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clearly a well read person as his text is speckled with literary references to classic works

and allusions from literature spanning thousands of years including the Western Chamber,

the Book of Odes (Shijing), the Book of Rites (Liji), Tang poetry, and many written

works now referred to as manuals of taste. Such manuals were not specific to porcelain

or ceramics, but spanned an array of object genres. In order to establish his intellectual

authority, Chen adopted the methods of philology, a mode of scholarly research practiced

with increasing intensity during the eighteenth century. Chen Liu ended the study by

enumerating seven texts written in the Ming dynasty, one from the last two years of the

Yuan Dynast, and one from the early Qing period. The list was equivalent to a modern

bibliography that appends the end of a written scholarly work.

Even more important, especially to Chen Liu himself, was the intellectual

authority gained through his visual observation of objects circulating while he was

working in Beijing. Chen proudly buttressed his own abilities as an expert on porcelain

by differentiating himself from scholars without firsthand object-based experience and

those antique dealers and collectors who lacked literary and writing ability:

There were blurry-eyed scholars who lived in remote places
and laboriously examined old methods, but their material
strengths were insufficient, and their insight therefore
limited. As for the porcelain dealers and honored officials
who know how to distinguish objects, and have some
measure of ability, they were not able to put their words to
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paper.

He spoke highly of his own opportunities and on several occasions exalted the

advantages of working as an official in Beijing for twenty years. The advantages were

spoken of by Chen in terms of both a positive visual experience and intellectual gain. He

enthused that the antique objects in circulation constituted a “delight of my own eyes