“Realm (境jing)”is an important element of Chinese painting, particularly in mountain-water landscape painting.Everything in the world has a“realm”aspect,and the best condition of any realm is one that transcends time and is all-encompassing of space.It is no more than the universally acknowledged standard of“truth”,“goodness”and “beauty”.Only where a high level aesthetic realm is reached do we find a high quality of art.

　Chinese painting, rooted in the richness of Chinese culture and the richness of our land, draws upon five thousand years of history and thousands and thousands of miles of space.Long ago our ancestors already were paying close attention to their relationship with heaven, earth and nature.Four or five thousand years ago our ancestors already possessed The River Diagram (He Tu) and The Luoshu River Diagram (Luo Shu).Later they made use of Book of Changes (Yi Jing) to observe the changes in nature,to master the laws of nature so that they could know how to deduce their own situations and develop in accordance with the trends of the time.This is why they were always concerned with changes in their environment.In the fifth century B.C., our learned sage Confucius (551-479 B.C.) was always seeking answers to changes observed in nature.He said,“Were I to have a few more years of life, at fifty I would learn the Book of Changes and I would make very few big mistakes!”(Shu’er, Analects of Confucius [Lunyu]).He would never talk about ghosts and deities rashly, but only wished for harmony between Heaven/Nature [tian]and humanity [ren], united as one.He summarized life saying that“when we are fifty, we know what heaven has mandated for us,”and this is“one’s lot”.“Heaven/Nature”may refer to the space we inhabit or it may be the mysterious and vast network of heaven,earth,wind and clouds, mountains, rivers and living beings.

　Normally“realm”refers to scenery or geographic environs.However, “realm”transcends land and soil.It means aesthetic realm and quality.Confucianism studies the human realm; Buddhists call it the mundane world.There is a story in Suiyuan Notes on Poetry (Suiyuan Shihua) by Yuan Mei (1716 – 1798) of the Qing Dynasty:“In Yang Wen’gong’s draft‘Letter from the Song Emperor to the Khitan’there are the words‘neighboring soils are happy with each other.’The Song Emperor Zhenzong wrote beside it ‘rat soil or yellow soil?’ Yang then changed ‘neighboring soils ’to ‘neighboring realms’, and the Emperor was pleased. ”Simply by changing “soils” into “realms”, it made the significance of border harmony so much greater!

　In its broader sense,“realms” also includes both the subjective and the objective worlds:it is feelings mixed with nature and nature as stored in the mind, and it is the coming together of feelings and realms.Wang Guowei (1877-1927),a modern Chinese master of literature, said,“Realm does not only refer to scenery.Happiness, anger, sadness, pleasantness are also aesthetic realms of the heart.Therefore, we can say those who can write about true scenery and true feelings are the ones who have grasped the aesthetic realm.”We can also see that the idea of aesthetic realm has received much attention and has been used often.

　At present,it is trendy to use “water-ink painting (shuimo)” instead of “Chinese painting”, and this amounts to forgetting the “aesthetic realm” in Chinese painting.This only looks at Chinese painting from the point of view of its tools and material or only considers its form, which is to substitute “ the Way” with “ the tools”, reducing it to nothing more than phenomena.

