers face a large number of emotional problems, which are mainly manifested in two aspects: one is the lack of emotions caused by humans facing machine work; the second is that people work in a high-tech environment, which cause the emotional stress problems’ (Guo Jingping, 2008: 116).

We live in the digital age and in the consumer society, the emotions that the Chinese express are truly different from those of people in ancient or revolutionary times. Since the rational mechanism has been established in contemporary society, the way in which emotional needs are satisfied has undergone several changes, and is different from traditional society. Wang Ning (2000) identifies three factors: (1) the privacy of true emotions: in modern society, the emotional relationship of the community is becoming more and more diluted, weakened and falsified. Therefore, people’s true emotional life is increasingly restricted to private spaces, becoming private and intimate in small circles. (2) The anonymization and unilateralization of emotional gratification: in modern society, emotional satisfaction outside of family and intimate relationships is increasingly inclined to adopt an anonymous form by way of networks. (3) The marketization of emotional life: the satisfaction of emotional needs depends more and more on the emotional ‘products’ and ‘services’ provided by the market.

Therefore, the collision and difference of tradition and modernity affect the expressions of emotions of every generation. The digital era, which obviously brings convenience to our lives, also causes many problems as well as leading to negative emotions. ‘Nowadays in China, as well as other parts of the world, people’s consumption behaviour has begun to transform from simple material enjoyment to spiritual pleasure, from tangible demand satisfaction to intangible demand satisfaction. The consumers pay for feelings’ (Zhang Jingting, 2019: 94).

The emotions are affected by social factors. In the consumer society, the individual emotions vary according to what we buy, and emotional labour plays a crucial role. Cheng Boqing (2013) uses the ‘structure of feeling’ to describe the principal emotional problems in modern China. In the process of rapid transformation, huge economic achievements and rising influence in the world do not represent all of our lives. In the past 40 years or so, our experience is truly mixed, with hope and despair, ecstasy and anxiety. The ‘structure of feeling’ is undergoing profound changes. ‘In the current Chinese society, resentment is widespread, which not only leads to frequent malicious and destructive incidents, but also tends to evolve into resentment and criticism in public discourse. Only by rebuilding the moral system and value system, that is, rebuilding the spiritual order, can we hope to relieve or even eliminate this toxin’ (Cheng Boqing, 2013: 47). Then he mentions the importance of ‘loyalty’, ‘loyalty, as a socially constructed emotion, is related to a specific social structure and historical culture. In fact, being loyal to one’s own country is a universal ideal in modern society.’

There is a recent event that has aroused the loyalty and the positive emotions of Chinese people – COVID-19. At beginning of 2020, China was the first country to be impacted by the epidemic. The Chinese New Year is the most important festival and time for reunion for the Chinese community, but the escalating coronavirus crisis saw China’s holiday atmosphere turned upside down. First of all, negative social emotions spread across the country: panic, fear, anxiety, worry. Wuhan and other cities announced their ‘closure’ with the ‘Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases’ before the New Year Festival. The official media said that people had been fleeing the epidemic area and this had serious consequences such as the spread of the virus, and they might be sentenced up to seven years in prison. Accordingly, during the New Year Festival, various parts of China began vigorous inspection of people coming from Hubei Province, especially the city of Wuhan. People in other cities became afraid of people from this area, even of those who worked in other places and had never been to Wuhan during the period. The negative emotions also include the distrust of officials because in December, when the first cases of COVID-19 appeared, the local government tried to deny human-to-human transmission and claimed that it would not be like SARS. The social negative emotions reached a peak with the case of Li Wenliang. ⁵ People were emotional for two main factors: one was the environment – it is easy to break out into negative emotions in this helpless, tense, and anxious atmosphere; the other is the condition of the individual’s dissatisfaction with all objects in society, which leads them to desire to vent their anger.

What we would highlight is the role of the official media in the control of public emotions during the epidemic. ‘The official media, especially the central media, such as “CCTV News” and “Xinhua Viewpoint” are at the top of the Weibo public opinion dissemination network in terms of centrality, collaboration and interaction, and structural position. The core nodes of this category indicate that such official media have relatively strong dissemination capabilities to shape public opinion about the epidemic and have abundant information sources, rapid response and a wide range of influence’ (Yao Leye et al., 2020). So, after March, as the epidemic was slowly controlled, the social emotions became more positive. People began to have confidence and rely on the government and actively cooperate with government measures such as the ‘quarantine policy’, ‘wearing a mask’, and so on.

In the face of the virus, the world as a whole is also very panicked. Whole societies are in a state of stress. This stress and the emotions of families and individuals are reflected in social media, penetrative and expressed in various forms, affecting all aspects of ordinary people’s daily lives, such as taking one’s body temperature in every building, and being asked where one has been, and so on. Scribano (2020) describes the conflict between the social space, intimacy and the measures to prevent COVID-19. ‘Euphemistically a space that mediates between bodies/emotions is called social distance. What we have been trying to do for years, to understand what is inseparable between bodies and emotions has become central in the pandemic: “desire to hug”, “need to be beside”, “desire to kiss”, are some of the most common phrases associated with not being able to touch, not touching, versus the imposition of distance’ (Scribano, 2020: 61).

