Painting in China, like most other cultural pursuits, has a long history, cult murals in tombs, temples and palaces are known to have existed already in the 3^rd to 1^st century BC as well as scroll paintings. Interest in paintings is a matter of very early historical record, earlier than that Europeans. This is explained by the extraordinary importance the Chinese had placed on the art of brush painting. The important place given to the art of brush painting is also due to the intimate association between writing and painting, resulting from the original pictographic character of Chinese scripts. As Chinese writing is not phonetic, anybody who is literate inn whatever region and independence of a local dialect will be able to understand a written text. The nationwide unifying and historically continuos script was therefore always more important than the spoken language. The art of rhetoric as practised for instance in ancient Greece was never developed in China. Writing and painting utensils are referred to in China as the Four treasures of Study. They consists of brush, ink, rubbing stone and paper. These are held esteem by poets, scholars and painters.

Chinese Crafts

Calligraphy, painting, poetry and music are regarded in China as the noble arts, whereas the applied arts are considered merely as an honourable crafts. All the same in the West, these skilled crafts always held a special fascination i.e. when thinking of China, one thinks of silk, jade and porcelain.

The cultivation of the silkworm is said to go back to the 3^rd century BC. Silk held the place of currency where civil servants and offices as well as foreigner envoys were frequently paid or presented with bales of silk. The Chinese maintained a monopoly on silk until 20 BC when the Korean and Japanese learn the secret to manufacture silk.

The Chinese invented porcelain sometime in the 7^th century, which means a thousand years before the European. The most widespread from of ancient Chinese porcelain was celadon, a product mixture of iron oxide with glaze which resulted during firing in the characteristic green tone of the porcelain. Sancai ceramics, which is a ceramics with three colour glazed from the Tang dynasty became world famous. The colours where mostly strong green, yellow and brown.

Jade with its soft sheen and rich nuances of colour is China's most precious stone. Jade is not a precise mineralogical concept but comprises two minerals, jadeite and nephrite. The former is more valuable because of its translucence, greater density and hardness as well its rarity. The Chinese have known jade since antiquity but it became popular in the 18^th century. Colour vary from white to green, but there are also red, yellow and lavender jade.

Lacquerware is attractive not only to the eye but also to the hand because no other material is as appealing to the touch. The bark of the lacquer tree which grows in central and south China, exudes a milky sap when cut, which solidifies in moist air, dries and turns brown. This dry layer of lacquer is impervious to moisture, acid, knocks and scratches and its therefore ideal protection for materials like wood or bamboo. The oldest finds of lacquered objects in China date back to the 5^th millennium BC. During the Tang dynasty, large Buddhist sculptures were produced by the lacquerware.


Ivory as a craft material is as old as jade and early pieces can be traced to as far back as 5000BC. Ming dynasty carvings exemplify the best craft skills and superior taste. During the Qing dynasty times ivory carving was further refined. Beijing and Guangdong province were famous for such work. Today's centres for ivory carving are the cities of Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai.