The Slow Victory of Plants:

On Luo Ying’s World of Flora

Qiu Zhijie

Quiescent and devoid of human presence, Luo Ying’s world is populated instead by orioles in flight, and a spectrum of trees and flowers: lotus rising from ponds, bamboo and pines, rose apples and cherry blossoms, all lush and flourishing. This is a land of peach blossoms, of angelica and orchids, a place where dreams of marvels and memories of past loves might flourish, where a rare deer might appear, or a simple plant reveals healing powers. Here duckweed floats untethered to the water’s surface, as rafts of reeds travel across the watery expanse, and perch swim freely for miles.

Over thousands of years, the roots of such plants have become deeply entwined in the souls of Chinese people. In Chinese art, trees and plants function as symbols and metaphor, they are objects on which we fix our gaze, and anchors that help us to ground our lives. In its earliest appearance in ancient oracle bone inscriptions, the character for art (yi)  was represented by a running man carrying a plant in his hands. In later seal script, this plant now appeared implanted in the ground while the entire people kneels by its side, cultivating the earth. In the modern simplified character for art (艺) we can still clearly identify the kneeling leg and foot, while the plant, now at the top of the character, has multiplied. There are no other people so filled with a sense of worship and gratitude towards plants as the Chinese. For thousands of years it has been said that trees and plants alone can understand and reflect our true selves; in fact, the plant world has become a kind of community for the solitary and the lonely. Just as with plants themselves, the legacy of Chinese art is not characterized by slashing and uprooting, but rather by quiet and patient cultivation.

Using plants as material in building architectural structures, the Chinese people never placed their faith in the indestructability of the hard and the firm; rather they believed in the power of sustained endurance, and this is a power that plants have revealed to us. The supposedly indestructible palace of King Taihang fell to the ground in the face of the enduring strength of the Foolish Old Man and his descendants. In the face of a cataclysm, plants yield to the destruction of the axe, to the inevitability of falling and withering, and yet in their hearts they are waiting. When the storm passes, plants regenerate and bloom again. The tomb of a monarch eventually becomes a fertile ground where plants grow and flourish. The victory of plants is slow, and relentless.

And thus, the world of plants that traditional Chinese people—that traditional Chinese art have/has constructed, is replete with species imbued with characteristics that are valued and respected: the noble resignation of reeds in an autumn lake, the melancholy of harvested fields of millet and wheat, the cold harsh endurance of the alfalfa, and the hopelessness of the gathered thorn-ferns.^[1] The mulberry trees glow in the setting sun, and the spiciness of ginger increases with age. In Song and Yuan paintings there is a tradition of depicting ancient trees in winter forests: this is an image that has long become encapsulated in our lexicon. Only those who aspire to the life of an anonymous recluse may earn respect as a noble scholar. In this kind of world, both the person who does not suffer from loneliness and the tree that is not old and withered are ignominious. It is taken for granted that only the moral person can find comfort and make his dwelling in such bitter, indifferent and frigid conditions. These paintings of withered trees and wintry forests represent a cultural sensibility, and have gradually become a touchstone of our language; they have become the trademark of the moral scholar in the same way that the humble dish of Yuxiang shredded pork becomes the test that distinguishes a master chef.

Chinese painters today lounge behind their floor to ceiling windows, turn on their air conditioners, play recordings of ancient guqin music on their expensive stereo systems, and open bottles of fancy Bordeaux wine; and yet, which of them does not attempt to insert into their work some of those qualities of bitter, wintry desolation, of loneliness and world-weariness, that permeate those ancient paintings?

Luo Ying’s world of plants is not of the kind characterized by an enforced condition of bitter cold and desolation. To the contrary, her world is full of vitality and life-force, like the first plants formed on Earth, as the biologist Thomas Huxley described in his essay Evolution and Ethics:

The native grasses and weeds, the scattered patches of gorse, contended with one another for the scanty patches of surface soil; they fought against the droughts of summer, the frosts of winter…. One year with another, an average population, the floating balance of the unceasing struggle for existence among the indigenous plants, maintained itself.^[2]

Here different species of plants are engaged in a constant life and death struggle. But Luo Ying’s world is not characterized by the typically western narrative of a battleground where the strong devour the weak and the law of the jungle prevails: rather, her summer plants are always lush and blooming, and her autumn leaves glow with a quiet beauty, each following in perfect order the seasons of the Earth.

