Chinese Beautiful Women and Temples in Iranian Popular Culture and Literature

Vast expanses of Chinese territory and its people alluringly resonated with Iranian ancient literature, both poplular and elitist. China’s natural, trade and cultural attraction, its remote inaccessible location and the lack of hostility and war between the two lands contributed to China’s more pronounced status within the Iranian society. In this regard, China’s pagodas and temples, the allure of its beautiful women indulged Iranian collective psyche and set the stage for imagination to run wild in poem and prose, as well as enriching the oral and written Iranian fiction. The current research seeks answers as to how these factors were reflected in popular Iranian fictions. Deliberating on this issue and attempting to find its roots could shed light on how Chinese culture bore upon Iranians during different epochs. The image indicates the heart of Iranian aesthetics which gives a subjective account of the cultural history. Through library archives, and by surveying the history of Chinese temples and beautiful women and their impact on literary figures’ thought, the author has studied selected fictions from the sixth to twelfth centuries. Each fiction reflects and represents the collective thought and aesthetic mind of the people of a specific century and is, without a doubt, an unbreakable chain of meaning in Iranian popular culture.