Jin Shi Jian _ Outside the Long Pavilion

Jin Shi Jian _ Outside the Long Pavilion | National Arts
2026-01-10 16:18

by Cui Cancan
"out": The Exhibition "Outside the Long Pavilion" by Jing Shijian

The exhibition "Outside the Long Pavilion" draws its title from a well-known historical allusion that has been passed down through generations. It refers both to the opening line of the song "Farewell" with lyrics by Li Shutong and serves as an index to the body of works created by Jing Shijian—marking the beginning of an archaeological journey into knowledge.

In the winter of 1914, old Shanghai was enveloped in desolation, with heavy snow falling across the city. Xu Huanyuan, a friend and like-minded companion of Li Shutong, was about to leave for Beijing with his family. At the time, social upheavals, revolutions, and prolonged conflicts had led to the decline of Xu’s once-prosperous family estate, pushing it to the brink of bankruptcy and plunging his life into poverty. Amid such a bitter winter, the impending separation carried an uncertain promise of reunion. On the occasion of their parting, Li Shutong composed the evocatively lyrical "Farewell" as a gift to Xu, expressing the profound sorrow of departure. Rather than merely a song, it can be understood as Li’s emotional projection through scenery—a poignant scene of parting, enduring friendship, and the timelessness of human experience, which spread throughout the land and left an enduring legacy in history.

However, the exhibition does not focus on retelling this touching story in its conventional form. Nor does it dwell on the profound, serene beauty of the Long Pavilion, ancient paths, or twilight scenes often associated with "Farewell," or explore "parting" as a timeless theme in literature, film, and theater across human history. It also avoids recounting the legendary life of Li Shutong. Instead, Jing Shijian turns his attention to the prequel of this story—the history before "Farewell" came into being.

In 1905, while studying in Japan, Li Shutong encountered the widely popular song "Homesickness" ("Ryoshū"). Deeply moved by its poignant and elegant melody, Li, longing for his homeland in a foreign land, found the initial inspiration for his own creation. Years later, borrowing the melody of this song, Li wrote new lyrics, giving birth to the universally known "Farewell." Interestingly, however, this widely sung Japanese song was not originally composed by a local musician. Its tune and prototype trace back even further—to Massachusetts, USA. During the American Civil War in the 19th century, composer John Pond Ordway wrote a song titled "Dreaming of Home and Mother." The war and opposition to racial systems lent the song a melancholic undertone. With its beautiful melody and heartfelt lyrics, performed by white singers in blackface, the song broke through the ideological barriers between North and South, becoming a classic of its time.

Years later, Japanese composer Kyūkō Inudō adapted the tune with new lyrics, creating "Homesickness." Decades after that, through twists of fate and cultural exchanges, Li Shutong borrowed the melody to compose "Farewell," imbuing it with classical Chinese elegance and philosophical depth. Thus, a melody spanning centuries traversed multiple histories: the colonial past of Black people, the prolonged struggles of the Civil War, Japan’s Meiji-era Westernization, and the cultural awakening and national consciousness of China’s first-generation intellectuals during the early 20th-century social revolution and New Culture Movement. These varied versions of the story, along with local adaptations shaped by regional contexts and the ambiguous life trajectories of its protagonists, endowed "Farewell" with a renewed state and vitality.

It is this extensive history that captures Jing Shijian’s interest, prompting him to retrace this convoluted journey through "painting as archaeology." However, Jing is not concerned with a comprehensive, grand historical narrative or the meticulous scrutiny and in series of vast historical materials as a historian might undertake. His focus is not on history itself but on the process through which history transforms into knowledge and experience. He is intrigued by the turning points in stories—where our narratives and knowledge originate, what drives the shifts in their values, truths, and falsehoods, when established concepts change, what triggers these changes, and how we perceive such transformations afterward. In other words, Jing’s interest in the archaeology of knowledge and the manifold "changes" experienced by "Farewell" also touches upon the mysteries of art: How does a once-flourishing art movement emerge? What leads to the rise of certain aesthetics and values, and how do they redefine and expand our understanding of art? What causes the decline of an art movement, ending certain artistic possibilities and formal transformations while giving birth to new languages and ideas?

If we were to interpret "Outside the Long Pavilion" or Li Shutong solely through conventional lenses—categorizing them as an old tale of classical elegance, Zen-like contemplation, and life’s vicissitudes—we would risk oversimplification, overlooking the complexity and ambiguity inherent in cultural translation. Similarly, if we were to reduce the artist’s engagement with history, knowledge, and philosophy in his works to mere explanations of painting, treating painting’s function and meaning as illustrative diagrams or annotated footnotes, we would both overestimate and underestimate the medium.

The story of "Farewell" serves only as an index for Jing Shijian’s creations, and Li Shutong is not a mere reflection of Jing’s personal spirit. The artist operates within a far more intricate system of knowledge and visual transformation. Unlike historians who strive for comprehensive descriptions, Jing is more interested in fragments of history—fragments that materialize as objects in his paintings: the Long Pavilion from the opening of "Farewell," the musical score of "Dreaming of Home and Mother," the faces of blackface performers, flowers from the earliest staged production of La Traviata in China, and the spring water from Hupao Temple where Li Shutong took monastic vows. These momentary images from different historical stages transform into fragmented, scattered, and dreamlike landscapes, still lifes, and figures in Jing’s works.

