Traditional Painting: Playing Chess before a Double Screen

Today, we’re going to talk about a traditional Chinese painting from the period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Superb painting skills aside, what’s more interesting is how it contains so many metaphors and mysteries and how it survived the treachery, conspiracy, and power struggles of the following dynasties.

Earlier this month, the 42nd World Amateur Go Championship wrapped up six rounds of online competition, and Chinese player Bai Baoxiang won the title. It was his fourth time to take home the championship after having won previously in 2011, 2016, and 2017. 

Go is the national chess game of China, originating more than 2,500 years ago, and it is considered one of the four essential arts of cultured Chinese scholars in ancient times. Perhaps you’ve never played the game yourself, but you’ve undoubtedly seen the symbolic image of two players alternately placing black and white pieces on the vacant intersections of a chess board locked in a display of mental domination. Simply put, the object of the game is to surround a larger total area of the board with one’s pieces than the opponent by the end of the game, but due to the game’s inherent nature, it can be played at such a high level that designers of AI algorithms use Go to measure the complexity of their algorithms.

But there’s one chess game that nobody fully understands. I’m talking about the chess game portrayed over a thousand years ago in a painting by Zhou Wenju from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, one of the most tumultuous periods in Chinese history. The painting, Playing Chess before a Double Screen, is now collected at the Palace Museum in Beijing.

Set in a finely decorated room, we can see four gentlemen are assembled around a chess board, and behind them is a screen. But it’s not like any screen you’ve seen before because painted upon that screen in the background is a similar setting with its own screen in its background, hence the name “Double Screen”. In the foreground, the four nobles are intensely focused on the game: one appears to be urging his opponent to settle on a move, while the other hesitates. The other two are observing the game attentively. The protagonist, who can be identified as the one wearing a taller hat, is Li Jing 李璟, the second ruler of the Southern Tang during the period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The other three are his younger brothers.

The Five Dynasties period was one of political disunity between the fall of the Tang Dynasty in the year 907 and the founding of the Song Dynasty in 960. The five short-lived regimes in northern China followed one another in quick succession. And around the same period, 10 regimes known as the Ten Kingdoms dominated various regions of southern China. 

The Southern Tang was one of the Ten Kingdoms established in year 937 with its capital in present-day Nanjing in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province. Its whole territory comprised the present-day provinces of Jiangsu, Fujian, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hubei.

The rapid successions of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms came to an end with the rise of the Song Dynasty, finally establishing a lasting empire after the Tang. But despite the unstable political situation, cultural activities continued to flourish and were not greatly disrupted. For example, it was during this period that printing with wooden blocks was fully developed. 

Southern Tang is one of the key states in this period that preserved the cultural values and artefacts from the great Tang Dynasty and left behind a splendid literary and artistic legacy, especially in terms of paintings. In fact, among the 17 paintings that are prohibited from going abroad for exhibition, seven are from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, and five of those were done during the Southern Tang.

Now, for a little background on the painter of Double Screen: Zhou Wenju 周文矩was a court painter of the Southern Tang who served through all three generations of its rulers. Zhou inherited the legacy of Wu Daozi 吴道子, the greatest brush master of the Tang Dynasty, whose brushwork was full of such sweeping power that, it is said, crowds would gather to watch him as he worked. Wu’s inheritor, Zhou Wenju, was famous for his paintings of court ladies and imperial gatherings for recreation. He was extremely favored by Li Jing, the second ruler of the Southern Tang and the protagonist of the painting we’re talking about today.

Playing Chess before a Double Screen is a remarkable work that left its distinctive imprint in the history of Chinese art, not only for its three-layered spatial depiction but also for the multiple metaphors and mysteries embedded within.

Let’s look deeper into the three layers of the painting. The first layer, the foreground of the painting, shows the four brothers playing chess. The seniority of each individual is mainly distinguished by the length of his beard. This chess-playing scene shows the friendly and respectful relationship of the four brothers. The second layer is the screen behind the four brothers. The painting on that screen depicts man who seems to have just returned from court as he is still wearing his official robe, but his official hat has been taken off. Two maidservants are waiting to serve the man as he rests on the couch. Later generations have found that this scene corresponds to a poem called Occasional Nap by Tang poet Bai Juyi 白居易, which describes the scene of an official taking a nap after dealing with government affairs. The third most inner layer is the second screen within the screen, which features a traditional landscape painting. Only officials or even emperors would place this kind of landscape screen in their main halls. 

The intricate three-layered space not only demonstrates the painter’s superb painting skills, but also contains many metaphors and mysteries. For example, if indeed Bai Juyi’s poem describes what is depicted in the second layer, it implies the intent of being tired from government affairs and wanting to retreat to the mountains. One mystery lies in how the tired old government official in the background relates to the chess-playing brothers in the foreground. But the biggest mystery of all is how should we interpret the details of that first layer, that intense game of chess, which by the way has only just begun and in a quite unorthodox way.

