Artistic Life By The West Lake In Late Ming Dynasty

The trend of travelling became fashionable in Late Ming Dynasty and the West Lake was no doubt the most popular destination, known for its beautiful scenery and its unique artistic atmosphere. People flocked to Hangzhou from all directions of the empire and built a complicated social network by the lake. A variety of cultural and artistic activities was carried out. The paper starts with the research of an ancient book "The Beauty of the Lake and the Mountain", which was published by a scholar in Late Ming Dynasty and is now kept in La Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF). Then the stories of four famous tourists, namely Zhang Dai a scholar, Wang Ruqian a business man, Li Liufang a painter and Lin Xue, a celebrated prostitute, were told respectively. By examining their activities by the lake and the work of art they produced, this paper aims at reconstructing the charming prospect of the cultural and artistic life of the literati in Late Ming Dynasty. This paper focuses on three questions:first, how did the literati in Late Ming Dynasty appreciate the scenery of the West Lake in an artistic way? Second, how did they live in an elegant and cultivated life style by the lake? Third, how did they represent the beauty of the lake in the form of art? This paper also discusses how the literati managed to pass on the legacy of the West Lake to the future generation by setting up the monument of stone (tombs) and the monument on the paper (literature and art)after the dynastic changes.