Riding the wind of rebirth

"It's actually very complicated." Zhou Zhi didn't know how to explain it to Mai Xiaomiao: "It's just like painting. Anyone with normal hands can do it, but the effect is another matter."

"Xiao Miao, you don't know, right? Elbow is the inheritor of the Southern Yanggong style, and his craft can be traced back to the Hanlin Academy of Painting in the Song Dynasty."

Zhou Zhi knew that Xiao Miao would faint again, and smiled, "That happened more than a thousand years ago. In fact, long before the Song Dynasty, two countries in the Five Dynasties, Hou Shu and Southern Tang, which had relatively developed cultural undertakings, established institutions specializing in painting, called painting academies. The painting academies were managed by the state, and the painters were called 'Hanlin Shizhao', an official position of the emperor's advisor. They enjoyed treatment similar to that of civil officials, wore official uniforms, and received 'salaries'."

"After the Song Dynasty unified China, it continued to set up painting academies and expanded them, and established the Hanlin Painting Academy. The masters of the painting academy during the Five Dynasties all worked in the Song Painting Academy. In order to select painters to paint murals for the newly built Yuqing Zhaoying Palace, the painting academy recruited painters from all over the country, and more than 3,000 painters responded. After the examination, more than 100 people including Wu Zongyuan and Wang Zhuo were selected."

"After that, the Royal Painting Academy was very active. Its heyday was from Emperor Huizong to Emperor Gaozong and Emperor Xiaozong after the migration to the south. The painting academy at that time was becoming more and more complete, and the examination was even formally included in the imperial examination. The examination was divided into six categories according to the subject matter: Buddhism and Taoism, figures, landscapes, birds and beasts, flowers and bamboo, and houses and wood. The examination was based on the ancient poems, and the question was to see who had the most ingenious ideas, surprising ideas, and more creativity."

"Many famous stories about painting exam questions came from here. For example, for the question 'Wild waters with no one to cross, a boat drifts all day long', most painters liked to draw a cliché of a egret perched on the boat, while the winner drew a person sleeping at the stern of the boat with a flute lying across it, tired from waiting for the ferryman all day long."

"For example, 'Ancient temple hidden in the mountains', most painters paint a corner of the ancient temple in the deep forest. Xiao Miao, how do you think the painting will win?"

“Draw the corner of the temple as small as possible?” Mai Xiaomiao remembered the Lingshan Temple hidden in the snow-capped mountains.

"The winner only drew a little monk carrying water by the stream, without any trace of architecture in the painting."

"That's really clever..." Mai Xiaomiao said with a smile, "Interesting, is there anything else?"

"There are many more, such as 'The horse's hooves smell the fragrance of flowers as it returns home' and 'The sound of frogs croaks ten miles away from the mountain spring', all of which have poetic allusions explained by the painters through clever composition."

"You have to tell me about it some other day." These stories left Mai Xiaomiao wanting more.

"'Frogs croaking ten miles away from the mountain spring' is at the Wanshou Temple on the West Third Ring Road, the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. Elbow can take Xiao Miao there someday to look at the paintings and talk about them. That would be more interesting."

"Is 'The Scent of Horse Hoofs Returning from Flowers' also there?"

“Hahaha…” Mr. Qi laughed, “‘Frogs croaking ten miles away from the mountain spring’ was the work of Qi Baishi, a modern painter. And ‘The fragrance of horse hooves returning home from stepping on flowers’ was the examination question given by Emperor Huizong of the Southern Song Dynasty to the Hanlin Academy of Painting. It was three or four hundred years earlier than the painting brought by Elbow. The painting is long gone. Although some people later borrowed the topic to express their own ideas, it was like an open-book question. There really is no good painting.”

"How long will it take to repair this painting?" Mr. Wang asked, "Although it is easy to repair, it is unlikely to preserve the original mounting, right?"

"We can only take care of the core of the painting." Zhou Zhi said, "The rest of the original mounting can still be used except for the scroll, and the silk and brocade strips can be used after cleaning. The rest can only be kept as specimens."

"If we have all the tools, we can fix it in seven days."

"Sometimes you have to wait to repair a painting. That's perfect. You can take Xiao Miao to visit the capital. We don't need to take him to the Forbidden City or the National Museum, right? I remember you have a consultant card that allows you to bring people in to both places." Old Yuan said with a smile. She liked the two young men in front of her more and more.

"I'm not that lucky." Zhou Zhi complained, "I guess I can only come back to fix the painting at night. In the morning, I have to go to the naval unit in Fengtai to answer questions. If everything goes well, I guess I have to build a network in Qingdao and the capital, configure programs, and a lot of things to do."

"It's the same if we come back here." Mai Xiaomiao was reluctant to leave: "I think there are enough things here for me to see." "If you want to take a closer look, it will take you ten days or half a month to see everything here." Old Master Wang nodded: "It's worthy of being a private museum."

"Even the National Museum and the Palace Museum have to borrow the exhibits. Some of the things here are unique pieces that are not even available in the big museums." Mr. Qi smiled and said, "You can't see them easily."

"Tomorrow we will gather our colleagues in Beijing to do an appraisal. By the way, if this painting is well-repaired in our country..."

"Don't!" Zhou Zhi waved his hand quickly. He knew what Mr. Wang was going to say next, so he had to stop him quickly: "I was able to bring this painting here because I gave guarantees from the state and the province. I must bring it back after it is repaired."

"If the National Museum is reluctant to spend money on materials, I can go to Rongbaozhai to find Mr. Chen. Anyway, this painting will not stay in the National Museum."

After he finished speaking, he glanced at Qi Lao again and said, "It doesn't matter whether he stays in the Forbidden City or not."

"Are you guarding us like thieves?" Old Wang pretended to be angry and said, "Forget it, let's repair it in the National Museum. There are fewer opportunities to repair Ming Dynasty paintings now. When we repair it, we can let people in the museum watch it."

"Well, I will bring people with me when the time comes." said Mr. Qi.

"Then this material..."

"The National Museum will publish it!" Mr. Wang rolled his eyes at Zhou Zhi and said, "But the training fee will be gone. In addition, we need to take a video to keep the materials of the restoration course."

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

"It's up to you." Zhou Zhi immediately smiled.

"It's also good luck." Old Wang also said: "In order to copy the portraits of the emperors of various dynasties, we just happened to order a large number of brocades and silks from Shuzhong, and the materials we needed happened to be all in there."

"Is it the whole thing or just part of it?" Zhou Zhi asked, "This is a big deal!"

“It’s really a big move.” Mr. Qi said with emotion: “To be honest, this job has been around for 70 or 80 years, and many of the early painters are no longer around.”

There are actually a large number of images commissioned by Emperor Qianlong to be stored in the Nanxun Hall. They include portraits of emperors, empresses and ministers from Taihao and Fuxi onwards, in three formats: scrolls, albums and scrolls, with a total of 123 copies. There are a total of 583 figures of all sizes depicted. Among them, the portraits of emperors and empresses are painted with yellow outside and red inside, while the portraits of ministers are painted with red outside and green inside.

This method of mounting is the Qing imitation of the Ming, and the Ming imitation of the Song. It uses the method of the Xuanhe Painting Academy, also known as "Nangong", which happens to be Zhou Zhi's strong point.

It is a pity that this set of precious paintings is still in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The ones collected in mainland China are all imitations copied by many painters from the Republic of China to the present.

However, the quality of these imitations is also very high. Many of the painters were famous artists at the time, and they put a lot of effort into the imitations. The copying technique also uses the double hook filling method, which is particularly suitable for reproducing these portraits. (End of this chapter)