Qi                          Chinese

Kuang-ming Wu	In China, qi (life-breath) pervades all under Heaven. The skies and the fields are qi’s expressions. Qi the life-élan, not impersonal, not personal, in-flows to create in nature, and humans are its part to create naturally with nature, as does nature. Nature breathes in everything everywhere, to in-spire Chinese painters to blend in it as its natural part. Perhaps the West and China have the world’s two richest, most accomplished traditions of painting, quite opposed in sentiment. Comparing with the West brings out the thrust of China’s inspiration.
In the West, the personal Muses inspire people to stand out. Painters portray persons against the nature-background. People shout for attention in the West, even in the rugged wilderness. They go to mountains and paint, and on the canvas appear their own portraits. Even their nature-portraits portray persons—in decent perspectives.
The traditional Chinese painting has a vast space for the skies and clouds to nestle rugged mountains, forbidding forests, and winding brooks—all occupying most of painting. At its hazy corner is a little hut with tiny people sitting in it, or walking in a winding path, or fishing/boating in water. How does such a strange landscape painting occur? A painter roams in nature for months to bathe its life-breath—qi—then returns home, to come home to nature. Wu Daozi the painters’ patron saint painted the wild and a hut, opened its door, entered it, and the hut vanished in nature. Things silently blend, throb, in nature’s breathing rhythms, qiyun. Wang Wei’s poems are vivid nature-paintings as his paintings are inspiring poems. The Yellow Mountains, favorite haunts of poets and painters, misty in misty rain-clouds, huddle poetic inspiration. Nature and things breathe the qi-breaths to breathe-in—inspire—painters. Nature is the source and the theme of painterly creation in China.	River Landscape,  Chu Tuan   National Museum, Stockholm. It appears on p. 17 of Mario Bussagli's "Chinese Painting (1966)," London: Paul Hamlyn, 1969.   The Yellow Mountains by Dong Shou Pings

Interview Questions
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Edwin: What has been your personal experience with qi and linggan?

Kuang-ming:  My study catches fire every time I grab my computer, but no fireman comes. Ideas grab me to snatch me out of my hunger and eye-ache. All my pages/volumes come out of such fiery violence. My stereo set makes music to calm me to keep me going. Then I realize. Both the fire-coming and the calm-to-keep-me-going are the rhythm of ideas, inspiration throbbing in the stereo-music, coming to shape me, fire me up, and cool me on. The oncoming rhythm is the qi ®š breathed in and out; the fire of the calming cool is the linggan   felt, pervaded. Such is the ineffable happiness.

 You also see why I focused on qi, qiyun (breath-rhythm), to simplify the  matter.

Can you tell me about the first time you felt inspiration as a child?

The "first" anything is usually retouched memories that are usually so vague as to be unreliable.   I vaguely remember sniffing the fresh scent of sunny sand as my mother walked me in a low buggy to a sunny park. That morning sand-smell always makes me, even now, feel my mother. She passed on last October. I miss her. This is the world entering me, my first inspiration, inbreathing, of Mother Nature.

Yes, it was about nature and a very nice story. I meant if you had any other stories about when you were inspired by nature?

I am impressed and calmed and comforted (and strengthened) by little unknown birds chirping their days away. They are so natural, so innocent, defying their precarious existence. I heard that 1/4 of their nests survive, if they were lucky. Usually no nests survive. Still, they sing and sing and sing. The world is their home and they can die any time, for nothing is wrong with dying at home!

I'm note sure how Qi will work. It does not seem to really be a translation of inspiration.. I've seen qi fa and qi meng used as inspiration. see zhongwen.com.

I hope you would allow me to insist on qi as equivalent to inspiration in the West. Qi means breath and thrust toward novel vitality, something like "spirit." To elaborate on this point requires more than one page, so I leave it as I submitted to you, to "inspire" controversies. (Other writers are  entitled to their opinions; I prefer shortness.)

Do you know if there are any locations in China called linggan or qi? For example, in America there are places called Inspiration Point.

Some people are inspired by travel. I used to be inspired by travel when I was younger.. Now I also generally find it exhausting.
 

I've seen qi fa and qi meng used as inspiration. see zhongwen.com Do you know these words and do they relate to Qi and  inspiration?

Both phrases have qi, as you see. Their base is in qi. It takes too long to trace their relations but the basic feature is what I pointed out.

What do you mean by,  "I prefer shortness?"

References

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