Jiangxi Nanchang Qingyunpu, China

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Qingyunpu

The Qingyunpu is located besides the Ding Shan Bridge. It lies in the south suburb of Nanchang, a city of Jiangxi province.

The famous painter Bada Shanren once lived here for tens of years and was buried here. It is a famous Taoism temple of Nanchang since a long time ago.

The Qingyunpu is a historic Taoism temple. People began to practise austerities since Zhou Dynasty. It is an ancient Taoism construction with ancient trees, clean windows, thick woods and beautiful flowers. Some of the ancient trees are nearly a thousand years old.

Today, there is a museum in the temple called the Bada Shanren's Studio. In the backyard, there're tombs of the famous Qing painter Bada Shanren and his brother Niu Shihui.

The temple has a great deal of connection with painter Banda Shanre, his original name is Zhu Yueliang. Mr Zhu was the later generation of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first king of Ming Dynasty. He called himself Bada Shanren.

He was born in 1626, and dead in 1705. When the Ming Dynasty was destroyed, he was only 19 years old. The abolished dynasty made him so sad that he decided to live in seclusion with his brother Zhu Qiuyue( he is also called Niu Shihui).

They lived in the temple studying the scriptures of Taoism and practising drawing. Besides those, they liked to do some farm-work every morning and evening like carrying water, planting vegetables and spreading manure, to strengthen their body.

When Zhu Yueliang was 36 years old, he rebuilt the Taoism temple and changed its name from Tian Ning Guan to Qingyunpu. There is a house called Shu Ju in the temple that Zhu Yue Liang had spent 60 years living in it.

As to the paintings of Mr Zhu, he has his special drawing style. He liked to draw animals like eagles, beautiful birds and fish. Nearly each of them in his painting are looking up to the sky and looks like having lots of questions and sadness. Mostly, when he put his signature to the paintings, he would wrote Bada Shanren crying or Bada Shanren laughing.

From those, you could know what he feel like when he was drawing. The literature giant of Qing Dynaty Zhen Banqiao wrote a poem for the painter after he had seen his drawing: from the lines in his pictures, you could find more tears than the ink points.