Poetry -- the Core of Painting, the Soul of Music

Chinese painting is a comprehensive art that has combined poetry, calligraphy, picture, stamp, language, literature, music, history and a variety of arts, and poetry is the core of a painting.

-- Both calligraphy and picture serve for the poem, to express its meaning and idea with character and painting.

-- Both of the lyrics of poems or song poems are language and literature works and they have to express a little or big part of culture or history.

-- Ancient Chinese poems were expressed by music or chant. Vocal music serves its lyric poem; instrument music serves a beautiful artistic conception.

Therefore, to learn a Chinese painting and its poetry inside is one of the best ways to learn Chinese culture and language.

Base on this idea, I have been creating Chinese painting to help non-Chinese to understand the meaning of Chinese poems since 2007, and I have been creating music to help non-Chinese speakers to feel more about the Chinese poetry which is the core of the Chinese painting since 2005.   

What I wish is in the process of enjoying the pictures, singing the song poems, writing the Chinese characters… to help non-Chinese speakers to understand the meaning of the poetry on the Chinese painting, feel their artistic conceptions and remember the language or vocabulary, rely on what you want, to learn Chinese culture and language naturally and artistically.

There are many different classical Chinese poems, at this time, for beginning, I just choose the shortest Chinese classical poem: Jue Ju (a poem of four lines, each containing of five or seven characters, with a strict tonal pattern and rhyme scheme) for you.

I really hope that effort will be of some help for you to learn Chinese culture and language. If you have any questions and comments, you are welcome to write to shirley@ebridge.cn . I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
Nov, 2017 in China
Nov, 2016 in the USA

关雎 — Singing Ospreys
七步诗 — The Quatrain of Seven Steps
敕勒歌 — Chi Le Song
一望二三里 — Have A Look Over, Two, Three Miles
赋新月 — Ode to the New Moon
赠汪伦 — Present the Poem to Wang Lun
静夜思 — Missing my Hometown in the Peaceful Night
绝句(江碧鸟逾白) — On the Blue River, Birds Seem More White
柏林寺南望 — Look Over the South From the Bailin Temple
晚春 — Late Spring
庭竹 — The Bamboo in the Courtyard
江雪 — Fishing on a Snowy River
寄扬州韩绰判官 — Send to the Official Han Chuo in Yang Zhou
夜雨寄北 —Send a Poem Letter to Someone in the North on a   Rainy Night
梅花   — Plum Blossoms