The carrier of the "art of living" is the "skills" of living. But when the subject of aesthetics admits that the skills are "beautiful"

they become "art". The "beautiful" in Zhou Zuoren’s words refers to the beautiful combined with the true and the good

not the beautiful in vision or hearing. According to him

"pleasure" is similar to "pain". Only in the bitter intellectual movement pursuing the "true" can there be real "pleasure". For Zhou Zuoren

scrutinization over the "beautiful" of a person’s life is also scrutinization over the naturalness of his life (the "true"). He continuously wrote a number of articles to tell us

tirelessly questioning what are the "natural" and the "true" for humanity

is the ethical bottom-line of an aesthetic life to avoid the dehumanization of self.