Her world does not belong to the primordial plant world described in Evolution and Ethics, because her world is full of the traces of human existence: tiled floors, garden railings, a cluster of chairs, even gates and stairways, or an empty couch. Yet it is also not the world of the traditional Chinese scholar’s garden, where the frustrated court official could vent his woes, or where the rich and complacent could retire and enjoy the elegant props that allowed them to imagine themselves as roaming through a wilderness of mountains and forests. To the contrary, in Luo Ying’s world we actually find western-style outdoor furniture. The metal railings and chairs have a flavor of Art Nouveau, and even the architecture of the walkways and the style of the flower vases have a distinctly western flavor, complete with street lights and sun umbrellas—these are the kinds of accouterments we would expect to see in modern European art, in the paintings of a Duffy or a Matisse. These are the symbols of an era in which civilization was confident in its belief that it had conquered Nature, when the critique of the machine age was yet about to unfold. These objects are past symbols of the bourgeois and hedonistic lifestyle.

Coming to this point in our analysis, it appears we are on the verge of labeling Luo Ying as either a painter of urban life, or as a painter of contemporary gardens: her use of colour and of ink—the gorgeous effects of the pale pinks and soft greens juxtaposed with or melting into the light ink wash, and the way she integrates the boneless style of painting with calligraphic line—goes against traditional stylistic conventions of brushwork and is completely devoid of the spirit of sparseness and bitter wintry desolation of past masters. All of these details conspire to create an association in our minds with a kind of hedonistic spirit, a judgment which would at least make us feel comfortable that we know what we are dealing with here.

And yet, let’s not be too hasty: moving beyond the details to the overall composition, we find that it is telling us a very different story. Every inch of the composition is infused with a certain traditional Chinese sensibility. These are not the mountains and woodlands of a Chinese scholar-recluse; these are realms hidden within the structure of our city, and they bring with them a sense of unease. Of course, it is the plants—these are not the plants so carefully tended by the gardeners of the scholar-gentleman, they are infiltrators that were long hidden under the long cloak of traditional painting schools and have found their way into our contemporary world. Even now, when they silently appear alongside the streetlights, and the shadows of trees fall on quiet, empty streets, they have yet not forgotten that they once were celebrated in the ancient Book of Songs and Songs of Chu; and they have never abandoned their stature as symbols. They use wind and moonlight as secret codes, and are ready at any time to join together with the army of wild plants growing in the mountain fields on the outskirts of the city, poised to turn this city into a pleasure ground for plants.

In Luo Ying’s world, plants are paragons of patience, experts of waiting; they gather around empty corners of the city where people don’t go, growing higgledy-piggledy all over the place and ever ready to expand their territory. Why are there no people? Because these plants have taken on a human personality. They are not interested in invading the air-conditioned, glass window-protected space of some museum for literati art. They are agitated, because they are always prepared for the worst, to be cut down or uprooted here in the city. These are not the kind of plants accustomed to playing at world-weariness and resignation, these are plants prepared to face their destinies head on. This is the same destiny of traditional Chinese culture in a modern world where the law of the jungle prevails.

Whenever I think of the stench of Chinese farming villages, I feel so moved I want to weep. The reason for the continued use of foul-smelling cesspool pits in rural villages is not because Chinese people are too stupid to design underground sewer systems, it’s because the night soil in these pits is a valuable treasure, used to fertilize the soil to maintain its vitality. When I was a little boy I used to watch the people in my native village plant beans and astralagus in the period between seeding the early rice and harvesting the late rice; they looked like the purple alfalfa flowers that the ancient explorer Zhang Qian brought back from the Western Regions. Later, when I did some studying, I realized that both the stems and leaves of the bean plant and of the astralagus are the best material for fertilizing the fields. After thousands of years of farming, the nourishment of the soil in China’s limited farmland has not yet been exhausted: this soil still feeds such a huge population, which is reliant on just that way of life; and this way of life is the life of plants. Plants rely on the bees and the butterflies to transmit their love letters to each other, and then offer up their food to us.

The nature of Chinese people is the nature of plants.

