Moral stories and social lessons are found throughout the decorative arts, with multi-frame narratives picturing tales from widely read vernacular literature. Often the themes echoed the emotional and social circumstances of contemporary literati viewers. An example would be the portrayal of the hazards of a woman’s romantic love, poignant in a society where sexual relationships were either an outcome of familial arrangements, existing 'freely' only in transgression - or in the slightly more acceptable forms of regulated concubinage, prostitution and entertainment.
The images on this cautionary relief depict the story of Ying Ying and the matchmaker from The Romance of the Western Chamber. The stages of an affair unfold: (1) attraction, (2) an illicit meeting where the woman welcomes her lover over a garden wall (3) an exchange of tokens of love, and (4) concluding in examination of the matchmaker. For the viewer, the risks that a woman’s free behavior might incur were daily called to mind by an otherwise richly decorated piece of her bedroom furniture. | | 
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