During the Sui (581 t0 618 AD) and the Tang (618 t0 907 AD) Dynasties, a system of official examination was developed to select mandarins to serve the empires. Therefore a culture elite class was formed from the early stages of Chinese imperial history. Their ultimate aim was to do the examination well, to be selected and therefore to become a mandarin in order to achieve their political ambitions. In order to reach this ultimate goal they had to read and write thoroughly and extensively in order to become a cultured person and “gentleman” and also to be successful for the examination. Painting and poetry training was a very important part in this endeavour. The greatest Chinese philosopher and scholar, Confucius, said to his fellow students: “ambition must come from truth (the way); based on integrity; exercised through kindness; expressed through arts.” This illustrated that integrity, kindness, and art were an integral part of a true greatness. He also said: “scholar can not be without truth.” and “artistic skill is the nearest equivalent to the truth.” This demonstrated a logical and underlining similarity between seeking the truth in a spiritual world and practicing a skill in an artistic field. The practice of art had been elevated to resemble the spiritual process of seeking the truth. For them art training was not a simple task just to command a skill but it was a mean to approach the way or the truth.
Consequently there were two types of paintings, those done by craft painters for the sake of painting and those done by scholars as a way of their training to seek the truth. Scholars were the ruling class who controlled the representation to speak for the society. They painted and published books to promote their understanding of painting theory and to discuss their techniques how paintings should be done. Therefore they effectively created criteria by which paintings were judged. And perhaps more importantly, they were more interested in the meaning or theory of painting as they were only using painting as an analogy to seeking the truth. For them, paintings were a mean not an end. It was the process not the end product. Their criteria to judge for a great painter were not only his technique to use pen and brush but also his ability to illustrate he was a great philosopher. From the Song Dynasty ), it gradually became a popular practice that scholars would use calligraphy of poem to decorate a painting to illustrate its philosophic meanings. This was beyond the ability of an ordinary craft painter, who was normally an uneducated person. The modern artist I-Iuang Binhong ) said: calligraphing and drawing follow the same principle, key is at the tip of a writing brush. The various manifestation methods of Han character calligraphy art of Chinese are applied in the drawing works, which is fundamental to the techniques of Chinese drawing.
The career or craft painters even though could have the very finest painting technique, their ability and freedom to express their understated and their way of painting was very much controlled by others. They normally painted scenes of real life and religion teaching by orders of their employers. They painted figures, landscapes (mountains and rivers, shanshui), flowers, fish or insects primarily for decorative purposes. In contrast, the painters who had higher social status would consider painting as an academic activity. It was a mean for them to enjoy the nature. For them, painting was not to imitate the nature but a way to express their philosophic feelings. Mind came before nature. Therefore landscape on their paintings would not be a mechanic copy of beautiful sceneries and it was rather the spiritual combination of their mind and the nature.
