Landscape paintings usually centered on mountains. The exquisite Chinese painting--Mountain and river, belongs to Chinese landscape painting. Mountains are sacred places in China--the homes of immortals, close to the heavens. Philosophical interest in nature could also have contributed to the rise of landscape painting, including both Daoist stress on how minor the human presence is in the vastness of the cosmos and Neo-Confucian interest in the patterns or principles that underlie all phenomena, natural and social.