In the lacquered screen above referred to, a large fan of this character is waved over the head of one of the devotees riding aloft on a cloud, wending his way towards the mountain paradise, the home of the God. [Illustration: FAN OF HSI WANG MU (From a Japanese painting. British Museum.)] The feather-fan is one of the chief attributes of Hsi Wang Mu, the famed Queen of the Genii (Royal Mother of the West), whose dwelling was a mountain palace in Central Asia, where she held Court with her fairy legions and received the great Taoist Rishis and certain favoured mortals, and whose amours with the Han Emperor Wu Ti have given much occupation for both author and artist.[35] [Illustration: WHITE PLUMED FAN OF HSI WANG MU (From a painting of the Chinese School of Japan. British Museum.)] Her fan is borne by one of her four handmaidens, who, like the Dêva Kings of Mount Sumeru, are severally related to the four points of the compass. It assumes various shapes, as that of a wing, in the painting by a pupil of Itcho riū of the Japanese popular school, British Museum, 1722; a bunch of long pointed plumes set in a bamboo handle, in the painting (Chinese School of Japan, British Museum, 778), in which a young girl in deer-skin, standing beneath the sacred peach-tree of the Immortals, offers the fruit to the goddess who, with her attendant bearing the fan, appears upon a cloud above the waves. The queen is also represented with the large pear-shaped screen, as in the painting of the same school, British Museum, 1022, the screen decorated with the sun, moon, and clouds. In the painting previously referred to (No. 1722), the goddess herself holds a smaller pear-shaped screen. Each of the ‘fore-mentioned paintings are Japanese, but the fan forms are, unquestionably, taken from older Chinese originals. [Illustration: Chinese Fan. filigree & enamel. Victoria & Albert Museum.] The earliest illustrations, however, of this personage and her fan, and probably the oldest representations of fans in Chinese art, are those of the sculptures of the Han dynasty, B.C. 206-A.D. 25. In these, Hsi-wang Mu, wearing a coroneted hat, is attended by ladies carrying cup, mirror, and fan. On the same relief the Emperor Mu Wang of the Chou dynasty, B.C. 1001, is attended by a servitor with fan and towel or handkerchief. In the frieze forming the lower part of the relief, we see the ‘Chariot of the Sage’ preceded by two men on foot, with staves and fans. [Illustration: PEAR-SHAPED SCREENS (From paintings in the British Museum.)] On another of these reliefs, representing the discovery of one of the sacred bronze tripods, the ancient palladia of the kingdom, the two commissioners deputed by the Emperor to superintend its recovery from the river are attended by servitors bearing fans. These are the small hand-screens (pien-mien) described by M. Rondot as being larger in the upper part, their shape approaching that of a reversed trapezium with the angles rounded off.