Page:Frank Owen - The Scarlett Hill, 1941.djvu/107

RV 102 (THE PEAR GARDEN) the clouds. Mei-fei improved so much that that very night she was able to play a game of chess with the Emperor.

Winter was coming. In Changan it was four-coat weather. Across the sky were long lines of wild geese. Snow drove in early, blotting out distance, bleaching the landscape, but still there were flowers blooming in the Palace gardens. Lan Jen was not disturbed. The snow was a coverlet under which the flowers of spring would sleep in wool-warmth.

In his enthusiasm, Wang Wei, an Assistant Minister at the Court, founder of the Southern School of landscape painting, profound mystic, devout Buddhist, lover of mountain peaks and snow-wrapped silence, painted a picture of his friend Yüan An, lying in the snow, and in the snow bananas were growing. To Wang Wei the picture was without absurdity. It had been conceived in his mind and set down on paper. His creative activity was one with spirituality. His inspiration was heaven-sent. He paid no attention to seasons. In the same picture he would have peach-blossoms, lotusflowers, apricots and hibiscus in bloom simultaneously. And even in the warm greens and browns of summer, he saw the ghosts of vanished snows.

Wang Wei was also a superb poet, and a Doctor of Medicine, with a surgical knowledge few could equal. Ming Huang, his patron and friend, had more faith in his healing power than in any of the other pompous RV 102 (102)