The Connoisseur

The first great painter in the county was Ji Taomin, and the first connoisseur was Ye San.

Ye San was a fruit seller. He is a fruit seller and other fruit sellers are not the same. Not a store, not a stall, and not carrying a stretcher down the street. He specializes in delivering fruit to the big houses. That is, to 20 or 30 families. These people he knows very well, the gatekeeper and the dog know him. At a certain date, he came. Inside, when you hear him knocking on the door, you know: it's Ye San. Carrying a gold gabion basket, a small scale in the basket, he walked into the hall, raising his voice to address the master. Sometimes the owner came out to meet him, sometimes he spoke through the door. "Weighing for you--?" -- "Five pounds." What fruit, is not even need to see, because to what season to send what fruit are certain. Ye San never said the price of selling fruit. The people who buy the fruit will never treat him badly. Some people pay at the time, most of them are to the next festival (Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, New Year). Ye San weighed the fruit, placed on the eight fairy table, said "excuse me", and left. His fruits do not need to pick, each is good. The advantage of his fruit, the first is to get the first of the four seasons. The market has not seen this kind of fruit, he already has in the basket. Secondly, they are big, uniform, very fragrant, very sweet and very beautiful. His fruits are all passed through his hands, with scars, insect eyes, crowded baskets, broken skin, discolored, too small all picked off and sold to other fruit vendors at low prices. His fruit are original, some are directly to the production area to pick up, are "tree ripe", - not in the rice bran smothered ripe. He went out a lot and spent more time buying fruit than he did selling it. He also likes to run around a lot. Four villages and eight towns, which garden, what family, what a famous good fruit tree, he knows, and and the owner of the garden for many years to deal with, as familiar as in-laws. --Other fruit sellers can't make such an effort and don't know these ways. Walking around, you can see a lot of good scenery, know the local customs, can be useful to talk about, and good for health. He rarely gets sick, because he walks a lot.

Around spring, he sells green radishes. The "stick hit the radish" and it cracked when it fell on the ground. When the apricots and peaches come down, they sell egg-sized apricots, white as snow, and "a line of red" peaches with a red line below the mouth. Then down are cherries, red like coral, white like onyx. Around the Dragon Boat Festival, the batch of loa. Selling melons in summer. In July and August, they sell river food: fresh diamond, chicken head, lotus root, and lotus root under flower. Sell horse tooth dates, sell grapes. Chongyang near, selling pears: the duck pear, Laiyang's half-jin crisp, and a kind of aroma called "golden pendant" puff a small sweet pear. Chrysanthemum bloom over, selling kumquats, selling the tip of the umbilicus Fuzhou honey orange. After winter, selling chestnuts, selling yam (thick as a small child's arm), selling lilies (as big as a fist), selling green and fresh sandalwood olives.

He also sells Buddha's hand and citron. People buy them, with the shelves and plates, the study to clear the offering, smell the fragrance to enjoy.

Many people who live in the countryside only remember what season it is when they see the fruit delivered by Ye San.

Ye San has been selling fruit for more than thirty years, his two sons are adults. They are learning the cloth store, both out of the master. The second is the third cabinet, the oldest has been promoted to the second cabinet. Everyone thought that the oldest would be promoted to the head of the shop and would be a steward. He was born to be a good material. He is the head of the store an abacus, the end of the year when the total always have to sit by him in the account room beeping and playing for days. Receiving customers from manufacturers, research into the purchase of goods (the purchase of goods is a big question, is the year's master plan, the next year more into which way the goods, less into which way the goods, which must always be ready, which can be sold on a trial basis, the whole year's profit and loss), are without him. The second is also very capable. Measure cloth, tear cloth (tear cloth without shears opening, two fingers of both hands, with a little dexterity, snort - a sound, the cloth to the head), clean and smooth. The shopkeeper's movement is fast and slow, and is also the signature of a cloth store. Customers are always willing to buy cloth from the handy shopkeeper. This is talent, but also by practice. Some people are sluggish and clumsy all their lives, can not change. No matter what business you are in, there is no way around it. The two brothers are very good-looking, eyebrows, not too tall, not too short. The shopkeepers in the cloth store are well dressed. What material is new, they wear what material. Their clothing material is of course inexpensive and good quality. They buy clothes according to the purchase price, not to add profit; if it is a fraction, there is a discount. This is the rules of the cloth store, but also the boss is happy to do, because the shopkeeper wear fashionable, but also to the store to decorate the face of things. Some customers came to buy cloth and often pointed to the sleeves of the shopkeeper's long shirts or short shirts that were turned outside: "Give me one like this."

