Landscape from the First Ode on the Red Cliff, by Zhang Daqian [Photo/english.cguardian.com]

The First Ode on the Red Cliff, written by Su Shi, is always on the college entrance examination, so many Chinese perfectly memorize this poem. The poetry explores the relationship between people and the universe when the author was boating beside the Red Cliff.

Zhang Daqian, who is one of the best known Chinese artists from the 20th century, painted two famous sentences from The First Ode on the Red Cliff: ‘纵一苇之所如，凌万顷之茫然’, which means, ‘the boat, once set adrift, traversed an immense expanse of thousands of hectares.’

The painting sold for 9,430,000 yuan at the China Guardian 2012 Spring Auctions.