Of round shape, painted in underglaze blue and decorated on the body with a continuous scene set in a terraced and tree-lined garden of several ladies occupied by varying pursuits, one holding a fan, one watering a flower pot, another holding a lantern, one seated beneath a tree, one with her sleeves rolled up washing in a bowl placed on a small table and so on, on the shoulder a broad band of interlocked ruyi-heads in between double blue lines, the foot also with double blue lines, on the glazed base a white hare outlined on a blue ground inside double circular lines.
Literature
The hare is the emblem of longevity in Chinese mythology, and represents the fourth of the Twelve Terrestrial Branches, the hare like the fox attains the age of 1000 years and becomes white when half that period is completed. Tradition earlier than the period of the Han dynasty asserted that a hare inhabited the surface of the Moon, and later Taoist fable depicted this animal, called the Gemmeous Hare, as the servitor of the genii, who employ it in pounding the drugs which compose the elixir of life.
