What Shall I Do? No. 6

A painting shows a towering mountain painted in bold but sparse strokes of black and ombre tones. At the bottom of the painting, a man stands in a boat, looking up at the mountain. Columns of Chinese characters fill the top of the frame.

She placed it on the shelf beside its sister, and pondered a thousand questions. Attend to what appears before you, she thought. That is what I must teach myself to do.

From Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records, Chapter 3, Ch. 3.

Image attribution: Painting is Shitao, Reminiscences of Qinhuai, 17th c. Photo is public domain, from Reminiscences of Qinhuai River | Cleveland Museum of Art. A full translation of the painting's text is there, as is some wonderful context.

I am riffing a bit here: later in the novel, Thien has Hannah Arendt remembering an 8th c. Chinese painting that hung over Karl Jasper's desk. I am not sure which painting she is referring to, but the following article hints at Jasper's fair interest in Chinese painting, and mentions that he and Arendt shared this interest. Jaspers was aware of this much later painting by Shintao:

Jean-Claude Gens, "Karl Jaspers' Philosophy of Nature: What is Still Worth Reading in Jaspers' Works in Times of Ecological Crisis?," Existenz, Spring 2021. Link.

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This post was first created on Aug 12, 2025.

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