How it all began…
A few years ago, my former high school art teacher invited me back to campus to give a brief presentation on Chinese art history. I gushed with the students about the symbolism of jade and clouds, surprised them with fun facts about how the terracotta warriors were originally painted realistic colors, but the most interesting part was when I pulled out my own personal copy of Zhang Zeduan’s Qingming Festival Along the River. I lovingly took it out of its brocade embroidered box, gathered the students in a circle, and walked through the painting segment-by-segment, explaining how scrolls are actually meant to be read in sections like a comic strip.
My art teacher’s eyes widened. “All this time, I thought you were supposed to unroll the whole thing first,” he said.
It’s not his fault he had this misconception. Museums usually display Chinese hand scrolls completely unfurled, under shiny glass cases and big signs that scold, “no flash photography!” Crowds mull by in a clockwise rotation, glancing down at the images here and there. It’s the exact opposite of the intimate way scrolls are meant to be viewed.
How can we teach Western audiences about hand scrolls?
This experience got me thinking: there’s got to be a better way to teach Western audiences about hand scrolls. What if I made a scroll English speakers could actually read?
Process
I chose one of China’s most iconic scrolls, the Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, attributed to Gu Kaizhi (ca. 345-406) with text by Zhang Hua (232-300). This version was copied a few hundred years after Gu Kaizhi. Sadly, the original is lost. There are multiple copies of this scroll, but I selected the most well known copy, which was owned by the Qianlong Emperor (1711-1799), stolen after the Boxer Rebellion, and now lives at the British Museum an ocean away (stolen artwork at museums is a topic for a whole other blog post). The scroll is a political commentary originally meant for the murderous Empress Jia (257-300). It gives instructions on how a palace lady ought to behave, and has some hilarious advice that would make One Direction proud, like “The ‘beautiful wife who knew herself to be beautiful’ Was soon hated.”
I carried out localization in Photoshop, making thorough use of its “content aware fill” and “flip horizontally” functions. To flip some of the seals, I used a magic wand to select the right color elements.
The translation is sourced from an official translation by Shane McCausland, which is what the British Museum uses for the scroll’s main section. When no official translations were available, I made my own, such as the frontispiece that reads, “For the ladies of the court.” I considered translating the seals as well, but eventually decided against it because they would mostly be untranslatable names. Plus the Chinese is prettier. Maybe in a future iteration, I’ll experiment and try my hand at stamp effects.
One of the toughest parts of the projects was deciding fonts. This wasn’t a transcreation project; I’m not trying to fool anyone into thinking this is a European artwork. If you’re interested in China-Europe art mashups, though, check out Emperor Qianlong’s court artist Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining). I mulled back and forth between trying to find fonts that resembled brushwork, versus medieval block text. For the font of the main text, I chose a font common with Roman scribes of the same time period.
Extra Thoughts
I worry some people might look at my localized version, especially my clumsy handwriting at the end, and think, “But…but you ruined it!” And that’s precisely the point. Scrolls are meant to be cut, rebound, scribbled over with drunken ramblings, and stamped with seals that scream, “I was here!” Maybe even totally modernized like Dai Xiang’s reinterpretation of that Qingming along the River scroll I mentioned. They’re a participatory event. If you want to join the conversation, leave a comment below!
