Within the emperor's vast collection of ancient paintings and calligraphy — much of it preserved from earlier dynasties — were numerous depictions of horses. Among them were works by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), widely regarded as the greatest painter-calligrapher of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), a regime founded by the Mongols, whose deep-rooted equestrian traditions made the horse an indispensable factor in political, military and social life.
While inscribing one of Zhao's horse paintings — Qianlong being the ardent and often relentless inscriber he always was — the emperor ventured into a kind of gentle psychoanalysis. "When the master painted a horse, he became the horse," he wrote. "Why, then, did he stop painting them in his later years? Not from any waning of skill, but for the sole reason that one cannot fully behold oneself."
Whether Zhao would have agreed with this assessment is impossible to know, but one thing is for sure: his passion for painting horses carried on through his descendants. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds a long handscroll depicting three horses, each attended by its groom — painted not at once, but across three generations, by the master, his son Zhao Yong, and his grandson Zhao Lin. Together, they form a singular visual legacy spanning 63 years, bound by lineage and a shared devotion to the horse as an artistic subject.
According to Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, the museum's associate curator of Chinese painting, during the early Yuan Dynasty, the ruling Mongols restricted the roles available to Han scholar-officials — the ethnic majority in China. In this context, the motif became a veiled appeal for the proper recognition and use of literati talent. Zhao Mengfu created the painting for a high-ranking Surveillance Commissioner, who may have been a government recruiter.
Steeped in calligraphy and classical learning, Zhao Mengfu rendered his horses as vehicles of literati introspection, where temperament, brushwork and self-cultivation took precedence, expressed with scholarly restraint. Su Shi (1037-1101), a towering figure two centuries earlier and a kindred spirit to Zhao Mengfu, once observed that judging a true literati painting is like assessing fine horses: what matters is not surface detail, but the surge of spirit and the sweep of intention.
That understanding of spirit has remained relevant across eras. During China's reform and opening-up, when the nation relearned how to move forward after decades of constraint, progress relied not only on policy or technology, but on inner drive — initiative, adaptability and the confidence to proceed without precedents.
In today's China, shaped by rapid urbanization, digital transformation and global exchange, the same principle quietly persists. What carries people forward is not mere spectacle but an accumulated sense of direction. As systems grow more complex and change accelerates, qianlima— individuals of insight, creativity and resolve — are needed more than ever. To recognize, nurture and trust such talent is no longer a poetic ideal, but a practical necessity.
Thirteen centuries earlier, Li Bai (701–762), a radiant figure of China's poetic golden age, sketched a vivid portrait of qianlima, capturing their unrestrained spirit in verse as free and exuberant as the horses themselves:
"It neighs into blue heavens, tossing its green-bristled mane;
With orchid-tough sinews and wondrous strength,
It runs and vanishes like a flame."
