10月出生的我，大约在中学阶段，就把去故宮博物院参观当成生日的某种“仪式”。即使当天不是周末假日，还是会在10月找一天去逛逛。10月10日 ，是故宫博物院的成立纪念日，所以当月一定会有年度特展，限展42天的珍贵书画，也都会集中在那段期间亮相。而且，配合院庆，展览图录和书籍、复制品等打折出售，更是我给自己买生日礼物的好理由、好机会！
1990年 ，第一次在海峡两岸解禁之后进入庞然的紫禁城，巍峨高耸的宫墙令人望而生畏，难怪戏曲里演皇帝偷偷“微服出巡”，住在宫里挺严肃、挺紧张的吧！展览空间条件不佳，不合适书画展示，我只逛了钟表馆，于是有“台北故宫看文物；北京故宫看建筑”的印象。
移居新加坡之后，每次到台北和北京，只要时间允许，故宫是不可或缺的行程。北京故宫的武英殿，修缮得具备书画馆展厅的规模；曾经遭火患的建福宫花园，新筑成会所性质，适合召开论坛。
2014年，我应邀参加“燕行使进紫禁城” 国际研讨会，谈清代朝鲜使臣在北京的纪念肖像画。2015年，故宫博物院成立90周年，我两度受邀“进宫”，先是9月讨论《石渠宝笈》；10月10日出席“故宫博物院成立90周年暨普天同庆——清代万寿盛典展学术研讨会”。在飞檐楼阁的栏杆前远眺明代崇祯皇帝自缢之处景山；避开冲向《清明上河图》的“故宫跑”人群，享受夜场观展的幽静微邈，和千载古物直面相对。学术同行切磋琢磨，纷纷期盼着十年之后的百年大庆盛事。
继2019年之后，直到去年再在北京故宫参加元代书画国际学术研讨会，询问百年庆特展，似乎尚未定案。眼看10月将至，坊间自媒体发布的消息未见官网正式宣告。
近年两岸关系僵化，台北故宫不像十年前热烈与北京故宫合作“神笔丹青—郎世宁来华三百年”特展，而是向日本东京国立博物馆借李公麟（約1049-1106）《五马图》和南宋李生《潇湘卧游图》，推出“千年神遇——北宋西园雅集传奇”。“西园雅集”是相传在北宋驸马王诜（1048-1104）府邸举办过的一场聚会，宾客包括苏轼（1037-1101）、黄庭坚（1045-1105）诸文人。我是中文学界第一位以“西园雅集”为题出版著作的研究者， 2001年在北京出版的《赤壁漫游与西园雅集——苏轼研究论集》，是我在中国大陆出版的第一本个人书籍。
在那个互联网还不发达，没有图像数据库的年代，“西园雅集”是我1996年8月成为职业学术研究人员的第一次发表主题。为了证明“写小说的衣若芬也能做好学术研究”，我花了4个月，翻遍了所有力所能及的文献和图册，扫描、输入、整理资料。报告论文时，我是同单位第一个用PPT的主讲人。话音刚落，听众沉默地看着我，研究哲学的刘述先先生首先肯定我结合文字和图像“另类考据”的贡献，夯实了我日后创发“文图学”的基础。
方闻先生是我的“师祖”，对我分析传宋徽宗《文会图》谬赞有加。在昏暗的展厅，傅申老师的话照亮了我的迷途：“这书法不是宋徽宗，还会有谁写得出？”这位诗书画兼通的帝王，是故宫收藏的领航家。
翘首故宫百年，台北故宫的何传馨先生曾经和我商议以苏轼为焦点，毕竟收藏了全球最丰富的苏轼作品啊。上一次展览《黄州寒食帖》，是十年前。我朝着《前赤壁赋》的书迹，录制解说视频，其他参观者听得目瞪口呆，问我是何方“神圣”？
我只是一个刚好十月生日，自以为和故宫博物院天然有缘的“守艺人“。用发挥文物永恒意义的精神，从事研究和推广。怀想几位仙逝的前辈，感恩垂爱，编选十篇论文，题名《千年宋韵.世纪故宫》为念。想起我在故宫博物院前身“古物陈列所”的库房宝蕴楼看到的箱子，装载文物避乱南迁；当我百年，我无需一口箱子，我的文字，在云端空间。
2025年9月27日,新加坡《联合早报》“上善若水”专栏
Born in October, I made it something of a “ritual” in my middle school years to visit the Palace Museum as a birthday tradition. Even if the day wasn’t a weekend or holiday, I would still find a day in October to wander through its halls. October 10 marks the anniversary of the Palace Museum’s founding, and so each year that month there would always be a major special exhibition. The precious calligraphy and paintings limited to a 42-day display would be unveiled during that period. What’s more, in celebration of the anniversary, exhibition catalogues, books, and replicas would be sold at discounted prices—an excellent reason and opportunity for me to buy myself a birthday present!
In 1990, after the lifting of restrictions on cross-strait exchanges, I stepped for the first time into the vast Forbidden City. The towering palace walls inspired awe and dread—it was no wonder that in operas the emperor would sneak out “incognito,” for living in the palace must have been rather solemn and tense. The exhibition conditions then were poor and unsuitable for calligraphy and painting displays, so I only visited the Clock and Watch Gallery. Thus was born my impression: “Taipei’s Palace Museum is for artifacts; Beijing’s Palace Museum is for architecture.”