With the chessboard as the focus of the painting, we can see that only eight pieces have been placed; moreover, they are all black. Seven pieces are arranged in the formation of the Big Dipper, pointing to the North Star, which is depicted by the lonely eighth piece in the distance. The two chess players are Li Jing’s brothers, the fourth son of the late emperor, Li Jingda 李景达, and his fifth son, Li Jingti 李景逷. And by the way, in case you wonder why he’s not in the painting, the second eldest son of the late emperor was already dead. Now, moving on, Li Jingda is seen with one hand raised to make a drop, but there is no chess piece in his hand. It’s a fake chess game! So, playing this game seems to be merely for show. So, what’s really going on here?

It turns out, quite a lot, in fact; for this painting contains the highest secret of state affairs of Southern Tang – the throne succession principle. When Li Jing first ascended the throne, he established a succession principle to pacify his younger brothers who control their own large armies, so that the younger brother is to inherit the throne from the late elder brother. He set this up by taking his younger brothers to the tomb of their late father where they made a vow supporting the principle. Afterwards, he ordered court painter Zhou Wenju to record it in the form of a painting.

In the painting, Li Jing wears a hat that was often worn by hermits at that time. Taking the feelings expressed by Bai Juyi’s poem into consideration, it seems to imply that although Li Jing sits on the throne, he is ready to retire. Beside Li Jing sits his third younger brother, Li Jingsui. This position indicates that he is the first in line for the throne. In fact, Li Jingsui had already been designated as the heir and was serving as grand marshal when the painting was created. 

The most active role in the chess game, the one who raises his hand to make a drop, is the fourth younger brother, Li Jingda. He is portrayed thusly because he was the favorite son of his late father. His father would have passed the throne directly to him if not for strong opposition from court officials. The seven chess pieces arranged in the formation of the Big Dipper are pointing to the North Star – represented by the eighth piece, which is on the side of the fifth younger brother Li Jingti, implying that he might be the person with the “mandate of heaven”. 

Opinions vary on how to interpret this “grand” chess game – whether it’s a quiet, peaceful, leisurely game among respectful brothers, or is it that each has his own axe to grind. Whatever the artist’s true intent, he could have hardly predicted the future of Southern Tang’s state affairs. We know from history that Li Jing was succeeded by his youngest son, Li Yu 李煜, rather than any of his younger brothers depicted in the painting. So, why did history not develop according to the succession principle as recorded in the painting?

To answer that question, you only have to think about one person, Li Jing’s eldest son, Li Hongji 李弘冀. And while Li Jing may have thought the arrangement represented in the painting was perfect, Li Hongji would have been standing in the wings plotting a way to keep it from ever happening. Not only did he have the ambition to fight for the throne, but he was also a gifted military strategist. In fact, designated heir Li Jingsui knew he was no match for his nephew and repeatedly offered to yield the throne to him, and to demonstrate his lack of desire to be heir, he even took the name Tuishen 退身as his courtesy name, which means to retreat or bow out. Eventually, emperor Li Jing agreed and conferred upon Li Hongji the title of crown prince.

But even that wasn’t enough for this power-hungry prince. Still fearing that his father would change his mind again, Li Hongji had his uncle poisoned. But what goes around, comes around, and Li Hongji never did take the throne. In the second year after he poisoned his uncle, he suddenly died from a mysterious illness. Back then, people liked to say he saw his uncle’s ghost and was scared to death. But as a brave military general, it’s highly unlikely that Li Hongji could have ever been scared to death. 

There’s another theory that gets more traction. At the time of Li Hongji’s death, the Southern Tang had just lost a war against what’s now called the Later Zhou, one of the Five Dynasties in the north. Naturally, the Later Zhou emperor didn’t want to see a military strategist succeed to the throne of Southern Tang. So, it’s no big stretch of the imagination to assume that the Later Zhou emperor found a way to get rid of Li Hongji.

In the end, it was Li Jing’s youngest son, Li Yu, who is famous in history for his literary talent as a poet and had never participated in political affairs, that succeeded the throne in the year 961. Just five years later in 974, Southern Tang was invaded by Taizu 太祖, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty. The next year, Li Yu surrendered and was taken to the Song capital in present-day Kaifeng of central China’s Henan Province. There he was given a nominal title. But after Taizu died, his younger brother and successor, Taizong 太宗 had Li Yu poisoned in the year 978. Some suspect that it was because Li Yu had written a poem that, in a veiled manner, lamented the destruction of his empire and the rape of his second wife by the Song emperor. 

At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, there was another emperor who inherited the throne from his older brother: Huizong 徽宗, the eighth Song emperor, who reigned from 1100 to 1127. He is probably one of the greatest patrons of art in Chinese history and a great painter, calligrapher, and poet himself. It is said that before Huizong was born, his father dreamed of being visited by Li Yu, leading some people to believe that Huizong was the reincarnation of Li Yu. His life trajectory was indeed similar to that of Li Yu, with his early life spent surrounded by luxury, sophistication, and art only to end in tragedy. Because of such similarities, Playing Chess before a Double Screen was regarded as a treasure during the reigns of both Taizong and Huizong.

It’s amazing that one painting can contain so many metaphors and mysteries. And the treachery, conspiracy, and power struggles witnessed by this painting are nothing short of shocking. In this sense, ancient paintings can serve as a key to unlocking history’s secrets, helping us to be delightfully enlightened. 

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Song Yimin, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.