‘Pith paper watercolors’ refer to the small pictures created mainly by local painters in Canton (present-day Guangzhou) in the nineteenth century, which were intended for sale to Western traders and sailors at that time. Pith paper is directly sliced from the white inner spongy tissue of a particular type of tree. Its cellular structure therefore can absorb waterborne dyes, facilitating the drawing of very fine details. Owing to their small size and modest appearance, pith paper watercolours have long been overlooked by scholars studying Chinese export arts. Thanks to the dedicated efforts and generous donations of Mr Ifan Williams, an amateur researcher of pith paper watercolours from the UK, Guangzhou’s public institutions acquired their first collection of pith paintings in 2001. Chinese researchers and collectors subsequently started to take greater notice of this particular genre. Revisiting the historical pith paintings, contemporary local artists in Guangzhou are trying to revitalize the genres and impart the drawing techniques to the younger generation. The pith watercolours at present is an echo and re-creation of their past.

Professor CHING May Bo is currently the Head of the Department of Chinese and History and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. She has published extensively on a variety of subjects relating to social and cultural history of modern China, with a focus on the transformation of regional identity and material cultures in Canton. In recent years, she has been examining how the regional culture of South China took shape in a trans-regional context in terms of sound, colour and tastes from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. With the support of Guangzhou Cultural Bureau, she coordinated the translation and publication projects of Mr Ifan Williams’ research on pith paper watercolours, resulting in two illustrated catalogues published in 2001 and 2014.