The Courtesan Li Duanduan Presenting a Peony to the Poet Zhang Gu. In many respects the Ming dynasty was the high point of Chinese erotic culture, and this painting is an excellent example. The peony flower itself his an erotic symbol, and here we see a courtesan and a literatus interacting on relatively equal terms. Such visual imagery would have been much less likely during the relatively more prudish Qing dynasty.

This page is part of www.east-asian-history.net. If you arrived here via a link from within the site, simply close this window or tab to return. If you arrived here via a web search or an external link, click the icon at left to go to the home page or click this link to go to the index page for the textbooks: www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/.