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Scholar's Rock

Scholar’s rock and bamboo have special meanings in China’s cultural traditions, since they stand for traditional Chinese intellectuals’ taste, and represent traditional views of nature and aesthetics. They have been the subjects of generations of master painters, as well as decorations in ordinary households. When I was a child, I remembered that my grandmother had a wardrobe with a mirror on it. The landscape decoration on the mirror had a strong feature of that era: a big, red sun rising in the back, with a few scholar’s rocks and bamboo in the front. My little sister and I loved playing hide and seek in that wardrobe...and ate the desserts my grandma hid in it. It was a pity that the wardrobe was lost during moving around. The scholar’s rock became a childhood memory of my sister and I, and my longing for hometown while living in New York. 

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