By discussing the influence of calligraphy on painting, we have discovered that the beauty of a painting can exist in the quality of a line and in the connection between lines, rather than in what the painting represents. We have gone a step further by suggesting that the beauty of lines lies more in the activity by which they are made than in their geometrical characters. Now that we have turned our attention from the result of the activity of painting to the process itself, a corresponding question naturally arises: Would the act of painting in its own right be considered beautiful by the ancient Chinese? This question, like those of the previous chapters, cannot have a direct and clear-cut answer, but one fact may still shed light on it, namely, painting can become a performance.