Painting in China, like most other cultural pursuits, has a long history, cult murals in tombs, temples and
palaces are known to have existed already in the 3rd to 1st century BC as well as scroll paintings. Interest
in paintings is a matter of very early historical record, earlier than that Europeans. This is explained by
the extraordinary importance the Chinese had placed on the art of brush painting. The important place given
to the art of brush painting is also due to the intimate association between writing and painting, resulting
from the original pictographic character of Chinese scripts. As Chinese writing is not phonetic, anybody who
is literate inn whatever region and independence of a local dialect will be able to understand a written text.
The nationwide unifying and historically continuos script was therefore always more important than the spoken
language. The art of rhetoric as practised for instance in ancient Greece was never developed in China. Writing
and painting utensils are referred to in China as the Four treasures of Study. They consists of brush, ink,
rubbing stone and paper. These are held esteem by poets, scholars and painters
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