Uncovering the Lost Stories, Art of Stones
Davis Museum exhibit explores how stones have been used in Chinese art
Dr. Yuhua Ding led this reporter into the exhibition hall at Davis Museum at Wellesley College. There sat a black stone. It was just a rock, but it felt like something more, like an elder, waiting to slowly tell its story to the visitors.
The piece was a part of the exhibit, “Shi: Stories in Stone,” that runs through May 20 of next year. The curator of the exhibition, Ding says that the first question many people ask when they meet is: “What is shi (stone)?”
The answer is hidden in the words. The shape of the Chinese character, which looks something like a horizontal line topping an elongated single apostrophe over a square, is meant to resemble a small stone falling from a high cliff. For over a thousand years, Chinese people have collected and studied stones, transforming them into art. They seek stones with unusual shapes, such as “odd stones” and “strange stones,” and refer to their cherished stones as “sacrificial stones” to express reverence.
In the English-speaking world, such stones are usually called “scholars’ rocks.” Ding did not follow this term.
“Many people ask me why not use scholars’ rocks, Westerners may be more familiar with it,” she says, “but I don’t want to.”
Why?
Because, she says, a scholars’ rock “is a Western term. It’s not a Chinese term.” To her, this word highlights the role of the educated elite in the history of collecting, but ignores the other aspects of “stone.”
Therefore, she hopes to let Western audiences directly recognize the Chinese names through this exhibition. “I really want to bring Western visitors to learn some of the Chinese terms… go back to the Chinese tradition.” Each label in the exhibition hall is attached with Chinese characters, pinyin, and English, at least let everyone learn a character.
The exhibition aims to restore the rich connotations of “stone” Ding said, noting that the character “stone” itself has multiple meanings.
“Shi really refers to rocks, minerals, fossils. It’s not just rock.” Here, stones are the source of individual and collective memory, a pigment for painting, a carrier and tool for writing, a source of artistic inspiration, and also a way for people to imagine the microcosm. The exhibition invites the audience to read the stories within the stones from multiple perspectives, including science, nature, art, culture, and history.
Therefore, collecting stones is not only for scholars and scientists. “If you’re not a scholar, that’s fine,” Ding said, “as long as you have heart and deep respect for nature, you are a stone collector. I myself have collected many stones at home and even made my own bases. It could be all kinds of materials as long as you love the shape… this is an art piece.”
She also mentioned her childhood: “Every child picks up stones, puts them in their pockets to take home, and then they are thrown away by their parents. But children really appreciate stones, they are so creative.”
The stone in the Painting
There were many paintings hanging in the exhibition hall, each with a shadow of stone. Ding explained the paintings and talked about the “uses” of stones depicted in the artwork.
An exhibition has a unit dedicated to the origin of stones as pigments. Minerals such as malachite and lapis lazuli are ground into powder and mixed to create the blues and greens for painting. Ding says that ancient people believed that the colors blue and green absorbed the essence of the sun and the moon. As early as the Han Dynasty, malachite was used in medical books to treat eye and ear diseases.
“However, we don’t do that anymore. That’s kind of a poison.”
The display cases not only showcase the ores but also demonstrate the process of grinding them into pigments.
One of the garden paintings is one of Ding’s favorite works, borrowed from the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University: “Heavenly Fragrance Pervades the Garden,” a painting by the Qing Dynasty artist Yu Zhiding from 1685. Ding first saw this painting while a graduate student at Cornell and it has left a deep impression on her ever since. In the painting, a young scholar stands in his own garden, surrounded by trees and pavilions, and the stone in the garden is neither gray, nor black or white, but a blend of blue and green. The entire painting, except for this central stone, is almost entirely devoid of color, and the stone adds a lively touch to the entire composition.
Ding said the person in the painting is Nalan Xingde. A child prodigy, Xingde entered the Imperial Academy at the age of 17, passed the provincial examinations at 18, and became a jinshi at the age of 22. But he was weak and often sickly, and passed away in his early 30s. Yu Zhiding was his close friend, and Ding speculated that this painting was commissioned by his family approximately two months after his death. “That’s why I think it’s a very, very emotional piece. The blue and green are not just colors, there’s a lot of meanings inside.”
