Painting the Dao

61 ak8.2 The Cinnabar Staff of the Hermit of No Further Desires Ink and watercolour on xuan paper 139.0 × 69.5 cm, Bangkok, 2008 Three artist seals 水松石山房 Shuisongshi shanfang (Water, Pine and Stone Retreat) 人磨墨墨磨人 Renmomo momoren (Man grinds the ink; ink grinds the man) 士撝 Shihui [name] Published The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat, Beyond the Stage of Time , ii: Staff Masters and Stone Fools (Hong Kong: Rasti Chinese Art, 2020), 8–9 Through the Gates of Wonder: Paintings by the Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat from the K. Y. Ng Collection (Hong Kong: CA Book Publishing, 2022), 60–1 inscr iption The Cinnabar Staff of the Hermit of No Further Desires is reputed to have been made out of a core of purple sandalwood covered in deer-hoof glue and cinnabar lacquer inlaid with fragments of coral. But it was made so many centuries ago that no one can say any more whether this is true or not. According to the legend (recorded on two original scrolls, long-since lost, although corrupted later versions were recorded in late- Ming printed editions), by the latter Han dynasty the original staff had been broken and repaired at least a dozen times. By the Tang dynasty it had become divided into two fragments. The lower two-thirds were mounted with a jade bird-head handle and transformed into a walking staff for the ailing penultimate ruler. The top became a ruyi of ultimate wish-granting power. The emperor’s stick was lost at some time during the transition to the Song dynasty but the ruyi ended up in the private collection of the Qianlong emperor. I was summoned to court in the twelfth year of Qianlong, mainly I suspect because of an exaggerated reputation as an alchemist, but possibly partly because of a secondary talent as a storyteller. In the Inner Chamber, the emperor was at ease and bade me be similarly informal. Then he hefted the fabled ruyi off a table in front of him and handed it to me. ‘What do you know of this strange object?’ he asked. I turned it over in my hands. I felt the power of the ages, the power of the wand. ‘Now that I hold it in my hands,’ I replied, ‘everything.’ The emperor laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘You are indeed an alchemist . . . or a very clever rogue. I have two scrolls here. Tell me what is in them and I shall believe you.’ So I told him, word for word, then I told him far more. I told him that quite apart from the powers of the years, the staff as a remnant of the Cinnabar Staff also still held all the power that gave it its legendary status in the first place, and all the power of the Hermit himself. In the right hands, this remaining fragment could recreate the whole, call forth the sunset and the clouds, cause wolves to sing in harmony in the gorge and cause the river in the gorge to bring forth plum blossoms. ‘[With this] in your hands,’ I said as I handed it back to him, ‘you could rule the universe. But there is a price to pay for such power.’ ‘Name it!’ he said. ‘You must give up the sceptre,’ I replied. Inscribed at the Garden at the Edge of the Universe, ’08. The Cinnabar Staff of the Hermit of No Further Desires drawn from the mists of time but true to surviving texts. A likeness in its original form at the point where the Hermit let go, stood back and made the staff begin to dissolve into the stars of countless universes.