Collecting Stones That Look Like Meat Is An Actual Thing
by Ivan Farkas
Our drywall-dwelling society is mostly divorced from nature, with many folks’ natural excursions being limited to crushing a snail while frantically taking out the trash on Garbage Day. But the ancient Chinese felt inseparable from their environment, and cherished its many manifestations. Possibly none more so than stones, which are supposedly imbued with vital energy, exude calm perfection, and aid in meditative purposes.
Like a sort of Rorschach test you could hold, rocks shaped like dragons, mountains, or other entities were especially prized.
Wikipedia
And so, Chinese gentlemen have been collecting strangely shaped stones, gongshi, for more than a thousand years. The practice began during the Tang Dynasty, circa the 9th century, when scholarly statesman Bai Juyi found two transcendentally "grotesque and ugly" rocks that captured his psyche.
Wikipedia
Like a meteorite from the fugliest galaxy. But in a beautiful way.
Bai Juyi studied math, time-keeping, philosophy, and literary vocations, much like his peers; back then, politicians had to be good at something, very much unlike politics in the West today.
He wrote about his ugly rocks and helped popularize the collecting of stones. Rock-love grew strong around the 12th century, when magistrate Mi Fu performed a perfunctory faux-pas while meeting fellow administrators. Instead of paying them deference, he bowed and delivered a speech to a large stone, which he addressed as "Elder Brother Rock," thus earning the nickname "Crazy Mi," which is pretty unimaginative and mild — you bow to a rock today and decades later you're being eulogized as "ol' rock-loving Steve" to the soundtrack of your weeping family.
Wikipedia
In his defense, that is a dope-ass rock.
And around 1127 CE, the Northern Song Dynasty did something unthinkable. Besieged by Manchurian nomads, they used their biggest sacred rocks as catapult ammunition. Imagine being in a WWII submarine shootout, running out of torpedoes, and loading your fellow crewmen into the launch tubes.
The historical veneration of gongshi is still going strong today, in a weirder form: food rock collecting. Aficionados prize stones that look like food, especially meat, and a nicely nuanced hunk of geologic steak or pork belly is graded on a 100-point scale.
This, of course, instigates gentlemanly arguments. Different regions vie to be known as the meat-rock capital city of the meat-rock capital country of the world (spoiler: it's China). Plus, such fame could hopefully drum up tourist attention and revenue. Yet some collectors are too busy disputing the classifications themselves: the grading scales developed in Lushan, for example, perhaps have an innate bias that favors Lushan's rock types.
Calmer souls collect for "the love of the game" and display their divine pieces in sumptuous "stone banquets" that may feature hundreds of rocks accrued over decades. Real maestros, like Li Yuehua, curate personal museums full of near-countless specimens. They’re loved equally for their perfections and imperfections, as per the Daoist appreciation of natural forms.
To supply some of these literal stone fiends, rock markets thrive throughout China and the world, offering extra fine items for thousands of dollars apiece. Though even sad suckers without seven-figure incomes, and an expenditure account for bacon-themed mineral accretions, can score smaller versions for a few bucks. Online, too; on Alibaba, they’re sold by the kilogram and presumably dropped on your doorstep in a muddy sack. At the other end of the dollar spectrum, a large stone resembling a cut from one of China's genetically altered titano-freak-pigs was quoted at $189K.
Yet in this topsy-turvy world of mineralized meat iconography, traditional aesthetics are still honored. The most globally famous examples are the “Meat-Shaped Stone” and “Jadeite Cabbage,” the world-touring superstars of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
Wikipedia
An auspicious, diplomatic, royal gift. Would presenting a leader with a rock get your country bombed nowadays? Probably.
Once among the Qing Dynasty’s treasures, the Dongpo pork-imitating stone is still fawned over for its stained layers of fat, meat, and collagen, along with the pores on its skin. The cabbage, with a hidden katydid and locust in its leafy head, promises longevity.
Today, one of China's most auspicious rock types is the seemingly blood-spattered "chicken-blood stone," since red is a lucky, propitious color that banishes evil. In addition to resembling a Neanderthal murder weapon, its vibrant red is due to mercury-based cinnabar, making this the most toxic good luck charm in the world or the perfect piece of table décor to gift an unassuming in-law.