And so we can empathize with both the unease and the vitality of Luo Ying’s world of plants. This is a struggle for a way of life. This is a statistical study of just how much tolerance there is for traditional Chinese people in this mundane world. This is where a light shines on the humblest thatched dwelling. This is where one cannot always distinguish the orchids from the wormwood. This is where every tree and bush conceals a warrior.

September 13, 2015

(Translation by Valerie C. Doran)

Qiu Zhijie is an artist and curator, and Dean and Professor of the School of Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

^[1] Note: Many of Qiu Zhijie’s references to the emotional qualities associated with plants are paraphrases or direct quotations from Chinese classical texts, where a particular plant plays an emotive role in particular scenario. For example, the reference to the hopelessness of the gathered thorn-ferns is from the poem ‘Cai Wei’ (‘Gathering Thorn-Ferns’) in the Xiaoya section of the ancient text Book of Songs (Shijing). In this poem, soldiers fighting on the battlefield far from their homes long for their families while gathering thorn-ferns. Thus an allusion to ‘gathering thorn ferns’ indicates a separation from and deep longing for home. Many such quotations from classical texts have become sayings with which the majority of Chinese are familiar.－Trans.

^[2] Quoted from Thomas H. Huxley, ‘Prologemena’, in Evolution and Ethics, (New York: 1896), pp. 1-2.

植物的勝利姍姍來遲

讀羅穎的花草世界

邱志傑

藝術家／策展人／中央美術學院 實驗藝術學院院長

羅穎的世界寂靜無人，這個世界鶯飛草長，雜樹生花，芙蓉出水，椿萱並茂。這個世界有桃之夭夭，有沅茝澧蘭，有竹苞松茂，有棠棣之華，蕉鹿之夢，蓼莪之思，葑菲之采。這裡萍飄蓬轉，一葦可航，純鱸千里。

這些植物在一個民族的靈魂裡盤根錯節、瓜葛相連已經數千年。在中國藝術裡，植物從來都是象徵的喻體，凝視的對象，安身立命的倚靠。從甲骨文開始，「藝」字就是跪著的人手捧著植物，。到了石鼓文中，這株植物已經被植在土裡，那一整個民族正在一旁蹲跪著培土。即使到了簡體字的「艺」字，這跪著的腿腳依然清晰可見，頭上那株植物依然生生不息。再沒有一個民族對植物這樣地充溢著由心而發的膜拜和感恩。以至於數千年來，所有聲稱只有植物是自己的知己的人們，其實形成了一個孤獨者的共同體。也像植物一樣，中國的藝術傳承，從來都不是披荊斬棘式的砍伐和摧折，從來都是默默地耐心地養成。在寫遍芭蕉之後，菊老荷枯之時，一再地，枯木逢春，柳暗花明，茅塞頓開。

中國人住在植物構造而成的建築中，他們從來不相信堅固的不朽，他們更相信不息的力量，這種力量正來自植物的啟示。不朽的太行王屋，在不息的愚公家族面前轟然崩塌。每當玉石俱焚之時，斧柯交加之厄，植物們偃服，飄零，承受踐踏，心懷等待。風過之後，植物總會重新挺立，重新繁茂。帝王將相的陵墓，遲早終將成為植物的沃土。植物的勝利，總是姍姍來遲。

因此，傳統中國人——傳統中國畫所構造的植物世界中，充滿了人格清高的物種，充滿了蒹葭秋水的無奈和黍離麥秀的傷感，充滿了苜蓿生涯的清冷和採薇者的絕望。每每在桑榆暮景中，撿拾著老辣的薑桂之性。宋元以來的中國畫中古木寒林的傳統，已經成為一個標準句式。不嚮往隱遁的生活，不足於稱名士高士。在這樣一個世界中，不孤獨的人和不枯萎的樹都是可恥的。苦澀、淡漠、清冷的世界才是有德者的居所。這古木寒林的畫面，及其連帶的一整套趣味，慢慢地成為一句套話，就像廚師考級時必考的魚香肉絲，成為雅士的身份證。今天的中國畫家，在落地玻璃窗內，打開空調，用高級音響播放一曲古琴，呷一口波爾多的紅酒，然後，誰的筆下沒有幾筆自古以來的苦寒和蕭瑟，滿紙的落寞與厭世。