This requires a relatively long process to recover slowly, and it also requires the whole society to cope with it. The development of the internet and the emergence of social platforms have broken through people’s traditional communication circles. The emotions of others can be recognized through the internet and mapped onto oneself. This is psychologically called ‘empathy’. In this epidemic, the role of empathy has been widely manifested. In a series of ‘Come on Wuhan’ (武汉加油) promotional videos, several singers produced songs and music videos for the epidemic, and other reports have repeatedly appeared on the Weibo social media platform. The concern, support, and even anxiety of the masses can make the public feel warmly towards each other. Empathy enables people to deal with the epidemic rationally and understand the feelings of others.

We have analysed above the importance of ‘Ren’ and other positive emotions in the Chinese traditional culture. People have expressed good virtues and collective emotions when a sudden social public crisis happened. The structure of feeling in China’s consumer society is based on the fact that the ever-increasing materialism triggers people’s endless desires combined with the negative and positive emotions, which will affect the results and influence of consumption. Now with the influence of globalization, people of all countries are not only a ‘community with a shared future’, but also a ‘community with shared emotions’. Yet, still many countries are in the midst of the epidemic crisis and this may result in many negative emotions. As Fei Xiaotong, one of the founders of Chinese sociology and anthropology, said ‘Appreciate the culture and values of others as you do your own, and the world will become a harmonious whole’ (各美其美，美人之美，美美与共，天下大同) (Fei Xiaotong, 2007).

Conclusion

The emergence of emotional phenomena in modern society is undoubtedly related to the changes in social structure and modes of interaction. Chinese civilization has a long history with distinctive cultural characteristics. In more recent times, the process of modernization has gradually begun a collision with the West. China has experienced many changes and revolutions, and has become today’s huge and complex society, shaped by the impactful process of globalization. The complexity of understanding current emotional issues is that many seemingly individual feelings are actually related to the increasing interdependence and interaction in the context of globalization, and are also caused by the development of new media based on internet technology. Transmission is no longer dependent on and limited to specific social ties, and may directly immerse the individual into the overall social atmosphere. Therefore, it is very important that we start from the general social conditions under which emotions are formed and expressed, to understand the social mechanism of emotional problems, and to diagnose the zeitgeist through the understanding of emotional phenomena.

How to appreciate the changes in contemporary Chinese society? Cheng Boqing (2017) believes that we should start with the most basic social activities, namely work, consumption and communication, using the perspective of the ‘emotional regime’ as developed by William M Reddy. The process of drastic changes in modern society is not only the transformation of a set of systems such as material, culture and symbols, but also the transformation and construction of social emotional space. The inherent needs, the complexity and integrity of human beings are placed in a more important position. The change and switching of the structure of feeling reflects the resonance of the social structure and the spirit of the times. What we expect is to have a lively dialogue with the ever-flowing era and society using the theory of the structure of feeling, rather than just examining the abstract structure of a particular era and society from the perspective of philosophical theory. On the one hand, the structure of feeling is the common experience and feelings of the members of the social community in a specific historical period, which can transcend individual experiences, feelings and living conditions and be recognized as a stable structure. On the other hand, it is not a frozen and static structure, but with the development of the times and society it will continue to reshape and regenerate. It is not only a description and summary of the past era, but also a reflection of actual experience; it not only has a clear and stable structure, but also contains complex, subtle, elusive, uncertain factors. It is the fruit of past and present, stability and change and the combination of interaction.

As China moves out of isolation and embraces modernization, the story of revolution and the imagination of ‘red’ passion have been replaced by a daily life of individual, desire, de-revolution and de-politics. Of course, this does not mean that the structure of feeling of tradition and revolution have completely dissipated, but they collide and merge with the current social spirit in a more profound way, and silently appear in places that are not noticed as protective. This means that a new structure of feeling has been generated.

The COVID-19 crisis provides us with a suitable opportunity to examine how these structures of feeling influence and dominate the emotional pulse of Chinese society. Where the evolution of these structures of feeling with the fundamental change in social structure will take China depends as much on the spontaneous process of chance as on the capacity of the Chinese authorities to steer emotional mobilization.

It is necessary to maintain a kind of epistemological or methodological vigilance when exploring emotions and their representations in different cultures, or even in different times of the same culture. Such vigilance is necessary to master the yardstick of prudence and moderation in the exploration of universality and particularity, identity and difference (Luo Chaoming, 2018). China has always been a fascinating complexity. From the perspective of emotional sociology, this article has examined the emotional factors at play in Chinese society and its changing path from the traditional to the modern. We hope that ‘the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society’ (Mills, 2000: 6). This is just a preliminary exploration. There is no doubt that there are still many problems and issues waiting for us to investigate further in the near future.