「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」 The brush and ink cut through the starry river,yet cannot fully express the meeting and parting

The romance of the Qixi Festival is always wrapped in a layer of melancholy over the rarity of reunion. The legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl separated by the Milky Way conceals the Chinese people’s sensitivity to parting, and the brush and ink have made this regret scalding hot.

In the six characters “Yearning goes wherever it goes” of Wang Xianzhi’s “Letter of Yearning”, the brushstrokes tremble as if weeping and pleading. He injured his feet to reject the royal marriage proposal, but ultimately could not resist fate. On his deathbed, he regretfully said, “The only thing I regret is the divorce with Xi Daomao,” making the ink on the letter seem to be soaked with blood and tears.

Lu You inscribed “Phoenix Hairpin” at the Shenyuan Garden. The three characters “wrong” were as abrupt as a torn silk. Tang Wan’s responsewith three “do nots”, was as melancholy as a sigh. The two, forced apart, poured out their heartbreak in verse. Later, the poems were engraved on a stele and passed down through the ages, becoming a love story that remains unsolved for a thousand years.

Du Mu’s “Poem for Zhang Haohao” also conveys the sorrow of parting and reunion. Between the lines, there is both a remembrance of the first encounter in the past and a lament for the beauty’s downfall, condensing the helplessness of life’s partings and reunions onto the tip of the pen.

The regrets in these writings are precisely because the parting is so deeply engraved in the heart that one understands the preciousness of togetherness even more. May under the starry river tonight, lovers need not rely on pen and ink to convey their yearning. When holding hands, they can cherish every moment, making “rare reunions and frequent partings” just a legend, and staying together year after year.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.