After moving to Singapore, whenever I traveled to Taipei or Beijing, the Palace Museum was always an indispensable part of my itinerary. In Beijing, the Wuying Hall had been restored to a scale befitting a painting and calligraphy gallery; the Garden of the Jianfu Palace, once destroyed by fire, had been rebuilt as a clubhouse space suitable for hosting forums.
In 2014, I was invited to the international symposium “Envoys Entering the Forbidden City”, where I presented on commemorative portraits of Korean envoys in Beijing during the Qing dynasty. In 2015, the Palace Museum’s 90th anniversary, I was invited twice to “enter the palace”—first in September to discuss Shiqu Baoji; then on October 10 to attend the academic conference “The 90th Anniversary of the Palace Museum and the Universal Celebration: Exhibition on the Grand Longevity Ceremonies of the Qing Dynasty.” Standing before the railings of the ornate palace towers, I gazed toward Jingshan Hill, where the Ming emperor Chongzhen hanged himself. I avoided the “Palace Run” crowds rushing toward Along the River During the Qingming Festival, and instead savored the quiet and stillness of nighttime viewing, facing millennia-old relics in solitude. With fellow scholars, we exchanged ideas, all looking forward to the centennial celebration ten years hence.
After 2019, I returned again only last year to the Beijing Palace Museum for an international symposium on Yuan dynasty painting and calligraphy. When I inquired about the centennial special exhibition, it seemed no concrete decision had yet been made. Now, with October approaching, self-media reports have surfaced, but no official announcement has appeared on the museum’s website.
In recent years, as cross-strait relations have grown tense, the Taipei Palace Museum no longer collaborates as enthusiastically with Beijing’s Palace Museum as it did a decade ago—such as the special exhibition “Giuseppe Castiglione in China: 300 Years”. Instead, it has borrowed Li Gonglin’s (ca. 1049–1106) Five Horses and Li Sheng’s Southern Song Xiaoxiang Strolling from the Tokyo National Museum, presenting “A Millennium of Inspired Encounters: The Legend of the West Garden Gathering of the Northern Song.” The “West Garden Gathering” is said to have been held at the residence of Prince Consort Wang Shen (1048–1104) during the Northern Song, attended by literati such as Su Shi (1037–1101) and Huang Tingjian (1045–1105). I was the first scholar in Chinese literary studies to publish a monograph on the “West Garden Gathering.” My book Chibi Wanderings and the West Garden Gathering: A Collection of Studies on Su Shi, published in Beijing in 2001, was my first personal volume published in mainland China.
In the era before the internet was widespread and before image databases existed, the “West Garden Gathering” was the topic of my first academic presentation after I became a professional researcher in August 1996. Determined to prove that “the novelist I Lo-fen could also conduct solid scholarship,” I spent four months combing through every available text and image catalogue, scanning, inputting, and organizing materials. When I delivered the paper, I was the first in my institute to use PowerPoint. At the end, the audience fell silent. The philosopher Liu Shuxian was the first to affirm my contribution in combining words and images as an “alternative form of textual criticism,” which laid the foundation for my later development of “Text and Image Studies.”
Mr. Fang Wen, my “academic grandmaster,” praised my analysis of the misattributed Gathering of Literary Minds ascribed to Emperor Huizong. In a dimly lit gallery, Professor Fu Shen’s words illuminated my confusion: “If this calligraphy isn’t by Emperor Huizong, who else could have written it?” This emperor, master of poetry, calligraphy, and painting, is truly the helmsman of the Palace Museum’s collection.
Looking toward the Palace Museum’s centennial, Mr. He Chuanxin of the Taipei Palace Museum once discussed with me the idea of focusing on Su Shi—after all, it houses the world’s richest Su Shi collection. The last exhibition of Cold Food Observance in Huangzhou was ten years ago. Facing Su Shi’s calligraphy of Former Ode to the Red Cliff, I recorded an explanatory video, leaving nearby visitors dumbstruck—asking, “Who is this expert?”
I am merely a person born in October who feels a natural affinity with the Palace Museum—a “guardian of the arts.” I devote myself to research and promotion in the spirit of drawing out the eternal significance of cultural relics. Remembering the late elders who nurtured me with their love, I selected ten essays under the title “A Millennium of Song Elegance, A Century of the Palace Museum: Text and Image Studies in Poetry and Painting by I Lo-fen” as a tribute. I recall seeing in the Baoyun Building, the storeroom of the Palace Museum’s predecessor “National Antiquities Exhibition Hall,” boxes packed with artifacts for southward evacuation in wartime. When I reach my own centenary, I will need no such box. My words will remain in the space of the cloud.
— Lianhe Zaobao (Singapore), “Shang Shan Ruo Shui” column, September 27, 2025
《千年宋韻 世紀故宮：衣若芬詩畫文圖學論文集》
A Millennium of Song Elegance, A Century of the Palace Museum: Text and Image Studies in Poetry and Painting by I Lo-fen
即將出版電子書
包括：
1.西園雅集
2.《赤壁圖》
3.《文會圖》
4.《寒食帖》
5.《九歌圖》
6. 《歸去來辭》
7. 《麗人行》
8.《集古錄》
9.《瀟湘臥遊圖》
10李公麟《五馬圖》