Luffaman,Thank you for your explanation of Chinese culture...you did what I never dared to do
Every conception you mentioned above is every complex. For example, I am affected by Taoism a lot, but even so far I cannot explain it to another successfully.
I found one interesting thing: China likes to talk about Confucianism. However, if one looks deeper into China's history, she would find that leaders/kings preferred to use 法家(fa jia/ I dont know how to translate it) to control their people actually, though they did put Confucianism in front of them.