Ancient sword fighting show

During a recent tour to Henan in late March 2015, I visited a them park which was built following the details as depicted in the painting Along A River in Qinming painted during the Song dynasty.

There were many shows performed in the park, shows such as Cock Fighting, battle ships attacking the song capital, man spitting fire and ancient swordsmanship. Of all these shows, I found the ancient sword fighting show very interesting and exciting. You can see swordsmen fighting each other on horses, what you would see in ancient war where generals fighting each other.

Yue Fei was a famous general during the Song dynasty. He defended the dynasty by fighting off the invaders from the north. During that time, two of the Song emperors were captured by the enemies, he went all the way to rescue them. Unfortunately, he was called back by the new Song emperor who executed Yue Fei without any reason.

Here is the show that featured Yue Fei in his early days where he entered the fighting aerna where the winner could get a post in the army. Unfortunately his opponent was a prince, a relative of the emperor. He killed the prince and was about to be punish by the organizer, someone rescued him. Eventually he was taken in as a commander in the army and later became a general who won many wars with the invaders.

 

Just when he was about to fight into the enemies' capital to rescue the captured emperors, the new emperor of Song (the captured emperor's son) had to send 12 decrees to order him to retreat. When he finally returned to the capital, he was imprisoned and later executed (no reason was given for his execution). I believed he was executed as the new emperor was worried that if he did rescued the emperors, the young ruler would have to give up his throne.

If you want to know more abut Yei Fei, please visit this site:

         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_Fei

Along a river in autumn

 Along a River in autumn ( 清明上河图) is a painting by a Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145). It captures the daily life of people and the landscape of the capital, Bianjing, today's Kaifeng, from the Northern Song period.

The painting depicts various scenes that revealed the lifestyle of all levels of the society from rich to poor as well as different economic activities in rural areas and the city, and offer glimpses of period clothing and architecture.

The scroll is 25.5 centimetres (10.0 inches) in height and 5.25 meters (5.74 yards) long. In its length there are 814 humans, 28 boats, 60 animals, 30 buildings, 20 vehicles, 8 sedan chairs, and 170 trees. The countryside and the densely populated city are the two main sections in the picture, with the river meandering through the entire length.

One of the scene in the painting

Visit my other blog for a detailed description of the scenes depicted by the artist on the life of people that live during the Northern Song dynasty some one thousand years ago.

        http://alansyb232.blogspot.sg/
                                          

A tiger painting

I have a porcelain painting of a tiger besides a tree.

 

This painting was done by a famous artist in Jindezhen in the early days. His name is Pi YanMing and he is well known for painting tigers. I bought this painting in the early 90s when I spotted it in an antique shop in Chinatown. In those days, these paintings were not in collectors' radar. This was because mainstream artists' works were not that expensive. Art works by artists like Wu Guanchong, Fu Baosi, Fan Zen, Li Keran, etc were selling by couple of thousands. Today, these artists' works can fetch millions in auctions. Back then no body was interested to put his money to invest in porcelain paintings.
As people get more affluent, porcelain paintings also become collectors' items. These porcelain works often appear in auctions with some rare and excellent pieces fetching hundreds of millions in auctions.