About this book

Caigentan, a book written by a Chinese scholar in Ming dynasty, integrates the philosophy of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism.   Recently, it has received a lot of attention by the Japanese business and society as a must-read classic.  The philosophy of Caigentan is the art of living, a high standard for social interaction and selection of employees. The book is written as a collection of quotations, outlining  Asian philosophy. In spite of some minor flaws due to historical limitation, the book is very readable. To the unseasoned, the book seems to set an unreachable standard for a self-inflicting puritan. Yet, for those who have experienced life, it certainly strikes a lot of accord. The author, Hong Ying Ming, apparently living by the same principles of the book, did not seek fame or fortune. There is little documented about his life.  The name of the book is quite profoundly philosophical by itself. Vegetable roots (Cai-Gen in Chinese) are the basis for nutrition for the plant, yet the texture and taste of vegetable roots are usually unpalatable. So are the quotations in the book. They are the fundamental principles of life, quite tough to live by. Readers would agree after finishing this book. The book was published again in China in 1989.

About this artwork

I have been practicing calligraphy as a hobby for years. Quotations of  Caigentan are often a topic of my practice. When I mentioned this book to Ms. Fu YiYao, my artist friend, I found that she shared the same interest to produce the book in an art form. We had once collaborated with her painting over my calligraphy of a poem by Wang Wei. This was done for fun and is totally unconventional in Chinese art where calligraphy is always done as a supplementary to and after painting.   Ms. Fu insisted to present in the format with calligraphy prior to painting. This really is too flattering to my amateurish calligraphy. After hesitating for a year, finally in early 1998, I sent twenty some drafts to Ms. Fu in Japan.  Ms. Fu came to New York City in July to prepare for her major debut exhibition in 1999 sponsored by the National Arts Club.   To my great surprise, she brought all the pieces back complete with paintings. Several artist friends also felt we should publish them.  So, here we are presenting them over the Internet to share with netters the wisdom of Hong Ying Ming's Caigentan.      

Siu-Leung Lee
October, 1998

Additional Notes:

The first edition of our book is now sold out and discontinued. If you bought one, it is now a collector's item. The second edition is printed with more classical flavor in a format of a series with several other classical books. We are extremely pleased to see the book so well received. Hope you enjoy it the same. (April, 2005)

The book is now published in Japanese by a renowned Japanese publisher on classics. It has the same English translation and (January 3, 2006) [News - People's Daily]

David See-Chai Lam Centre of International Communication at Simon-Fraser University is using some of our work for their website frontages.