When Mi Fu 米〓 discusses the "even and bland" (pingdan 平淡) and the "heavenly and true" (tianzhen 天眞) in works such as the Shushi 書史, Huashi 畫史, Baopu yingguang ji 寶晋英光集, and Haiyue mingyan 海岳名言, his discussion is underpinned by a negative, prejudiced, and sharpened consciousness seeking to eliminate the "vulgar" or "common" (su 俗). Ouyang Xiu 歐陽脩 wrote of the poetry of Mei Yaochen 梅堯臣 that he set out from the even and bland, brought out profundity and breadth, and achieved the odd and crafted, while Su Shi 蘇軾 wrote that when writing a poem, one produces new meanings through classical allusions and creates the elegant by means of the vulgar. These writers possessed a wholesomeness that encompasses even that which seems to run counter to the "even and bland" or embraces the "vulgar" and sublimates it to the elegant in an attempt to achieve an organic unity, and they did not develop vehement critiques that were simply sharply focused on the "non-vulgar." This is a major difference even though, like Mi Fu, they used the same terms "even and bland" and "heavenly and true" to express aesthetic ideas. the same terms "even and bland" and "heavenly and true" to express aesthetic ideas.
  In this article, I discuss the terms pingdan and tianzhen as used in the poetry, prose, and treatises on poetry by Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaochen, Su Shi, etc., and in "poetry talks" such as the Canghai shihua 藏海詩話, which were popular during the Song. I also consider the awareness of the "even and bland" and the "heavenly and true" in Mi Fu's writings on painting and calligraphy and discuss what lies at the basis of this awareness from the perspective of the background circumstances at the time.
  The background factors underlying Mi Fu's awareness when he spoke of the "even and bland" and the "heavenly and true" were wide-ranging. The biggest direct factors were his commenting from a position of leadership as a teacher of calligraphy and painting, his abhorrence of the inundation of calligraphic fonts by Yan Liu'ou 顔柳歐 associated with the popularity of movable-type printing, his criticism of the deluge of forgeries from his position as a calligrapher, a connoisseur, and a collector, and his experience in making rubbings and copies faithful to the originals in his capacity as someone who prided himself in being a skilled copyist.

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