Lessons from the Unseen: The Treasures of the Drowned
(Image: Horizontal painting — broken Ming porcelain floating through deep blue water, a sunken ship below, and a family of luminous jellyfish rising toward the light.)
“Some call it the Nanhai Dream — a vision of pride and reclamation over the South China Sea.
But to me, it is the dream of the sea itself — to dissolve the noise of nations and cradle what was lost in peace.”
Beneath the South China Sea, the broken porcelain of the Wanli wreck lies scattered like fallen stars — fragments of beauty that once journeyed across oceans. They drift still, pale and delicate, surrounded by the ghostly dance of jellyfish rising toward the light — the souls of sailors, perhaps, ascending through time.
I once painted this image: porcelain pieces floating horizontally across a deep blue canvas, a sunken ship resting below, and a quiet family of jellyfish lifting through the debris. It was meant as a meditation on impermanence — how beauty endures even in ruin.
But the Unseen revealed another twist.
Those same broken pieces, once lost to the sea, have made millionaires out of the living — salvage divers, dealers, collectors, even my old friend Ben Ronjen of Kraak Creations, who turned them into trinkets for the curious and the rich. What was sacred to history has become currency for the present. The Chinese call it heritage; the world calls it commerce.
Above the surface, the living argue over ownership.
Below, the dead release their burdens into the quiet.
Perhaps that is the lesson — that what we cling to as treasure often drags us downward, while what we surrender rises like light through water.
“Not all that is lost needs to be found again.”
#LessonsFromTheUnseen #WanliWreck #TreasuresOfTheDrowned #NanhaiDream #SpiritualArchaeology
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