Famille verte — the Chinese porcelain palette dominated by bright, translucent greens alongside iron red, blue, yellow, and black — appears in poems about the Kangxi period as a visual equivalent of the dynasty's energy and confidence; A poem evoking an eighteenth-century European collector's passion might describe the famille verte dish "arriving from Canton in a crate of straw, its greens still shouting in the grey light of a Dutch warehouse"; The transparency of famille verte enamels — unlike the opaque pink of famille rose — gives the palette a luminous quality that poets of light and colour might exploit; In a poem about a great house's china room, famille verte dishes are shelved above eye level: "the greens best seen at a distance — like forests, like the colour of money"; The variety of famille verte subjects — scholars in gardens, officials in procession, warriors and phoenixes — offers poets a miniature theatre of Chinese literary and official culture; A contemporary poem about an auction sale might describe a famille verte rouleau vase reaching a record price: "for a column of painted green, the room held its breath."