To exalt the beauty of classical Chinese painting, Chunghwa Post has specially released a souvenir sheet on “Early Spring” by the Song dynasty painter Guo Hsi. It features one NT$35-denominated stamp. The painter and painting are introduced below:Guo Hsi, a court painter during the rule of the Song emperor Shen-zong in the 11th century, hailed from Henan’s Wen County. The emperor was a great admirer of his paintings, which were often splendid renderings of craggy outcroppings of rock and old pines on misty mountains. In painting rugged mountain slopes, he employed “curled cloud texture strokes,” and he rendered trees with “crab claw” forms. Taking their cues from his abundant use of these methods, a school of landscape painting came to be based around them. Painted in 1072 and bearing calligraphy of its own title, “Early Spring” is the most famous of Guo Hsi’s surviving works. The painting depicts snow melting in spring, as grasses and trees bud and sprout amid the earth’s great awakening. The scene is one of flourishing and renewal, and the rendering of it demonstrates a smooth and light touch. Blending the Chinese landscape painting methods of “high distance,” “deep distance,” and “level distance,” the composition reveals an ideal landscape that is traversable, viewable, livable, and well suited to becoming a tourist attraction.