Another set of paintings has a special connection with Wellesley College. The exhibition displays the landscape paintings by Soong Mayling, an alumnus of Wellesley College (graduated in 1917), side by side with the works of her teacher, Huang Junbi, allowing the brushstrokes of two generations of teacher and student to confront each other, captivating viewers for a long time. Ding said that the painters later all left the mainland and never returned, “But all their paintings depict mainland China.” The stones she matched with these paintings are also shaped like mountains. “The Chinese love mountains… love to paint landscapes, mountains, rivers… spiritual connection to a person’s homeland.”
There is also a topic in the exhibition that Ding is particularly eager to discuss: gender. “Many people don’t realize that the stones in Chinese gardens actually have very clear gendered preferences. Historically, we almost never find female-painted rocks. Women can paint flowers and birds, but they don’t paint rocks.”
The exhibition features a copy of an 18th-century male painter’s work based on a female painter Ma Shouzhen. Ding said that Ma Shouzhen was a famous courtesan, surrounded by male scholars, and her way of painting stones was also influenced by them. “
This circle is a circle of male scholars, so basically, the rock is a very gendered topic.”
In another garden painting, there are three women, one of whom is dressed as a man, and it is the work in the exhibition that people most want to take a second look at.
“It’s a mystery,” Ding said, “Some might interpret it as queer culture, but I’m more interpreting it as friendship.”
She believes the figures in the painting are Hongfu and Princess Lechang, both of whom were concubines of Yang Su and later became friends. Hongfu ultimately eloped with a general, and the scene in the painting is their farewell before leaving.
“This is my interpretation, and I welcome different ones. At least … not just about male and female. It’s three females, including the servant, which is quite interesting.”
Stone not only appears in paintings but also remains in texts. The exhibition includes stone tablets, rubbings, and seals. Ding said, “Carving on stone, carving on bronze, that’s for a permanent purpose. Writing on paper or silk is easily perishable; carving on stone means it is important and needs to be passed down from generation to generation.”
The back of one stone screen is inscribed with an epitaph, a female devotee’s wish to eliminate illness and karma, “It’s very sad and very touching.”
Visiting into Interacting
What makes this exhibition most unlike a traditional Chinese art exhibition is that it invites people to get involved by touching.
“Our 2026 graduating class has been a great help,” Ding said, “The design and production of these animations have all been done by the students, and it’s truly amazing!”
The animations made by the students tell the story of how the character ‘shi’ evolved from its original form to today, “They’ve given this stone a lot of personality, and I especially like it.”
In the exhibition hall, there are also 3D-printed stones and bases, where visitors can try placing the same stone on different bases, turning it in different directions to see how its appearance changes. Ding said that the bases themselves are also art. “The same stone, placed on a different base, will give you a completely different feeling. The display is not just a supplement. It’s its own artwork.”
This hands-on experience of handling stones is actually the way Chinese people collect stones.
Ding summarized several “fun facts”: First, Chinese collectors date the stone not by its geological age, but by when it was first collected and appreciated. Second, before the stone is displayed, it needs to be cleaned and polished, and sometimes even carved. Ding also emphasized the cleaning step at the scene: “It must be 100% clean, you wouldn’t put a stone with dirt on your desk.”
Third, collectors like to name stones according to their shapes, comparing them to mountains, animals, people, or characters from folk tales. In the last part of the exhibition hall, Ding invited the visitor to name the stones and draw their own view of them. The walls were filled with visitors’ creations: stones shaped like wolves, pumpkins and smiling faces, which were very fitting for the Halloween atmosphere, as well as shapes of flowers and umbrellas.
“I just came in this morning, and I was like, wow, there’s a lot of things added.”
Fourth, collectors pick up a stone, look it over, handle it, and put it back on its stand. Fifth, many enjoy striking a stone with a metal rod to hear a metallic sound. Ding said Lingbi stone was prized because it rings when struck, and that it was used to make musical instruments. The exhibition includes a recording of that sound.
Making, looking, touching and listening, Ding says, collecting and appreciating stones in China is a multisensory experience. The exhibition also hopes that visitors will feel everything through looking, touching, listening, drawing, and naming.
“I do not want a very hierarchical style of interpretation from the very top,” Ding said, “Let’s not just talk; let’s go back to the stone itself.”
Her larger worry is that Chinese art can feel out of reach.
“A lot of times, when people come to a Chinese art exhibition, they feel it’s hard to access. They feel Chinese art is difficult to understand… so far away. ‘I don’t speak the language,’” Ding said. “I hope this exhibition can be enjoyed by people of different ages and backgrounds, I really want people to have fun and enjoy Chinese art.”
For events related to 'Shi', see the following link www.wellesley.edu/davismuseum/events
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