Scroll on which is written in Chinese script a well-known poem from the Tang dynasty called春曉 ‘Chun Xiao’, which translates as ‘Spring Dawn’, by the poet 孟浩然 ‘Meng Haoran’ (689-740). The poem is #232 in the collection 300 Tang Poems. The poem reads “春眠不覺曉，處處聞啼鳥。夜來風雨聲，花落知多少。”, and can be roughly translated as “In Spring one sleeps, unaware of dawn; everywhere one hears crowing birds. In the night came the sound of wind and rain; who knows how many flowers fell?” As indicated in the left hand column, this calligraphy was written by a person called 蒨英 ‘Qian-Ying’ in the winter of the Chinese lunar year 丙申 ‘bing shen’(which could be the year 1716, 1776, 1836, 1896 or 1956, following a 60-year calendrical cycle).
