Reflections | Hong Kong had the King of Kowloon, eccentric graffiti artist. Yuan dynasty China had Ni Zan, king of Lake Tai and equally eccentric minimalist painter

Tsang Tsou-choi, who graffitied all over Kowloon – some of his work is in the M+ museum – was an odd character. Ni Zan in ancient China was that and more

The minimalist landscape artist famous for his Lake Tai paintings had a mania for cleanliness, and defecated from a high tower into a bucket full of goose down

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Graffiti painter Tsang Tsou-choi, also known as the King of Kowloon, prepares for a solo exhibition in 1997. Photo: Dickson Lee

Wee Kek Koon

Published: 8:45am, 11 Nov 2021

M+, a “museum of visual culture”, is finally opening in West Kowloon after almost 20 years of gestation, planning, replanning, bureaucratic wrangling, more than a few controversies … but no matter, the two decades have not been totally wasted. M+ finally opens its doors on 12 November.

Among its substantial collection are the works of Tsang Tsou-choi, also known as the King (or Emperor) of Kowloon. While he never had any formal training in art or calligraphy, Tsang decorated Hong Kong’s public spaces with his inimitable renditions of Chinese characters, most of which had been whitewashed by municipal authorities as graffiti. Fortunately, some of his work still remains.

It was widely reported that Tsang was somewhat eccentric; he might even have lived with mental health issues for most of his life. He died in a nursing home in 2007 at the age of 86.

Most of us would immediately think of Vincent van Gogh as an artist whose mental state was similarly afflicted. Not many people know of Ni Zan (1301–1374), a Chinese artist who lived in the Yuan dynasty and the first few years of the Ming. Based on records of his eccentric behaviour, even an untrained layperson can surmise that he probably had what is presently known as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Ni Zan’s Six Gentlemen (1345), from the collection of the Shanghai Museum. Photo: Shanghai Museum

First of all, his art. Ni Zan, one of the Four Yuan Masters, was famous for his minimalist landscapes painted in the pingyuan (“level distance”) style, which typically shows an expansive vista, often of mountains and bodies of water. Ni’s landscapes are often devoid of people and human activity, imparting his works with a meditative or even melancholic quality.

He was particularly noted for his depictions of Lake Tai, on whose banks are the cities of Suzhou and Wuxi. The latter’s Yunlin Neighbourhood, where Ni was born, is named after the pseudonym he used as an artist.

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