The Qi of Paper and Ink By Sandie Osborne Part 2: A look at the rest of the four treasures of the study: paper, ink and inkstone. Without these treasures, the brush would be just waving in the air. If our body when practicing qigong or taiji is like the treasured brush, paper is like the ground we take a stance on, where we leave our footsteps. Ink is like emitted qi, stored in the ground or within a paper painting. Rock faces for carving and cave walls for marking with natural pigments were the first ground available to artists (and they have achieved considerable longevity). Bamboo slivers or “slips” were used for writing before paper, and perhaps have more in common with papyrus, a functional writing material made from the stems of the papyrus plant, dating from Bronze Age Egypt. Unlike papyrus and bamboo, paper, one of the inventions of the Han Dynasty, is made from a soupy pulp of plant fibers. Paper did much to spread literacy and art (to say nothing of commerce, politics, and religion). In use it must have been as revolutionary as plastic is to us (though more environmentally sound). I wonder if there was ever a choice to ancient Chinese: bamboo or paper, like paper or plastic. Paper is ubiquitous in our everyday life. It drifts through our daily existence and, like the ground we walk on, we may not notice The Empty Vessel — Page 12
the different types and purposes. How different it is to walk on an asphalt sidewalk or a soft path in a forest, a hard lead pencil on bond paper or a fountain pen on laid linen. Printers and artists know paper as an ingredient to their work, but for most of us, paper is just a product to be used, rarely appreciated for itself. Paper wraps our packages, and wipes
our runny noses; we jot shopping lists on the back of torn-off calendar pages, and we might cover a wall with it. I once stayed in a peasant cottage in China in 1988 and was amused to see the pages of a book papering the walls and ceiling, an attractive treatment really. They were ripped from The Little Red Book, Quotations of Chairman Mao. I live in a former
