Word: taos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...great precept-giver on manners and morals, said as early as 500 B.C.: "The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills." Lao-tzu, an elder contemporary of Confucius, added another dimension, proclaiming that underlying nature was an all-pervading spiritual force, which he called Tao, and likened to water...
Emperor Ming Huang was also a great lover of nature. Homesick for mountains, he one day ordered two of his painters to reproduce the scenery of the Kialing Valley. Artist Wu Tao-tzu went out to lie under the trees, listen to the murmuring streams. Then, having identified himself with the scene, he took his brush, dashed off One Hundred Miles of the Kialing River Valley in a single day. Artist Li Ssu-hsun, who was also a general in the Emperor's army, labored for long months to depict the same scene. Presented to the Emperor, both paintings...
Neither painting in the competition has survived, but both the followers of Wu and General Li can be traced throughout Chinese painting history. And some idea of what Li's painstaking rendition looked like can be got from a work of the general's son, Li Chao-tao (known as the "Little General"). Travelers in a Mountain Pass (opposite], a rare, 1,000-year-old painting on silk, is believed to be his. Done in metallic blues and greens, it creates a panorama of cloud-shrouded peaks and gorges against which is shown a group of horsemen...
...court beauties. Unfortunately, much of what was most perishable, including the scroll paintings and murals, has disappeared, and today is known only through third-or fourth-hand copies. That such might be their fate the T'ang artists may even have suspected. The legend of Artist Wu Tao-tzu indicates at least a premonition. After Wu had finished his greatest mural, he stepped through a secret door as his painting vanished before the eyes of the astonished Emperor. Neither Wu nor his mural was ever seen again...
Only 90 coastal miles separate Canton and Hong Kong, but they are two whole worlds apart. In the last days of free Canton, before the Communists took over, Hsiao Tao-huang and her husband said goodbye to her sister Hsiao Ming, who was pregnant and was staying behind with her husband. At first the two families wrote occasionally, but then it became wiser not to. Recently in Canton, Hsiao Ming took advantage of relaxed Communist exit rules, went south to Hong Kong for a visit. She had to leave one member of the family behind, her husband. But she brought...