Gong Kai paints with a sense of humor. His rendering of a fine horse with its clearly visible ribcage is not unfounded, for it is written in classics that a horse is considered a fine specimen only if it has at least ten ribs clearly visible. By that standard, the horse in his painting displaying fifteen ribs has to be one of the best horses. Just to avoid any misunderstanding, he quotes on the margin of the painting a passage from the classics. Anyone seeing the lugubrious eyes of the horse however will have a hard time believing that is now a fine horse should look. It is worth noting that the artist used the contrast of dark and light or chiaroscuro technique, which was rare in paintings of and before his time.