Both brothers had already started a family, and the eldest already had a child, and Ye San had a grandson.

This year is Ye San's 50th birthday, the family discussed how to give the old man birthday. The oldest two proposed Dad do not go to the house to sell fruit, they can afford to raise him.

Ye San a little angry.

"Think I embarrassed you guys? Two big cloth store 'sir', there is an old man selling fruit, not a good look?"

The son hastened to explain.

"It's not. Your old man is old, always running outside, in the wind and rain, water and dry roads, as the son's heart uneasy."

"I'm used to running. I'm used to delivering fruits to these people. For the sake of the Fourth Master, I also have to sell the fruit."

The Fourth Master is Ji Taomin. He was the fourth oldest in line, and people in the city called him the Fourth Master.

"You don't have to do anything for my birthday either. If you have filial piety, take out the painting that the Fourth Master gave me and frame it, and give me a mouthful of birthday material." It is a custom here to prepare the longevity materials early for the sake of good fortune: to add blessings and longevity. So they all complied with him.

Ye San still sells fruit.

He really sells fruits for Ji Taomin alone. He sent fruit to other families to earn money, he sent fruit to Ji Taomin is for the love of his paintings.

Ji Taomin had a temper, he drank while painting. He did not drink on the food, but on the fruit. When he drew two strokes, he drank a large mouthful of wine with the mouth of the pot, picked up a piece of fruit with his left hand, and continued to draw with his right hand. Draw a picture to drink two pounds of Huadiao, eat pounds and a half of fruit.

Ye San searched for the best fruit and always sent it to Ji Taomin first.

Every day when Ji Taomin got up, he walked into his small study, the painting room. Ye San entered through a small hexagonal door, walked through a stone paved path of ice flowers, saw Ji Taomin through the window, and walked in carrying and holding his fresh fruits.

"Fourth Master, loquat, from Baisha!"

"Fourth Master, watermelon from Dongdun, three white! --This three-white melon has a bit of pear fragrance, not found elsewhere!"

He brought fruit to Ji Taomin for half a day. He sharpened the ink for Ji Taomin, bleached the vermilion fat, researched the stone green, and stretched the paper. When Ji Taomin was painting, he stood next to him and watched intently, concentrating so hard that he did not even take a breath. Sometimes when he saw the wonderful place, he could not help but take a deep breath and even exclaim in a small voice. Where Ye San breathes in and exclaims, it is also Ji Taomin's winning brush. Ji Taomin never painted in public, he sometimes painted by locking the door of his study. He was very willing to have such a person watching next to him, he thought Ye San really understood, Ye San's appreciation was from the bottom of his heart, not pretending to be an insider, nor flattering.

Ji Taomin hated to hear people talk about paintings. He seldom went to his relatives' homes to entertain. Really have to go, he is also to a to, drink half a cup of tea on the goodbye. Because there must be some fake celebrities talking, because Ji Taomin is a great painter, these celebrities especially love to comment on the paintings in front of him, in order to show off their elegant erudition. This kind of discussion is all hearsay, seemingly through and through. Ji Taomin was really uncomfortable when he heard it. He also knew that if he answered with his voice and coped with a few sentences, a famous scholar would re-sell his high opinion in other social places and say, "Brother, Ji Taomin also deeply agrees with this."

But he looked at Ye San in a different light.

Ji Taomin admired Li Futang most. He thought that the eight monsters in Yangzhou Futang had the most profound strength, the large and small works were good, with brush and ink, also spontaneous, also rigorous, also thick, also beautiful, and not pretentious, no jianghu atmosphere. One day Ye San sent him a four-page booklet of Li Futang, which surprised Ji Taomin: the four-page booklet was real! Ji Taomin asked him how much he bought it, Ye San said it didn't cost anything. He went to Sanchi to sell fruit, and saw a cabinet with four paintings in the glass, - he had seen a lot of Li Futang's paintings in the Fourth Master's place, and could recognize them. The "Suzhou piece" was green and flowery, and new, and the family was very happy.

Ye San only liked the painting from the heart, he never commented blindly. When Ji Taomin finished the painting, he nailed it to the wall and looked at it from afar with his own hands, sometimes asking Ye San.

"Is it good?"

"Yes!"

"What's good about it?"

Ye San could mostly tell what was good in one sentence.

