Humans at One with Other Living Things
3 min readLove for all living things in the world and appreciation for their state of being can often be found in ancient works of art and literature.
Dong Qichang（1555-1636），a famous painter of the late Ming Dynasty，explained that，most artists enjoyed a long life because everything they observed was full of life.Dong You（birth and death dates unknown），collector and connoisseur of the Song Dynasty，emphasized that artists should depict the state of life，which exists in nature.Therefore，artists should observe and learn from nature.Wang Gai（1654-1710）of the Qing Dynasty summarized the secret of painting fish as:depicting their liveliness as they swim in water.He compared the happiness of fish in their natural world to the happiness of humans in their natural world.Chinese artists never paint dead animals.The birds，fish，insects，and flowers are all full of vitality under their brush.
Ancient Chinese literature has a similar focus.In the poems of the Tang and Song dynasties，when Chinese poetry reached the apex of development，birds and flowers were often depicted as if they had human feelings.In Strange Tales from Make-do Studio（Liaozhai zhiyi），by Pu Songling（1640-1715），human beings and other living things are described as being of the same kind.Many of the stories tell of love between men and beautiful women incarnated from plants or animals.”Xiangyu”is such a story.The heroines，Xiangyu and Jiangxue，are incarnated from，respectively，a peony flower and a camellia flower in a monastery on Mount Laoshan（sacred mountain of Daoism）.Xiangyu falls in love with Huang Sheng，a scholar studying at the monastery.Jiangxue also becomes his friend.Unfortunately，a visitor to the monastery grows so fond of the white peony flower that he moves the plant to his home，where it withers up.The heartbroken Huang Sheng composes 50 poems entitled Crying over the Flower.Then the priests of the monastery want to cut down the camellia plant in order to build extra rooms there，but Huang Sheng stops them.Later，a new plant sprouts from where the white peony used to be.In his sleep，Huang Shengdreams of Xiangyu begging him to water her every day.He follows her request.
The plant grows more luxuriant day after day.The next year a large flower blooms，on which sits a tiny beauty.In a blink of the eye，the beauty floats onto the ground.She is none other than Xiangyu.The three of them live happily together.Later，Huang Sheng falls seriously ill.He leaves this message to an old priest,”You will find a red sprout growing vibrantly from underneath the white peony. It will grow into five leaves. That’s me.”The year after Huang Sheng’s death,a plump sprout indeed appears. The old priest diligently waters it. The sprout grows over three years to become a plant more than a meter tall, but it does not blossom. After the old priest dies, his disciple cuts down the plant because it never flowers. Soon afterward, the white peony plant dies, immediately followed by the death of the camellia plant.
“Xiangyu,”like many other tales by Pu Songling, is full of love for all livingthings in the world. These stories are to signify that humans and other living things are of the same kind, and they share weal and woe together.