羅穎的植物世界卻不是這樣一個有幾分強裝的苦寒。她的植物世界生機勃勃，有如《天演論》中的天造草昧，是「怒生之草，交加之藤，勢如爭長相雄。各據一抔壤土。夏與畏日爭，冬與嚴霜爭……憔悴孤虛，旋生旋滅。菀枯頃刻，莫可究詳。是離離者亦各盡天能，以自存種族而已」。物種在這裡方生方死，此起彼伏。然而羅穎的世界卻又不是西方式的弱肉強食的生存競爭的戰場。這裡夏花爛漫，秋葉靜美，一切都在時序和地理的秩序中。

所以這個世界當然又決不是《天演論》中的天造草昧，這個世界已經到處都是人的痕跡：一片地磚，一排欄杆，幾把椅子，甚至於一角門巷，數段台階，一把空空的躺椅。它們甚至不是中國傳統園林中那些用來讓官場失意者長吁短嘆或讓得意者假裝嚮往山林的道具，這是一些西式的戶外家具。鐵欄杆和椅子都帶著新藝術運動以來的鐵藝風格，甚至有西式的建築迴廊和花盆，甚至有路燈和遮陽傘——這些道具我們在杜飛和馬蒂斯時代的歐洲畫面裡看到過，那是一個人類充滿自信地自以為征服了自然之後的時代，對於機器的反省就要展開。這些器物，曾經是中產階級和享樂主義的符號。

解析至此，我們幾乎要把羅穎定義為一個都市生活畫家或現代園林畫家了：她的用色和用墨——粉紅和嫩綠在淡墨中的交錯斑斕；她用沒骨和兼工帶寫的畫法規避了傳統中國畫中骨法用筆蒼老用筆的律令，驅盡了殘破和苦寒趣味；所有的這些細節，似乎都傾向於把我們推向一個享樂主義的印象，這樣一個解釋就能讓我們安分了。

但是且慢，整個畫面告訴我們的卻又全然不是這些。有一種傳統中國的氣質正彌散在這個世界的每個角落。它不是中國隱士的山林，它就在我們這座城市的秩序中潛伏，帶來一種不安。對了，就是這些植物，這些植物從來沒有甘心地接受園藝工人的修剪，它們只是一個漫長傳統派來潛伏在我們這個當代的臥底。甚至於當它們默默地和路燈為伍，把樹影落在夜靜無人的街頭時，它們也從來沒有忘懷自己在《詩經》和《楚辭》中的身份，它們從來沒有放棄象徵的地位。它們用風和月光作為暗號，隨時準備和城市周邊山野裡的植物大軍裡應外合，把這座城市變成植物的樂園。

在羅穎的世界中，植物是一些耐心的等待者，它們總是包圍著無人的都市一角，旁逸斜出，枝柯交錯，隨時準備蔓延。為什麼無人，因為這些植物就有人格。這些植物沒有準備把自己安放在空調玻璃房裡的古木寒林博物館裡，它們不安分，它們隨時準備在城市裡遭遇摧折。這不是那種習慣化的表演著厭世和無奈的植物，這是一些擔當著命運的植物。這是傳統中國在一個弱肉強食的現代世界中的命運。每次我想起中國農村的臭，都感動得想哭。中國農村的糞坑，不是中國人蠢得不會設計下水道把糞便排放出去，而是這些糞便都是寶貝，是用來讓土壤保持肥力，讓資源循環。我小時候看家鄉的人在兩季禾苗早稻和晚稻中間，在田裡種豆和紫雲英，也就是張騫從西域帶回來的紫花苜蓿，後來讀書才明白，豆根豆葉和紫雲英，都是最好的肥田的材料。幾千年的農耕，中國有限的耕地，土壤的營養沒有耗盡，養育了這麼多人口，靠的就是這種生活方式，這種生活方式，就是植物的方式。植物拜託蜜蜂和蝴蝶傳遞情書，一定供奉出食物。這是一種謙卑和禮貌的生活。相比之下，動物都是掠食者。

中國人都是植物性的。

因此我們理解了羅穎的植物世界中的不安和活力，這是一場生活風格的爭鬥。這是這座塵世中還能容下多少傳統中國人的統計學。這裡蓬蓽生輝，這裡蘭艾難分，這裡，草木皆兵。

二零一五年九月十三日