Riverboats under Snowy Peaks and Clouds, by Lu Yanshao [Photo/ english.cguardian.com]

In 763 AD, the An-Shi rebellion during the Tang Dynasty was eventually crushed, leaving the great Tang poet Du Fu in a good mood at that time. He then wrote a famous heptasyllabic quatrain on that mood: ‘兩個(gè)黃鸝鳴翠柳，一行白鷺上青天。窗含西嶺千秋雪，門(mén)泊東吳萬(wàn)里船’, which means, ‘two yellow orioles sing in the green willows; a row of white egrets fly into the blue sky. From my window the snow-capped peak of Mount West is seen; beyond the door the boats from faraway Wu areas are moored.’

The painting above, by Lu Yanshao, who was a famous Chinese landscape painter, just depicted the famous scenery from this heptasyllabic quatrain, and sold for 2,296,000 yuan at the China Guardian 2010 Spring Auctions.