Chinese formula

In the past three years, from traveling for photography trip in China with Chinese, got me to understand how do they prefer to shoot their landscape pictures. There is formula, Chinese formula;
The perfect landscape picture(for Chinese),needs the perfect light, and it has to be the side light, better to have some clouds as a contrast to the deep blue sky, and farm houses – best if there are cooking smokes, and don’t forget the birds, and buffalo (of course it can be Yak, horse, deer…..), and of course the water.....lake...steam....
They will frame their picture the same way and wait for the light. You literally would see Chinese queue up to shoot at the exact same spot. It is bizarre!



I was recently in Taipei, Taiwan and took a day off to visit the Palace Museum where the famous painting by Huang Gongwang 黃公望 “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” (painted between 1347-1350) displayed.
The famous painting was burnt into 2 halves in 1650 and since then collected/preserved by and through separated routes are reunited again.



And now "landscape reunited" is the current themed exhibition in the museum.
What I learned from the museum get me understand how Chinese think about landscape.
Landscape usually referred as “Mountain-Water” 山水 [shān shuǐ] in China, for thousand of years, the beautiful Chinese landscape is the popular theme for painting, mostly in ink, more on state of mind than realistic painting so therefore the perfect landscape is born – beautiful mountains, fog, a few birds, the fisherman or boatman, ripples of water, perhaps the farmers, buffalo, pine or plum tress, often some cooking smokes……Déjà vu, right?

This is the formula that they have been practicing for hundred of years.

Chinese is a special language, and it is an art by itself, and of course the language affects its culture, and history. For thousands of years, the masters have set the standard, and generations after the master, follow the master, there is no shame to copy, in fact, it is encouraged to get as close (similar) as possible, for Chinese – it is learning, and that was then. Now, most of the Chinese photographers travel to the great locations to try to duplicate the image on the postcards, or on the books, is not to be mistaken as “copy”, it is “tradition”!
So, when they copy iPad or BMW, it is flattering, they thought these products are great design as master pieces, so their tradition is to produce as close or same as the master did.

Captured by KanJANA
Location: Xinduqiao, Sichuan, China.