In memory of Wu Guanzhong, Chinese artist who died in Beijing on Friday—
"Once Knecht confessed to his teacher that he wished to learn enough to be able to incorporate the system of the I Ching into the Glass Bead Game. Elder Brother laughed. 'Go ahead and try,' he exclaimed. 'You'll see how it turns out. Anyone can create a pretty little bamboo garden in the world. But I doubt that the gardener would succeed in incorporating the world in his bamboo grove.'"
— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, translated by Richard and Clara Winston
"The Chinese painter Wu Tao-tzu was famous because he could paint nature in a unique realistic way that was able to deceive all who viewed the picture. At the end of his life he painted his last work and invited all his friends and admirers to its presentation. They saw a wonderful landscape with a romantic path, starting in the foreground between flowers and moving through meadows to high mountains in the background, where it disappeared in an evening fog. He explained that this picture summed up all his life’s work and at the end of his short talk he jumped into the painting and onto the path, walked to the background and disappeared forever."
— Jürgen Teichmann. Teichmann notes that "the German poet Hermann Hesse tells a variation of this anecdote, according to his own personal view, as found in his 'Kurzgefasster Lebenslauf,' 1925."