Suddenly she was afraid of him.
He painted a small picture of crab-apple blossom and wrote beneath it: Your husband is just as good and bad as before. Why is there no harmony between you and him any longer? Why do you make plans to exchange him for a horse? Once we spoke of buying a pine wood on the other side of the Wu bridge and raising deer and making the best ink for all the world’s pictures. Red flowers carpet the hillside, the spring streams caress the rocks. Like your love they open their flowers and then wither. The stream flows endlessly, like my sorrow.
He sent her this picture after she had already left him. But she did not reply. He wrote to her once more: On whom should the scent of the orchid model itself? I can no longer tell whether twilight belongs to the morning or the evening. Was it you who sent me these cawing ravens? I hate the pasture by the pavilion. I watch ants in the moss moving their nest. The sadness of the pines dripping in the rain and this wind which never stops blowing.
But no word ever came back.
26 It was at this time that he first summoned the courage to hold his dead master’s paintbrush. He set out a piece of paper and poured water into the hollow of the rubbing stone. He rubbed the ink and drenched the brush. Then he ran it over the peach stone until the bristles stopped dripping.
Starting in the bottom left-hand corner, he made a bold stroke across the entire width of the paper and then continued in a right angle upwards, slowly lifting his hand so that the line, after a slight curve to the left, finished in a point. Around this point he planted three deep-black, almost round blobs, inserting between these some delicate, parallel, wavy lines with the tip of the brush.
Above where the thick line at the bottom began, he now led the brush in a gently winding movement to the top, where he again finished the stroke with two blobs cut off by the edge of the paper. He added a few short spikes on either side of the three bold strokes by thrusting the tip of the brush into the black vein from about a finger’s width away.
He wet the brush tip with ink a second time and signed the small piece of paper with the characters ba da shan ren. He had given himself another name: man on the mountain of the eight compass points.
He endorsed the picture with his seal.
When he fixed the picture to the wall to view it, he could see a fine forked branch at the end of which sat a rose in bloom.
Like an armed guard, the thorny branch defended the beauty at its tip. The seductive petals would soon fall, but the thorns would remain.
Branch of blossom with thorns
27 Since his second wife had left him, Bada Shanren had been leading the life of a vagabond. At the age of sixty he no longer had his own retreat; he was free from all ties.
He had renounced whatever would not fit into his paltry luggage. Everything else seemed superfluous.
Like a bird he drifted from place to place, whistling and singing, only ever settling down temporarily. He accepted all the hospitality extended to him. But often people were full of mistrust when they met him; they thought he was mad.
Wherever possible he stayed with friends.
When he met an old acquaintance he would make himself useful straight away and work for him all day long without a break. He pushed himself to the limit, forgetting all else as he did so.
This was how he lived.
28 From this time he used only the one name, Bada Shanren. He was asked about the meaning of the name and he would reply, ‘The points of the compass symbolize the eight directions of space which each painter worthy of the title must be capable of opening up with a single brushstroke.’
Whenever he wrote the four characters of his name, ba da shan ren, he would put them together in such a way that they could be read not only as Bada Shanren, but also in another arrangement: as the characters kuzhi and xiaozhi, which mean the crying man and laughing man. He was the laughing man who also cried, and the crying man who laughed too. He could not merely cry or laugh; his laughter always contained a tear and he cried tears of laughter.
‘Isn’t it terrible to live with so much uncertainty and fear for the future?’ he was asked by a friend who put him up for a while.
That same night Bada Shanren took out a piece of paper, rubbed some ink and lowered his brush into the hollow of the rubbing stone.
He painted a large dot somewhat to the right of the centre of the paper. Below this a short, flat line, to the side of that a similar vertical one, and above the dot a finely drawn arc the breadth of a fingertip. He left some space around these marks, then he painted a palm-sized area beside and below the two short lines by pressing the brush down onto the paper, rolling it on its axis and wiggling it to produce an irregular black patch whose edges, punctuated by individual bristles, had extremely fine points.
At the bottom of this ball of colour he drew a thin, horizontal line which extended as far as the vertical axis of the dot. Halfway along this line he added a second, equally thin but much shorter line, crossing the first one at a sharp angle.
In the left half of the picture, a little lower than the first dot, he now painted a second one which he likewise bordered with a line that he brought downwards in a gentle arc and then took to the right, almost horizontally. Where the line ended he applied the brush to the paper once more, leading it downwards diagonally and then, with a tilt of his hand, angling it slightly to the right. Through the resulting bend he painted a straight line downwards, bringing it to a point shortly after the intersection. Above the second dot he pressed the brush down onto the paper as before, extending the blotch that appeared upwards, eventually letting it fade to the side. An almost rectangular shape emerged above the dot, forming a slight overhang in the upper right corner.
Now he dipped his brush again and signed the paper with the characters ba da shan ren. Finally he printed his red seal on it. He presented the picture to his host, saying, ‘Here you can see how I feel.’
