Great Wisdom Seems Slow-witted

This piece of needlework is based on a finger painting by Li Shan (1686-1762 AD), one of the “Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou”, who depicted an autumn scene of a clumsy but lovely goose standing beside several reed catkins.
The geese, seen as a dull animal by the common people, has been a subject for praise in Chinese poetry since ancient times, as geese are elegant, modest, diligent and enjoy the present life. The creator of this embroidery piece aims to express her understanding that people with great wisdom may appear slow-witted, just as the geese. This piece has fully transferred the artistic charm of an ink painting on the embroidery foundation thanks to her skillful application of various techniques including long and short stitches (tao zhen, 套针), neat stitches (qi zhen, 齐针), random stitches (luan zhen, 乱针), full-and-broken-line stitches (xushi zhen, 虚实针), etc.
This piece won the Gold Award at the third Oriental Arts and Crafts Capital Exposition in 2013.