Theatrical jacket for a court lady

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This jacket features delicate embroidered lotuses on green satin. Known as a lotus-picker jacket (cailianyi), this type of garment would have been worn by a lady while she picked lotuses. On the lining of this example, several ink stamps indicate it was used at the Jingshan, a man-made hill north of the Forbidden City where actors from south China who performed in the imperial theater lived.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art