Blue sacred mountains

Behind the plums are washes of blue mountains—another motif with a long historical lineage in Chinese art. Bright blue and green mountains are used in Daoist art to denote the sacred lands inhabited by immortals. The shade of “peacock blue” (kongquelan) in the fan painting is associated with Islam in China and used in mosques such as the Great Mosque of Xi’an, building on the sacred associations of blue mountains. In the painting Searching for Blossoming Plum in the Western Suburbs, Yu Zhiding (1647–1710 or after) depicted blue mountains with plum blossoms to express an idealized world.

Interestingly, Yu Zhiding’s painting of the western suburbs and the fan painting may both refer to mountainous regions to the west of China. These “western regions” (Xiyü) carry explicit connotations with Islam, as shown in the Chinese map published in 1811 (Da Qing wan nian yi tong tian xia quan tu). The label for the blue mountains on the map reads:

回回其先然得那期祖国 按舘考云與天方國鄰天方在筠沖之地…名天堂又名西域

“The area from which huihui [Muslims] first came… the place neighbouring tianfang [Kabaa] in Hejaz is named ‘Heaven’ [referring to Islam] or xiyü [western regions]”. Indeed, geographically, Mecca is surrounded by mountainous terrains, and Mount Arafat and the mountainous Valley of Mina are both hajj sites. The blue mountains in the fan could be a reference to the mountains around Mecca. The blue mountains in the distance, combined with the local Chinese plum blossoms in the foreground, could be a visualization of the journey from China to Mecca.