Ji Taomin painted a picture of wisteria and asked Ye San about it.

Ye San said, "There is wind in the wisteria."

"Well! How do you know?"

"The flowers are messy."

"That's right!"

Ji Taomin put pen to paper and inscribed two lines.

"The deep courtyard is quiet and unoccupied, the wind brushes the wisteria flowers in chaos."

Ji Taomin drew a sketch of a mouse on a lampstand. Ye San said, "This is a small mouse."

"Why do you think so."

"The mouse curled its tail on the lampstand post. It is very naughty."

"Right!"

Ji Taomin loved to paint lotus flowers. All he painted were ink lotus. He admired Li Futang, but his painting style was not similar to Futang. Li's paintings were mostly heavy, while Ji Taomin's paintings were floating. Li painted mostly with a medium point, while Ji Taomin used a slight side stroke. Li Futang sometimes dripped with ink and water, and his head was rough and disheveled, and his intention was in the brush first; Ji Taomin did not have that kind of arbitrariness, but his paintings were large-format, but always with a clean brush, and his strokes were sparse, and he was good at using the blank space. His ink lotus paintings use Zhang Daqian, but are more spacious. He painted the lotus leaves without hooking the tendons and the stems without puncturing them, and he liked to make long stems, which were very long and finished with one stroke.

One day, Ye San sent a large lotus flower, and when Ji Taomin was happy, he painted an ink lotus with a lot of lotus flowers. When he finished the painting, he asked Ye San, "How is it?"

Ye San said, "Fourth Master, your painting is not right."

"Not right?"

"'Red-flowered lotus seeds and white-flowered roots'. You drew a white lotus flower, but the lotus canopy is this big, and the lotus seeds are full and the ink color is dark."

"Is that so? It's the first time I've heard that!"

Ji Taomin then unfolded an eight-foot raw rice paper, drew a red lotus flower, and inscribed a poem.

"Red-flowered lotus seeds and white-flowered roots, fruit vendor Ye San is my teacher. I am ashamed to be a painter with little knowledge, so I made an exception for you to write rouge."

Ji Taomin sent Ye San many paintings. --Sometimes Ji Taomin painted a picture, but was not satisfied and dropped it. Ye San picked it up and gave it to Ji Taomin some days later to see, and Ji Taomin thought it was not bad, so he changed it slightly, added the title, and gave it to Ye San again. The paintings given to Ye San by Ji Taomin were all inscribed with the above name. Ye San also had a scientific name. He lacked water in his five elements, so he was named Runsheng. Ji Taomin gave him a character called Ze Zhi. The paintings he sent to Ye San were often inscribed with the words, "Elegantly corrected by the third brother Zezhi. Sometimes it was inscribed "Painting with Ye San". Ji Taomin also explained to him that it was an ancient custom to address him by his rank, not to look down on him.

Sometimes Ji Taomin gave Ye San a painting and said, "This one is not inscribed, you can sell it for money, it's not good to sell with the inscription."

Ye San said, "It's fine whether it's inscribed or not. But I won't sell your painting."

"Not for sale?"

"Not even one?"

He put all the paintings given to him by Ji Taomin in his coffin.

More than ten years passed.

Ji Taomin died. Ye San no longer sells fruit, but he has eight seasons, but also looking around for fresh fruit, to Ji Taomin's grave to make an offering.

After Ji Taomin's death, the price of his paintings increased greatly. Some people in Japan collected his paintings. We all know that Ye San has many paintings of Ji Taomin in his hands, and they are all fine works. Many people wanted to buy Ye San's collection of paintings. Ye San said.

"Not for sale."

One day a foreigner came to visit Ye San, Ye San looked at his business card, the man's surname is very strange, surname "Tsuji", called "Tsuji listen to Tao". Once asked, is a Japanese. Tsuji heard Tao say he was specially to see his collection of Ji Taomin's paintings.

Because it was a long way to come, Ye San had to take out the painting. Tsuji listened to Tao very religiously, asked for water to wash his hands, burned a stick of incense, and worshiped the scroll three times before unfolding it. As he looked at it, he kept exclaiming.

"Wow! Wow! It's wonderful! It's really a miracle!"

Tsuji wanted to buy the paintings for as much as he wanted.

Ye San said.

"Not for sale."

Tsuji had to leave in despair.

Ye San died. His son followed his father's will and buried Tsuji's paintings in a coffin with his father.

February 28, 1982