　Chinese mountain-water landscape painting began more than one thousand years earlier than western landscape painting and this is related to the different emphasis of the two ancient civilizations.Western civilization,represented by ancient Greek architecture and sculpture, seeks solemnity,harmony, precision,realism and idealism.Accompanying these is the rise of the study of perspective and anatomy.From sculpture to painting,they emphasized expression of the search for physical beauty; imitating and representing physical beauty, stories of people and paintings of religious history reached their peak. Landscape painting did not emerge until the seventeenth century. Ancient people in China were much more concerned with the patterns of change observed in nature.Nature’s beauty was expressed through reasoning, symbolism,analogy and experience.The representation of changes eventually became substantial.(Mencius said that substantiation is beauty.) The reason that Chinese mountain-water landscape paintings have lasted for thousands of years is because they are unique.It is because they are not just paintings of scenery, but have both scenery and feeling; they have artistic conception and aesthetic realm.They pay attention to inner beauty.The name “mountain-water” cannot be separated from our ancestors’awareness and respect for nature.Confucius compared virtue to the beauty of nature:“The benevolent rejoice in mountains; the wise rejoice in rivers and lakes.”Praising the nature of water, he also said: “Going with the flow in the shallows and acknowledging the unfathomable in the depths -- this is like wisdom.Descending into the deepest valleys without hesitation -- this is like bravery.Entering muddy waters and emerging unsullied -- this is like enlightenment. Reaching great heights, yet never losing balance -- this is like uprightness. Suffering countless difficulties yet remaining master of the situation -- this is like determination.”Mountains and waters contain humanity and virtue.Viewing Chinese mountain-water paintings from a western aesthetic perspective,we may say: “they are outer expressions of inner meaning”.

　A psychological state that is expressed using words is called a linguistic realm.For example,“calm”is a favourite realm expressed through Chinese mountain-water landscape paintings.This calm is not cold, dark dead silence.It is a calm of the sounds of nature with singing birds and tranquil mountains.It is a calm that lifts the soul into the heights.It is a deep calm that is borderless and boundless. Of course,“movement”is also a realm.Consider,for example,the realm of the tempestuous churning of the vast sea, or the realm of the rising winds and soaring clouds. As well,there are the artistic realms of spacious cold, or desolate remoteness; the bold and vigorous, the comfortable and sensible, and the easy-going and the generous -- all these are great artistic realms.

　Chinese mountain-water landscape painting emphasizes scenery and feelings.It is an art wherein the artist mixes the scenery of nature with feelings and emotions and expresses it through an artistic technique.

　Subjectively or objectively, Chinese art does not overly emphasize the stimulation of sense organs and rational analysis.It emphasizes the harmonious interplay of subjective and objective.Its aesthetic demands are related to its national character, so it stresses simplicity and vigour, honesty and sincerity, broad-mindedness, gentleness, virtue and goodness.The way to appreciate it is to slowly enjoy it,experience its sensibilities in an ineffable manner.In other words,enjoying its taste, understanding its meaning and knowing its ideals. Huang Binhong (1864-1955) has said,“Mountains and rivers are actually like paintings. We should quietly appreciate their inner beauty.”Inner beauty is ambience, quality,flavour and vividness.Naturally it also implies subtle ethical and educational meanings.

　From scenery to finished product,from creation to appreciation, mountain-water landscape painting is unique in that it draws the viewers into the beautiful scene and transfers their feelings into the scenery.Without the painter’s own physical experience of being there and being affected by the scenery,the viewer would not be able to physically appreciate it and be affected by it.As a mountain-water landscape painter, one should be equipped with the spirit of a tour guide so as to bring the viewer to travel through the scenery to better observe, consider and experience it.In this way, the viewer can be joyfully touched and relaxed so as to reach the integration of mind and soul.In other words: to experience a“freeing of the spirit”.The person who said this was none other than the fifth century mountain-water landscape painter Zong Bing, who was unable to walk during his later years, and so he looked at the mountain-water landscapes all day long.He would“lie down and travel”,totally drawn into the paintings.He called this:“freeing the spirit”.

　The salient characteristic of Chinese mountain-water landscape paintings is mindframe creation.“Take Nature as the Master”.The important thing is to create a realm, and the highest goal is to convey that realm.The ultimate goal is for both the painter and the viewer to physically enter the realm together,to probe the depths of aesthetic activity.The first goal is to be close to nature, to return to nature, to be united with nature, and eventually reach the realm in which both the subjective and objective worlds move in sync and where the scene is always fresh.This is what is meant by up-to-date.The second goal is to unobtrusively steeped in the aesthetic realms of the true, the sacred, and the wondrous.Cultivate integrity, purify heart and soul so as to reach the realm of the sublime!