Similar to yet distinct from postmodern philosophy, Jing consistently seeks fragments within complete stories. He extracts isolated "words" from sentences, liberating them from their narrative functions and stripping them of contextual meaning to return to their original state as "roots." However, these "roots" in Jing’s works differ from philosophical notions of returning to zero or neutrality. Instead, they manifest as objects, to which painting restores faces, emotions, warmth, and sensations—granting them artistic imagination. This process of generating imagination and perception lies at the core of painting’s allure: a visual process akin to "mold formation," beginning with an initial creative idea sparked by Li Shutong and "Farewell," evolving into a painting concept through the archaeology of knowledge, and further extending through associations, expansions, disruptions, analogies, and boundless growth during creation—all corresponding to variables in form, proportion, color, composition, and brushwork within the painting. Like a chemical reaction between thought and visual movement, it is ultimately the artist who governs the relationships among objects, the coherence of the narrative, and the rationale behind concluding a painting or a story. Only in this sense can we comprehend the objects in Jing Shijian’s paintings that are both related and unrelated to "Farewell."

In the artist’s archaeological exploration and associative thinking, several oversized tomatoes, scattered guavas, and a few golden corn kernels—originally exotic species—share a similar history and fate with "Farewell." They all traversed long distances, crossed oceans, arrived in China, and underwent prolonged processes of innovation and recombination to become familiar elements in our lives, flowing through our historical experiences as symbols and embodiments of shared memory.

Yet, imagination always has the power to disrupt logic, and chance often gives rise to entirely new meanings in painting. In the artist’s depictions and imagination, Li Shutong’s cross-dressing in the Western classic La Traviata bears an uncanny resemblance to the appearance, identity, and fate of Leslie Cheung in Farewell My Concubine, sharing a conspiratorial gaze. Similarly, a pot of lilies from a still of La Traviata is magnified in another of Jing’s paintings, symbolizing everlasting love while echoing earlier narratives of identity and romance.

If the archaeology of knowledge is Jing Shijian’s creative path, then imagination, analogy,in series, and the regrowth of stories constitute his syntax. Yet, approaching this syntax requires returning to another core characteristic of Jing’s practice: the hybrid use of artistic languages. Early training in Soviet-style painting and realism equipped Jing with exceptional technical skills, allowing him to masterfully shape his canvases while anticipating transformative changes. Unlike realism, however, Jing incorporates techniques from European Symbolism, where exotic fruits, crops, lakes, and rice fields symbolize narrative, emotion, and historical change. Yet, these elements refuse to coalesce into complete stories. Conceptual art enables Jing to treat the scattered, intersecting, and conflicting relationships among objects as intentionally arranged narrative structures, thereby disrupting the coherent narratives of realism and classicism. Modernism and formalism have broadened the horizons and richness of Jing’s visual language, where one can discern the lingering influences of traditional Chinese painting, German Neo-Expressionism, and the Leipzig School—a fusion of intense European metaphysical spirit and the traditional humanistic landscapes of Hangzhou.
Yet imagination always has the power to disrupt logic, and chance often gives rise to entirely new meanings in painting. In the artist’s depiction and imagination, Li Shutong’s cross-dressing in the Western classic La Traviata bears an uncanny resemblance—in appearance, identity, and fate—to Leslie Cheung’s role in Farewell My Concubine, as if sharing a conspiratorial gaze. Similarly, a pot of lilies from a still of La Traviata is magnified in another of Jing Shijian’s paintings, becoming a symbol of enduring love while also echoing earlier narratives of identity and romance. If the archaeology of knowledge is Jing Shijian’s creative path, then imagination, analogy, juxtaposition, and the regrowth of stories constitute his syntax. Yet approaching this syntax requires returning to another core feature of Jing’s practice: the hybrid use of artistic languages. Early training in Soviet-style painting and realism equipped him with exceptional technical skill, allowing him to shape the canvas with ease while anticipating transformation. Unlike realism, however, Jing borrows techniques from European Symbolism—where exotic fruits, crops, lakes, and rice fields come to symbolize narrative, emotion, and historical change. Yet these elements refuse to coalesce into complete stories. Informed by conceptual art, Jing treats the scattered, intersecting, and conflicting relationships among objects as deliberately arranged narrative structures, thereby breaking the coherent storytelling of realism and classicism. Modernism and formalism have broadened the horizons and richness of his visual language, in which one may trace the lingering presence of traditional Chinese painting, German Neo-Expressionism, and the Leipzig School—a fusion of intense European metaphysical spirit and the traditional humanistic landscape of Hangzhou. Yet this hybrid syntax does not derive from art-historical dogma but from Jing Shijian’s personal experience and free consciousness. Averse to pursuing a fixed style or reinforcing artistic tropes, Jing’s practice transforms every few years into an entirely new visual language. He does not seek a strategy for artistic “success,” nor does he confine himself to any a single theme. His paintings always carry their own logic of completion—sometimes achieving meaning with just a few strokes; at other times, through layered reworking over years, merely to approach a higher metaphysical sensation.
More often, however, he possesses the unique talent and instinct of an artist. In conversations with me, amid seemingly disconnected logics and associative leaps of thought, he would reveal the charm of individual and free imagination through the very gaps in philosophical discourse: from the origin of the “Farewell” melody in Massachusetts, he would connect the shared latitude between its landscapes and his hometown in Northeast China, where farmlands yield similar crops; and the West Lake where he now lives and the Hupao Road he travels nightly would, through the allusion to Li Shutong, magically merge into one vast continent of painting.