The Influence and Cultural Value of Taoism in China to the World

Taoism is a religion bred from Chinese culture, which has a great influence on the world! Many of these influences are contributed by Taoism. Here are four major influences of Taoism on the world:

Tao Te Ching

Tao Te Ching has become the most widely read book in the West after the Bible. At present, Tao Te Ching has been translated into nearly 500 foreign languages around the world.

Laozi's Tao Te Ching

Philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche and Hegel, scientists such as Leibniz and Einstein, writers such as Kafka and Tolstoy, statesmen such as Ronald Reagan and Dmitry Medvedev have all gained great enlightenment from them.

Tai Chi

Tai chi, Yin and Yang of tai chi chuan is based on the traditional Chinese Taoist philosophy dialectical concept as the core, set the temperament, strengthen physical health care, and combat against a variety of functions, the combination of easy change of Yin and Yang five elements, Chinese medicine channels and collaterals, the formation of ancient art and handled the guidance of a kind of inside and outside and repair, soft, slow, light spirit, and flexibility of the martial arts of physical health.

Tai chi chuan has now spread to more than 150 countries and regions, and 150 million people practice it overseas. The idea of tai chi chuan integrating nature with man and Taoism with nature not only brings strong and healthy body to the practitioners, but also brings great inspiration and thinking to the environmentalists.

Gunpowder 

There is a story in Taiping Guangji. It tells that in the early Sui Dynasty, a man named Du Chunzi went to visit an old alchemy man and stayed there that night.

Du Chunzi woke up in a dream in the middle of the night, saw the furnace inside the "purple smoke through the house", immediately the house burned up. This may have been caused by the alchemist's careless disposition of flammable drugs.

The Taoist priest invented gunpowder in alchemy

And there was also a book of alchemy, called The Secret and The Secret, which spoke of the burning with sulphur, saltpeter, realgar, and honey, and of the burning of the faces and hands, and of the burning of the roof, and of the burning of the house.

The book warns alchemists to prevent such accidents. This showed that the Taoists of the Tang Dynasty had grasped a very important experience, that is, sulfur, nitrate and carbon can form a kind of medicine that burns easily, which is called "the medicine on fire", that is, gunpowder.

Tofu

It was invented by Liu An, the grandson of Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty, in 164 BC. When Liu an and Taoist priests were burning medicine and alchemical on the Mount Bagong, at the junction of Shouxian county and Huainan in Anhui Province, they happened to point bean juice with gypsum, which led to the invention of tofu.

The invention of tofu is good news for vegetarians all over the world!

Tofu was invented by Liu An in the Han Dynasty