The Dai park provides visitors with an immersive experience to learn about local culture, traditions and history through traditional arts, dance and music. Tourists are encouraged to dress in local attire and participate in activities like dancing or making paper lanterns – which helps connect them to the place. Over 500 Dais are employed at this park – security guards as well as performers provide daily shows that include water-splashing festivities and dragon boat races on a stretch of river.
This park was established by a Han businessman from Guangdong Province during the late 1990s and sold to a state-run rubber company for tourism in 1999. Visitors today can stay in family houses that follow Dai tradition for overnight accommodations.
Although Dai peoples have long held independence, they also remain deeply interwoven with both Chinese and foreign neighbors. This fusion is evident in their handicrafts such as their signature embroidered satchel (Tong Pa). Many such products feature patterns and colors which symbolise both cultural identities simultaneously – something Chinese culture cannot replicate with its independence alone.
Dai firmly believes that living by a set of moral standards that promote the flourishing of all humans is the pinnacle of moral virtuous living, as this allows him to do what is “self-so” for his heart-mind and “imperative” for humanity; when these two aspects align, that’s when humans can experience true fulfillment and satisfaction.
Dai accomplished his goals by abandoning the abstract metaphysical speculation of his Song and Ming dynasty counterparts in favor of evidence-based learning methods, including studying ancient philosophy texts as well as Classics such as Hanxue (disciplined rhetorical argumentation).
One of the main ideas Dai promoted in his Yuan Shan essays was an analysis of pattern (li). Dai distinguished this approach from that proposed by Song philosophers who held that human beings have both physical passions as well as higher, spiritual forces that set limits to these passions.
He believed that li was the source of all desires. Shu – his version of empathy – allows individuals to identify this structure by reconstructing another person’s desired states; doing this enables one to refine or discard her misguided or excessively personal predilections.
As it remains unknown exactly how a moral agent chooses which of her simulated psychological states to merge into a unified desire, but it seems likely that he or she must take care in simulating those that would harm a mirrored person, similar to how grief or love highlight specific features about someone most important for grievers or lovers.
Some scholars have speculated that Dai’s normative ethics are similar to indirect utilitarianism due to their link with satisfying our wants and feelings; however, Tiwald (forthcoming-b) contends that his view of pattern as an independent basic value distinguishes himself structurally from act utilitarianism, thus disqualifying Dai from being classified under this umbrella term.
