On the southern slope of the southern peak of East Sheshan Mountain, there is a huge boulder. Chen Jiru (nicknamed "Meigong"), a famous writer, calligrapher and painter in the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644 )often fished sitting on the boulder when he lived in seclusion in East Sheshan.
He built Baishishan House (also called "Wanxianlu") in East Sheshan and lived there. He wrote a couplet and hung it at the gate. It is said that after Chen Jiru lived in seclusion in East Sheshan, he wrote many books and meanwhile studied stone tablets, calligraphy and painting.
He collected folk tales and wrote Baoyantang Manuscripts in more than 400 volumes, Jian Wen Lu in nine volumes, and Tai Ping Qing Hua in four volumes, edited Poems in the Ming Dynasty, and collected the poems of Gao Qi, Wang Mian till Li Zhi, attached with the author’s brief biography. He also wrote Gu Lun Da Guan, Qin Han Wen Hui, Gu Wen Pin Wai Lu and Sheshan Poetry.
In addition, Chen Jiru was good at calligraphy and painting. In that period, the Yunjian School of painting from Songjiang was somewhat influential in China. Chen Jiru and Dong Qichang were representative figures of this school. His Wu Cun Tu, Jiang Cun Yun Shu, Meihua Tu and Qiu Shui Chun Diao Tu are all valuable painting works. Now they are collected in the National Palace Museum, Japanese National Museum, Taiwan Museum and Songjiang Museum.
