Talking about the mountains amid the fragrance of zong leaves.

This portrait is for “The Ten Treasured Relics of the Jiangxi Provincial Museum”—this is the only portrait of Bada Shanren discovered to date, and it holds immense historical significance.

It was painted in the year AD. 1674 That year, the Eight Great Mountains Man had already spent more than twenty years practicing Zen in the Buddhist monastic community. The day after the Dragon Boat Festival that year, he invited his close friend Huang Anping to the Gengxiang Monastery to paint a small portrait of himself. In the painting, the Eight Great Mountains Man was not wearing monk’s robes but instead donned a long gown and straw sandals—a typical attire of a scholar from the Ming Dynasty. After finishing the portrait, the Eight Great Mountains Man immediately picked up his brush and inscribed in small seal script the four characters “Ge Shan Xiao Xiang” on the portrait. Next to it, he added two lines of running-script inscription: “Two days after the Pu Festival in the Jia Yin year, I met my old friend Huang Anping, who painted this for me. At that time, I was forty-nine years old.”

1674 Over the next three years, he asked his three close friends—Rao Yupu, Peng Wenliang, and Cai Shou—to write prefaces for his small portraits. Meanwhile, he himself composed four poems and nine passages, meticulously recounting his life experiences and the inner journey that led him to embrace Buddhism. The artist Bada Shanren was a ninth-generation descendant of Zhu Quan, the sixteenth son of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty. As a member of the imperial clan of the Ming dynasty, he was barred by the “National Statutes” of the Ming Dynasty from taking the imperial examinations. At the age of fifteen, he renounced his noble title and took the exams as an ordinary citizen, eventually earning the degree of Xiucai. At the time, every respected elder praised his exceptional intelligence. Had nothing gone wrong, Zhu Da would have continued his studies, taken the imperial examinations, and embarked on a career in officialdom.

However, when he was nineteen, the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, bringing an end to the Ming dynasty. That year’s reign title was Jia-Shen, hence the event came to be known as the Jia-Shen Incident. His father passed away, and soon after, his wife and children also died one after another. With the country in ruins and his family destroyed, Zhu Da fled far away to Jiangxi, taking refuge in the Jiagang Lantern Society in Fengxin, where he became a monk under an assumed name. At the age of thirty-four, he succeeded his master, Geng’an, as the abbot. Looking back on those years, it seemed like only yesterday that he had first set foot in the mountains—and yet, before he knew it, he had already spent thirty years living there. In the small portrait, Bada Shanren affixed a seal. The seal “Xijiang Yiyang Wangsun” was used to signify his royal status; this particular seal has been used only once, on this small sculpture.

In this miniature portrait, the inscriptions penned by Bada Shanren encompass regular script, running script, clerical script, and seal script, demonstrating his profound mastery of calligraphy. He was born into a family steeped in an atmosphere rich with culture and the arts; both his grandfather and father were painters and poets. As a member of the aristocracy, he received an excellent education, and coupled with his natural brilliance, 8 By the age of ten, he could compose poetry and wield his brush to write in the delicate small-script style of Mi Fu, a calligrapher from the Northern Song dynasty. 11 He is able to paint landscapes, demonstrating extraordinary artistic talent.

Three years after the small statue was created, 1677 In the autumn of that year, Hu Yitang, the magistrate of Linchuan County, invited the Eight Great Mountains Man to Linchuan to participate in the compilation of the Linchuan County Gazetteer. At the invitation, the Eight Great Mountains Man left Fengxin and headed for Linchuan, leaving his small portrait behind in Fengxin. Little did he expect... 1680 In that year, he fell ill in Linchuan, becoming狂乱 and unpredictable—alternating between crying and laughing uncontrollably, tearing apart his monk’s robes and setting them on fire. He then walked back to Nanchang from Linchuan, renounced his monastic life, married, had children, and never returned to Fengxin afterward.

1955 In that year, a wall on the side of Fengxian Temple in Fengxin collapsed, revealing a scroll hidden within—the very “Portrait of Geshan.” After three centuries, the “Portrait of Geshan” once again came into the public eye. Subsequently, the portrait was added to the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. 1959 In that year, the Eight Great Mountains Memorial Hall was established. “A Small Portrait of Geshan” and a collection of other representative works by the Eight Great Mountains were transferred from Beijing to the Eight Great Mountains Memorial Hall in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. Now, it hangs quietly in the display window every day, silently narrating to the endless stream of visitors the life story of a gifted artist who lived in times fraught with misfortune four hundred years ago.