attendants, with the head eunuch Li Lien-ying as their protector,
ordered the court artists to paint appropriate foreground and
background and then called young Yu, her court photographer, to
snap his camera and allow Old Sol the great artist of the
universe with a pencil of his light to paint her as she was.

One day while visiting a curio store on Liu Li Chang, the great
book street of Peking, my attention was called by the dealer to
four small paintings of peach blossoms in black and white, from
the brush of the Empress Dowager. These pictures had been in the
panels of the partition between two of the rooms of Her Majesty's
apartments in the Summer Palace, and so I considered myself
fortunate in securing them.

"You notice," said he, "that each section of these branches must
be drawn by a single stroke of the brush. This is no easy task.
She must be able to ink her brush in such a way as to give a
clear outline of the limb, and at the same time to produce such
shading as she may desire. Should her outline be defective, she
dare not retouch it; should her shading be too heavy or
insufficient, she cannot take from it and she may not add to it,
as this would make it defective in the matter of calligraphy. A
stroke once placed upon her paper, for they are done on paper, is
there forever. This style of work is among the most difficult in
Chinese art."

After securing these paintings, I showed them to a number of the
best artists of the present day in Peking, and they all
pronounced them good specimens of plum blossom work in
monochrome, and they agreed with Lady Miao, that if the Empress