A valuable commentary on Ch’êng Hua porcelains is given by a late seventeenth-century writer in notes appended to various odes (e.g. on a “chicken cup” and on a Chün Chou vase). The writer is Kao Tan-jên, who also called himself Kao Chiang-ts’un, the name appended to a long dissertation on a Yüan dynasty silver wine cup, which now belongs to Sir Robert Biddulph and was figured in the _Burlington Magazine_.[60] “Ch’êng Hua wine cups,” he tells us, “include a great variety of sorts. All are of clever workmanship and decoration, and are delicately coloured in dark and light shades. The porcelain is lustrous and clear, but strong. The chicken cups are painted with a _mu tan_ peony, and below it a hen and chicken, which seem to live and move.” Another writer[61] of the same period states that he frequented the fair at the _Tz’ŭ-iên_ temple in the capital, where porcelain bowls were exhibited, and rich men came to buy. For Wan Li porcelain the usual price was a few taels of silver; for Hsüan Tê and Ch’êng Hua marked specimens two to five times that amount; but “chicken cups” could not be bought for less than a hundred taels, and yet those who had the means did not hesitate to buy, and porcelain realised higher prices than jade. An illustration in Hsiang’s Album[62] gives a poor idea of one of these porcelain gems, which is described as having the sides thin as a cicada’s wing, and so translucent that the fingernail could be seen through them. The design, a hen and chicken beside a cock’s-comb plant growing near a rock, is said to have been in the style of a celebrated Sung artist. The painting is in “applied colours (_fu sê_), thick and thin,” and apparently yellow, green, aubergine and brown. Like that of the grape-vine cup, it is evidently in enamels on the glaze. 3. Ruby red bowls (_pao shao wan_)[63] and cinnabar red dishes (_chu sha p’an_). These were, no doubt, the same as the “precious stone red (_pao shih hung_) and cinnabar bowls red as the sun,” described in the chapter on Hsüan Tê porcelain. Kao Chiang-ts’un remarks on these that “among the Ch’êng wares are chicken cups, ruby red bowls, and cinnabar dishes, very cleverly made, and fine, and more costly than Sung porcelain.” 4. Wine cups with figure subjects and lotuses. 5. “Blue and white” (_ch’ing hua_) wine cups, thin as paper. 6. Small cups with plants and insects (_ts’ao ch’ung_).[64] 7. Shallow cups with the five sacrificial altar vessels (_wu kung yang_). 8. Small plates for chopsticks, painted in colours. 9. Incense boxes. 10. All manner of small jars. All these varieties are mentioned in the _Po wu yao lan_, which gives the place of honour to the grape-vine stem-cups. The only kind specifically described as blue and white is No. 5, and the inference is that the other types were usually polychrome. [Illustration: Plate 63.--Baluster Vase