‘But that’s two chicks,’ his host said.
‘Yes,’ Bada replied, ‘and there’s an eagle circling above them, but that you can see only in the chicks’ expressions. The bird of prey will swoop down on top of them, but they can share their fear and rely on their mother. I crossed the threshold and left my homeland long ago, and my heart trembles along the length of the path. I share my fear with my pictures alone.’
Two chicks
29 One day Bada Shanren was the guest of a goldfish breeder. He showed Bada around his garden, which he called the Garden of the Yellow Bamboo.
To Bada’s great astonishment, his host did not mention goldfish once. He had made up his own lyrical names for all the shrubs and trees, and he enthused about their subtle colours and the variety of their leaf forms. Late in the afternoon he suddenly grabbed Bada’s arm.
‘This is the moment. Now the light is perfect.’
Bada was taken to the veranda behind the house. There, an assistant was standing a number of blue-and-white porcelain bowls on the low wall.
‘Master,’ the host said, ‘please look at my fish. Look at them all and tell me which colour you like best!’
Bada looked one by one into all the bowls. He noticed that the goldfish breeder had arranged the fish in a colour scale. The first one was saffron yellow. The scales of the second glistened pink, the third and fourth were both bright orange. The fifth shone a lurid red, the sixth had a purple back. The final one seemed to him almost violet.
In each bowl was a single fish, almost the size of carp. They were so large that they could swim only in a tight circle, forced to bend their heavy bodies to the limit. It was clear that they noticed the change in light on the water when Bada bent over them. They looked at him through the clear water with their large round eyes and seemed to be trying to kiss the surface with their plump lips, shattering the delicate glass each time. The light glinted colourfully on their stout backs.
Bada chose the last fish, the violet one.
‘Why the darkest one, Master?’ the goldfish breeder asked with a hint of surprise.
30 After his visit to the goldfish breeder, Bada Shanren settled on the shore of a lake near the Orchid Temple and put himself up in an old fisherman’s hut. He gave his modest abode the name Song after Waking, which he wrote on the wooden planks in large white characters.
When he had become familiar with his surroundings and had found peace again, he put a long roll of paper on his low painting table. To keep the paper flat he weighed it down with stones from the river. He rubbed ink and dipped his paintbrush.
In the upper left-hand corner of the picture he allowed a large, irregular shape to emerge, which in places he outlined with shading. Diagonally opposite, in the lower right-hand corner of the picture, he painted a second shape, similar to the first. Their contours seemed to snuggle up to each other across the wide space between. In this empty space Bada used the tip of his brush to paint a tiny arc, the upper end of which split into two prongs. Two hand widths away from this, set slightly below, he made a stroke across the paper which also divided on the right, but which was then rounded off by another delicate downwards stroke, thereby leaving a narrow empty space between the upper straight line and lower rounded one.
He painted four other objects of a similar shape and size, close to the outline of the large shape at the bottom.
To finish he signed his name, stamping his seal below it.
When the ink was dry he attached the roll of paper to one of the ceiling beams so that it caught the light shining in. Here the black colour swallowed the sun’s rays; there the ink let the light filter through and grey clouds appeared, while in the backlight the unpainted area of the paper acquired the depth of sand dunes.
Two boulders jutted out of the embankment above the still water of the lake. There was movement between the rocks and around them. Minnows darted about in the clear water.
A gentle gust of wind caught the picture hanging like a curtain and a faint tremor ran in a wave down the length of the paper. For a few moments the little fish took off and swam in the air. Their joy was for the eternity that lay before them. But no one was pressing them to express it openly.
Fish and rocks
31 Bada Shanren had become a master and young painters came from far and wide to show him their work and seek advice. They generally brought small gifts, ink tablets from their province or jars of jam, and he would thank them politely. These visits punctuated long periods of silence, when he would immerse himself completely in his work.
Bada looked patiently at the mountains and rivers, the pines, the bamboo, all the cranes and wild geese and fish. Everything seemed so superficial, so stiff and lifeless. A heap of bones and ashes. He would then give the painter the following advice: ‘When you walk, do not think about walking, but let your feet dance on the soft forest floor. When you paint, do not think about painting, but let your wrist dance.’
Soon afterwards monks from the Monastery of the Green Cloud also visited him in his fisherman’s hut.
Once he was sitting with a monk on the shore, speaking of the joys of being a fish.
‘But Master, you’re not a fish,’ the monk countered. ‘How can you know whether fish can be happy?’
‘You are not me,’ Bada replied. ‘How can you know that I do not know when a fish is happy?’
‘No, I’m not you,’ the monk said. ‘So I cannot know what’s in your mind. But you are definitely not a fish. That is certain. So I doubt that you can know fish feel pleasure.’
‘Let us start at the beginning once more,’ Bada said. ‘When you asked me how I could know what fish feel, you already knew that I know, and you asked me how. My answer to this is: I know, for the happiness I feel is not my own.’
