Presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (2021), this article examines the ecological culture embedded in Chinese mountain and water painting. The author explains how, during the Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties, social turmoil, the revival of Laozi and Zhuangzi and the spread of Buddhism encouraged reclusion (yinyi) in the mountains, from which shanshui painting emerged as an independent genre with its own theoretical literature. Central to this literature is tianren heyi, the unity of heaven and humanity, in which the painter’s empathy merges inner spirit with the flow of qi in nature, overcoming the Western separation of subject and object. The article analyses two foundational texts. Zong Bing’s Hua shanshui xu presents landscape as an embodiment of the Dao, approached through a tranquil, empty mind, and introduces woyou, “travelling while lying down” before a painting. Guo Xi’s Linquan gaozhi extends this experience to those bound to social duties, through the “four ways” of walking, viewing, roaming and dwelling, and personifies mountains and streams. The author concludes that these texts offer valuable resources for contemporary ecological civilisation and a holistic relationship with nature.