What's on

Inspiring landscape

In his most well-known prose Taohuayuan Ji (Peach Blossom Spring), Tao Yuanming, the poet whose life straddled the 4th and 5th centuries, wrote about a place where people live a peaceful, self-sufficient life free from worldly worries. More than 1,000 years later, a painter named Qiu Ying was inspired by Tao's fable to create a mountain-and-water painting titled Immortal Realm of the Peach Spring. Qiu visualized a serene, harmonious land ideal for intellectuals. His painting depicts lush mountains amid clouds, palaces bathed in mist, springs cascading over cliffs to form streams that run below bridges. Under pine trees and peach blossoms sit three men, dressed in white, with two young male attendants, enjoying casual talk and playing guqin (a seven-stringed zither). This landscape, applying a lot of green and blue pigments as a typical style of the Chinese art, is considered a monumental piece in Qiu's oeuvre, with only some still in existence. The painting is now at the center of an exhibition at Tianjin Museum that surveys Qiu's art. He is hailed as one of the "four masters of the Suzhou school", a loose group of painters active in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Self-trained, Qiu was known for his cultural accumulation that rendered his brushwork a mood of subtlety and elegance. The long-term exhibition also shows the works of his teacher, Zhou Chen, and two copied works of Qiu.

9 am-4:30 pm, closed on Mondays.62 Pingjiang Road, Hexi district, Tianjin. 022-8388-3000.

Edo period on show

The ukiyo-e print, the Japanese art form that thrived during the Tokugawa or Edo period (1603-1868), reflects the many aspects of flourishing society then, depicted as a "floating world". People can learn about the economic, social and cultural prosperity of that time through the art. Political stability, agricultural production, handicrafts and commerce resulted in promoting a booming scene for art and culture then. In such artworks, the diversity and richness of urban life is encapsulated in objects used by people in day-to-day life. Fine examples of the aesthetics and lifestyles of the Edo period are now on show at Suzhou Museum, in the historic and idyllic city in Jiangsu province. One piece from Katsushika Hokusai's most iconic collection of prints, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, shows thunderstorms accumulating above the mountain. Other exhibits include incense-burning sets and picnic cases to exemplify the craft work of the time. Objects at the exhibition are from the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. The artifacts were traded outside Japan as commodities or taken to North America by Japanese immigrants, and passed on throughout generations before entering the museum. The exhibition ends on May 21.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays.204 Dongbei Street, Suzhou, Jiangsu province. 0512-6757-5666.

Art in inches

"Governing a big country is as delicate as cooking a small fish," wrote Laozi in the classic text Tao Te Ching more than 2,000 years ago. That can be applied as a philosophy in artistic creation, for an artist is able to reveal the truth of the universe only when he can achieve refinement in details and dimensions of confinement. Beauty in Greatness Through Details, an exhibition at the National Art Museum of China through March 26, is showing works of small sizes in which creators portray diverse life experiences, nature and a love of people, reflecting an evolution in art styles, changes in social concerns and people's reflections on history. The exhibition is the first themed show to mark the 60th anniversary of the National Art Museum of China this year.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays.1 Wusi Dajie Street, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-6326.

China Daily