https://mayalucia.dev/tags/shan-shui/ Recent content in Shan-Shui on MayaLucIA Hugo -- 0.156.0 en-us Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100 https://mayalucia.dev/surveys/high-asia-art/shan-shui/ Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100 https://mayalucia.dev/surveys/high-asia-art/shan-shui/ <p><em>Mountain-water — the oldest tradition of painting mountains</em></p> <h2 id="overview">Overview</h2> <p>Shan-shui means, literally, &ldquo;mountain-water.&rdquo; The two characters — 山 (shān, mountain) and 水 (shuǐ, water) — name the two poles of the Chinese landscape: the solid and the fluid, the vertical and the horizontal, the yang and the yin. Together they form the Chinese word for &ldquo;landscape,&rdquo; and they name the oldest continuous tradition of landscape painting in the world. When a Chinese speaker says shanshui, they do not mean a picture of a pretty view. They mean a philosophical proposition rendered in ink: that the world is constituted by the interplay of mountain and water, stillness and movement, presence and absence.</p>