Selected works from Feng Zikai's collection of protective life paintings

Author: Feng Zikai
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2000-09-01
Features: The Selected Works of the Protecting Life Pictures Collection is a collection of Feng Zikai's widely circulated comic book Protecting Life Pictures Collection. Selected by the renowned scholar Ge Zhaoguang, it includes 100 pieces of artwork accompanied by brief, thought-provoking comments, preserving the original content. Additionally, several color illustrations of Feng Zikai's protective life paintings and calligraphy by related figures are meticulously presented by Zhonghua Book Company. The Protecting Life Pictures Collection is a unique book. In 1927, Feng Zikai received the famous monk Hongyi (also known as Li Shu Tong) at his home in Jiangwan, Shanghai. On Feng's birthday, he took Hongyi as his teacher and converted to Buddhism. Around that time, they discussed the idea of Feng, who was skilled in painting, creating the artwork, and Hongyi, who was knowledgeable in Buddhism, writing the accompanying text, to jointly compile The Protecting Life Pictures Collection. While Hongyi was alive, Feng initially considered it a birthday gift for Hongyi. After Hongyi passed away, Feng regarded it as a tribute to his teacher. Of course, he also saw it as an interpretation of Buddhist faith and a call to protect both living beings and the soul.
The Selected Works of the Protecting Life Pictures Collection also features calligraphy by related figures, meticulously presented by Zhonghua Book Company.
Excerpt:
"Carrying mud with flowers clinging,
A year's spring festival forgotten.
Suddenly, I see swallows flying before my eyes.
Birds too know the diligence of building nests,
Carrying mud with flowers clinging."
— Qing Dynasty, Lu Shuang's poem
Previously, when viewing Qi Baishi's painting of tadpoles titled "Frog Sounds Fill the Mountains," one imagined the noisy mountain springs when tadpoles mature. Old books also recorded a line by a Song Dynasty painter, "Horse Hooves Fragrant with Flowers," where a clever painter depicted bees around the hooves, evoking the image of a horse having run through a field of wildflowers. Here, "Carrying mud with flowers clinging," likely carries a similar meaning. Swallows build nests, carrying mud from afar, and the mud contains flowers—naturally from a place where fragrant flowers abound. And when fragrant flowers are everywhere, it must be spring. So, seeing swallows flying, one is startled to realize it is another spring.
"Curved lanes and high eaves avoid nets,
Morning, I feast on the grain at the field's edge.
As long as the four seas remain bountiful,
I bear no grudge at the presence of mice and sparrows."
— Ming Dynasty, Fang Xiaoru's Hundred Sparrows Poem
This truly reflects a broad-minded perspective. If the grain is so abundant that it cannot be eaten entirely, even if sparrows come to feed, one can simply let it be, perhaps even revising Du Fu's line to "Fragrant rice leftover for small birds,
Old branches for sparrows to rest."
Recalling the past, during the Four Pests Campaign, loud drums and noises were used to scare them, nets and sieves to capture them, and poison and bait to kill them—until the very end, one could no longer hear the sound of sparrows. Now, one is forced to promote "love bird nests" and scatter "love bird food" in the mountains and fields. If only one had known then, why would one have done it in the first place.