So many of our best winter-flowering shrubs came to the UK from China. I have been following their route in reverse, thanks to the recent exhibition on Chinese painting at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This remarkable show was so popular that it became difficult to see its long scrolls under glass among the queues of so many keen spectators. On my visit, I noted the paintings which related to gardens and flowers and vowed to study them more closely with the help of the expert catalogue. The show has now ended but the catalogue, edited by Hongxing Zhang, lives on in bookshops and is an essential addition to keen gardeners’ libraries. It has increased my initial pleasure.
Which will surprise readers of the Weekend FT more, the discovery that Chinese court ladies played football in the garden in the 15th century, or the discovery that a Mr Tang was painted in that same era, reclining in a rattan garden chair beneath a tree and having a “pure dream”?
I hope the ladies are more unexpected. Mr Tang is not our respected David, House & Home’s agony uncle, taking a nap. He is Tang Yin who ranked as the top scholar in his province’s exams but came to grief when he sat the national exams in Beijing. He was alleged to have given a bung to the senior examiner’s assistant in order to see the papers in advance. There was nothing left for him but to become a Buddhist, paint and write poetry. He is shown in his chair beneath the branches of a Paulownia tree, his eyes closed. “The Paulownia shadows cover the purple moss”, the accompanying poem by Tang says. “The gentleman is at leisure, feeling an intoxicated sleep, For this lifetime, he has already renounced thoughts of rank and fame, The pure sleep should not have dreams of grandeur.” There is no sign that he has taken to advising correspondents on manners and etiquette. In my garden I have two Paulownias, hanging on to life despite the cold winter of 2013. In warmer counties like Hampshire these quick-growing trees sometimes even flower. Perhaps we should set a deckchair beneath them and snooze, remembering VAT inspections of the past.
The footballing ladies are truly surprising. One of them has a dainty foot extended and a big round ball in the air above it. Soccer is an English invention, but if you thought that the English male was the first person to put foot to an inflated ball, you are hundreds of years out of date. Chinese palace ladies were already practising their passing inside the bamboo fence. The ball was lined with an animal bladder and inflated from outside. What about the problem of bound-up feet? Foot-binding was widely imposed on classy women in the Ming period. These 15th-century footballers are moving freely, probably because the painting, as so often, is evoking a much earlier era. Their game was called cuju. If it goes back another 800 years to the Tang era, female footie is inarguably a Chinese invention. Some scholars even claim examples of it in the remote sixth century BC.
via 500-year-old Chinese painting hints at football’s female origins – FT.com.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 