In the mid-1980s, the TV series The Legend of the Muyu Stone became a hit, and its hero Wang Erlie was known as the most talented scholar in Northeast China during the Qing Dynasty.
The Liaoyang Museum houses a piece of national treasure: the Wang Erlie Birthday Screen.
The birthday screen consists of nine leaves, each with a wooden frame. The upper and lower frames of the screen are adorned with the Chinese character “shou”（“寿”), symbolizing longevity. The center of the screen is made of ciqing paper, which is a kind of porcelain green paper. Calligraphic works and paintings on nijin paper (paper coated with golden paint) are mounted on the ciqing paper, creating an awe-inspiring composition.
There are 126 works of art displayed on the screen, with two lines of calligraphic “shou” characters adorning each edge. Paintings and calligraphic works of ink wash with added colors are featured in the center. Of these works, 91 are calligraphic pieces with longevity as their theme, executed in the styles of running, cursive, official, seal, and Jin script. They are written in different languages: 86 in Han Chinese, four in Manchu, and one in Mongolian and Tibetan.
The screen also includes 35 paintings with poems, in which landscapes, figures, flowers and birds are all vividly rendered.
This artefact was a birthday gift framed and presented to Wang Erlie on his 70th birthday from his colleagues and friends, government officials of the Qing Dynasty, as well as celebrities and scholars, each of whom made a painting or calligraphy. Behind each piece lies an extraordinary story.
One such contributor was Liu Yong, a renowned statesman whose calligraphy was revered for its distinctive “thick ink and plump strokes”.
Weng Fanggang, a famous calligrapher, was another contributor. Legend has it that he was able to write in regular script using small characters on a melon seed and to write the words “tian xia tai ping”(meaning “peaceful world”) on a sesame seed, which was a marvelous and amazing feat.
Cheng Weiyuan, the creator of the screen’s Twin Pines ink wash painting, edited and published the first and second printed editions of the literary masterpiece, A Dream of Red Mansions.
Ji Xiaolan, a grand secretary of the Qing Dynasty, painted the ink wash painting Crane. He was the chief editor of Siku Quanshu (The Complete Library in Four Sections) and was later promoted to Vice Minister of War, Left Vice Censor-in-Chief, and Minister of Rites. Few of Ji Xiaolan’s calligraphic works have survived, and his paintings are rarer, testifying to the value of this painting.
Works of art featuring such rich content and various famous artists are rarely seen in the world today. Thus, the Wang Erlie Birthday Screen is invaluable when studying the history, politics, customs, calligraphy, and paintings of the Qing Dynasty.