32 Shao Changheng, man of letters and functionary, also harboured a strong desire to meet Bada Shanren. He had studied and admired the master’s calligraphy, without ever being able to acquire any of his work.
When in 1688 Shao stayed as a guest of an abbot friend of his in the Orchid of the South Monastery near Nanchang, a well-informed monk was sent to the master’s abode to request whether Shao might be able see him. The messenger returned the following day to say that the master agreed to meet Shao Changheng in the Orchid Temple.
When the appointed day arrived it was pouring with rain. With such bad weather Shao could not expect the ageing master to keep their engagement. In spite of his doubts, however, he called for a bamboo litter and set off.
He was only halfway to the temple when Bada came running to meet Shao, gave him a warm greeting and then burst out into loud laughter. Shao saw an old man of slight build with a faintly reddish face, sunken cheeks and a thin moustache whose ends hung down in fine strands. The man was wearing a fisherman’s hat from which the rainwater dripped all around as if from a fountain. His shoes and cape were sopping wet, but this seemed not to trouble the man; he danced and sang alongside the litter on the final stretch to the monastery.
They spent half the night in conversation by lamplight. The master became less and less talkative, whereas his gestures became increasingly animated until his whole body moved with them.
All of a sudden Bada demanded some ink and a brush, which the monks gave him without delay. Now he started frenetically covering sheets of paper with calligraphy, writing dark words which Shao was unable to interpret. Bada went on in this frenzy until he collapsed from exhaustion and fell asleep on the spot.
Outside a violent storm was raging and water was swooshing from the gutters. Gusts of wind rattled the windows and doors, and around the pavilion the bamboo groaned like tigers in the deserted mountains.
There was such commotion that night that Shao could not sleep. He was overcome by an interminable sorrow, like black water flowing into an empty lake basin. He would have liked to wake the master and shed tears with him, but such things were beyond him, and he merely felt sadder as a result.
He was unable to sleep because he felt more awake than in the daytime, more awake than he had ever felt.
As the storm continued to rage, Bada remained motionless, like a drowned man.
Shao became worried and bent over him.
Bada was fast asleep, with a cheerful expression on his face.
33 Later, in summer, another young painter visited the master, asking many questions and seeking advice.
‘How can I develop my own style?’ the painter wanted to know.
‘Originality!’ Bada laughed. ‘I am as I am, I paint as I paint. I have no method, I do not think about originality, I am just me.’
‘But surely I have to choose the style of the Northern or Southern School.’
‘You come from no school and you go to no school. The school does not come to you, either, and no school goes forth from you. Take a brush and some ink and simply paint your own style.’
Bada could see the young man’s questioning look. So he elucidated further: ‘We do not know which style the ancients followed before developing their own painting style. And when it had reached maturity they did not allow their successors to renounce this style. For centuries their successors were unable to lift their heads from the ground. Like those who follow in the footprints of the ancients rather than following their own hearts. A truly lamentable state of affairs, it means a young painter becomes the slave of another, well-known painter. Apart from that, avoid flatness, excess detail and, most of all, continuing with a well-worn pattern. What is painting if not the technique of the universe’s changes and developments?’
‘Does that mean I don’t have to begin with the role models and attain their level of expertise before striking my own path?’ the pupil asked. ‘When you talk like that you are forgetting that besides the old role models you also have your own: yourself. You cannot hang on to the beards of the ancients. You must try to be your own life and not the death of another. For this reason the best painting method is the method of no method. Even if
the brush, the ink, the drawing are all wrong, what constitutes your “I” still survives. You must not let the brush control you; you must control the brush yourself.’
34 Bada Shanren had been invited by the abbot to the Orchid Temple. They drank their fill of liquor and laughed into the summer night.
The following day Bada took leave of his host very early and set off on his way back to the fisherman’s hut where he still lived.
A fine rain had set in. Bada wandered through the pine forest beneath the monastery and breathed in the fragrance, for the damp trees were letting off an aroma. Amidst the silence he told himself, ‘You must know when the world acquired you and when the time has come to leave it. My life is fading away like the magnificence of the cherry blossom in the rain, and I feel only sadness at the emptiness which remains. I have filled it with my signs, but have I thereby proved my existence?’
He stopped. ‘Is this a suicidal thought? Or is it quite the opposite? Why does the rain have this effect on me? Surely there is nothing softer in the world than water. And surely nothing better for softening hard and severe things.’
He was approaching his dwelling. He saw the hut by the lake, squatting at the foot of the mountain, and he stopped again to savour the view.
The trees, the rocks, the mountain stream in the rain.
Everything seemed blurred and other-worldly. Everything playing out incessantly before him – was it merely the flow of things? Was it the trees dripping in the mist which made the world appear like that, or was it the tears in his eyes?
No sooner was he back in his abode than he took a large piece of paper and wiped it with the wet sleeve of his robe. He hurriedly poured water into the rubbing stone and prepared the ink.
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