(taken from Asia Society’s Asia Blog at: http://asiastoreblog.blogspot.com)
An Interview Scholars’ Rock Expert
with Kemin Hu
Cherished by the Chinese for generations, scholars’ rocks or “spirit stones” are gaining appreciation in the West for their beauty and spiritual meaning. Kemin Hu was stirred to an appreciation of scholar?s rocks by her father, a noted connoisseur of Chinese antiquities. She became an authority on scholar?s stones through her long career as a dealer and collector, as well as through her friendships with such great collectors as Richard Rosenbloom and C.C. Wang.
A: How did you become interested in and begin collecting scholars’ rocks?
K: My entire life I have been around scholar rocks. As a child in China my father collected antiques and scholar rocks, and even though I didn?t begin collecting them until later, I have been around them all my life.
A: Why do people in China collect scholars’ rocks?
K: In ancient times, and still now, Chinese scholars have appreciated these rocks as a means to remain close to nature. They see humans not as removed from nature but as a part of it, and these rocks serve as a way to communicate with it. The stones act as a sort of window, so that when one is somewhere like a big city like New York, you can still have a mental connection with nature via the stone. In the Song, Tang, and Ming dynasties the emperors collected scholar rocks.
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