A Northern Song Dynasty painter hid his name in a painting for a thousand years, and a Forbidden City restorer found it a thousand years later.
After Zhou Huaian discovered that his paintings were stamped with the emperor's seal, he began to hide his name in each painting - using tiny brushstrokes to hide in the eyes of birds and the texture of stones. He designed a set of passwords and hid the "secret location map" in the wall of the art academy, hoping that someone would discover it a thousand years later. During the Jingkang Incident, the painting academy was destroyed and he disappeared. Nine hundred years later, when Lin Xi was restoring a Song painting, he discovered this "secret mark" under a microscope. She spent several years deciphering the code and found the "secret location map", and finally held an exhibition in the Forbidden City, allowing the names of the forgotten painters to appear to the public for the first time.
