Goodness, I'm sorry I should replied to you sooner.
Thanks for the large picture. It's beyond my level of ability to read Chinese calligraphy, so I enlisted hubby's help. He deciphered it's a calligraphy of a 4 verse stanza from an ancient styled poem "stamped" 4 times next to each other. He thinks these are the characters in Chinese:
閒挂天地根， 幽搜古靈魂。 菰蘆蓧幹異， 豈是南風昷？
We tried to interpret the meaning, and this is all we could come up with:
1st verse: "Idly hanging over at (either) the source of all living things between heaven and earth (or) the vale where two peaks connect," 2nd verse: "quietly searching the ancient spirit." 3rd verse: I'm not too sure about this--something about gourd--my guess is the gourd flower all dried up--maybe that flower is a gourd flower (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Calabash_flower.jpg), but those are mostly white I think. I did find a variety that grows in the Himalayas but I don't know what it look like, 4th verse: "Could it because the southern wind is too warm?"
Of course we could be totally wrong here. Incidentally we found a message board (http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=485447945) on badu (the Chinese version of google I think) where people were discussing its meaning so the poem must be well known. Apparently no verdict were concluded. People couldn't even agreeing with the words...
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Thanks for the large picture. It's beyond my level of ability to read Chinese calligraphy, so I enlisted hubby's help. He deciphered it's a calligraphy of a 4 verse stanza from an ancient styled poem "stamped" 4 times next to each other. He thinks these are the characters in Chinese:
閒挂天地根，
幽搜古靈魂。
菰蘆蓧幹異，
豈是南風昷？
We tried to interpret the meaning, and this is all we could come up with:
1st verse: "Idly hanging over at (either) the source of all living things between heaven and earth (or) the vale where two peaks connect,"
2nd verse: "quietly searching the ancient spirit."
3rd verse: I'm not too sure about this--something about gourd--my guess is the gourd flower all dried up--maybe that flower is a gourd flower (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Calabash_flower.jpg), but those are mostly white I think. I did find a variety that grows in the Himalayas but I don't know what it look like,
4th verse: "Could it because the southern wind is too warm?"
Of course we could be totally wrong here. Incidentally we found a message board (http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=485447945) on badu (the Chinese version of google I think) where people were discussing its meaning so the poem must be well known. Apparently no verdict were concluded. People couldn't even agreeing with the words...