About
Chou Ying's Peach and Plum Blossom Garden
-- Chinese Flower Viewing --
If you ever visit the Kyoto National Museum, look
for Chinese paintings like this in Room 12 (Chinese and Korean Painting),
on the 2nd Floor of the New Exhibition Hall. April is the
season for flower-viewing in Asia. The Japanese favor cherry blossoms,
but for centuries the Chinese have loved plum blossoms, peach blossoms
and peonies. Of all of these, the flowers that perhaps best signify
the arrival of spring are the peach blossoms.
Look at the following painting:
Peach and Plum Blossom Garden
(Chion-in Temple)
This painting is called Peach and Plum Blossom Garden. It depicts
Li Bo (701-762), a famous Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty (618-907
A.D.) spending an evening with his cousins in a garden of peach
and plum trees in full bloom. This is the scene that Li Bo described
in a poem entitled "Prologue on a Spring Evening Spent with
Cousins in a Peach Blossom Garden." The poem is included in
a collection called True Treasures of Classical Literature. For
the collection, the title was changed to "Prologue on an Evening
in a Peach and Plum Blossom Garden" and this is the name best-known
today.
In the central garden, several large, slightly tilting peach and
plum trees are in full bloom. Can you figure out which are peach
and which are plum? Look carefully; the peach trees have longer,
thinner leaves. The plum trees have shorter, wider leaves with blossoms
in clumps.
Peach and Plum Blossom Garden (Detail)
(Chion-in Temple)
Under the trees, a table has been set with platters of round cakes
and cups of rice wine. Four men with rather similar-looking faces
are sitting aroung the table. These are Li Bo and his cousins. Li
Bo is thought to be the man on the right. He and the man with his
back to us are drinking wine. Another man is stroking his long beard
and looking up at the blossoms. I wonder what he is thinking about?
The man in the rear of the picture is holding a brush in his right
hand. He seems to be about to write something on a piece of paper
laid out on the desk next to him. Actually, these four men are not
sitting in the garden only to drink and admire the blossoms. They
are taking turns writing poems about the event. If one doesn't come
up with a good poem, he has to pay by drinking more wine!
The other people in the picture are busy filling empty cups and
bringing in fresh pitchers of wine. Candle-holders around the table
are lit with candles and one of the servers is carrying a lantern.
The party seems to be in full swing. Night has just set in and the
light of the moon probably clearly outlines the pale blossoms against
the night sky.
In China, the peach and plum trees are thought to be brothers. In
this painting, the close relationship is symbolized by the two trees
leaning against each other with branches intertwined. The trees
seem to be a metaphor for Li Bo and his cousins.
This painting is only one of a set of two. The other painting, which
always hangs next to it, is called the "Golden Valley Garden."
These were painted, not in the Tang Dynasty, when Li Po lived, but
much later in the first half of the 16th Century, during the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), by a famous painter named Chou Ying. Somehow,
these two scrolls were brought to Japan. Since the Edo period (1600-1868
A.D.) they have been carefully cared for by Chion-in Temple in Kyoto.
Text by Minoru Nishigami, Department of Archives
Illustrations by Satoshi Ichida, Department of Public Relations
English translation by Melissa M. Rinne, Department of Archives
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