This article argues that the creation of Chinese landscape painting depends on three interdependent elements: passion, universals and technique. Passion, the painter’s sincere love for particular mountains, rivers and villages, is presented as the source of creative impulse; the author illustrates it with Huang Binhong, who repeatedly travelled to Huangshan, Jiuhua, Mount Tai and the Three Gorges, and with his student Li Keran, whose attachment to Huangshan and the Lijiang River shaped his work. Universals are defined as the fundamental laws governing nature, objects and painting, such as the growth of trees, seasonal change, the interplay of yin and yang, and compositional principles of density and emptiness; Guo Xi’s description of the four seasons in the Linquan Gaozhi is cited as an example. Technique is traced through the development of texture strokes (cun) from the Five Dynasties to the Yuan, the distinctive ink styles of Song masters, and twentieth-century innovations by Huang Binhong, Pan Tianshou, Shi Lu, Fu Baoshi, Zhang Daqian, Li Keran and Lu Yanshao, including Huang’s “five strokes and seven inks”. The author concludes that passion guides creation while universals and technique provide its framework.