Critics have been too quick to dismiss the relevance of Chinese painting to modern art. This guide aims to redress the balance by assessing the history of Chinese art in terms of Oriental, not Western, aesthetic principles. T.C. Lai examines the brush-and-ink techniques at the heart of traditional painting, its close relationship to calligraphy, and the tension between type-form and inspiration, symbol, and likeness that has characterized the development of Chinese art.