Attributed to Jiang Tingxi 1669-1732

ink and colour on paper, hanging scroll
Signed chen Jiang Tingxi, inscribed, dated Yongzheng san nian (corresponding to 1725), the fifth day of the beginning of the tenth lunar month, and with two seals of the artist Chen Yin Tingxi and Gong hui
One Imperial seal reading Qianlong Yulan zhi bao
 

The inscription reads as follows:

Eulogy to the Auspicious Roots in the Imperial Gardens

On the fifth day of the tenth month, third year of Yongzheng (corresponding to 9 November 1725), it was announced that in a vegetable bed in the Imperial Yuanmingyuan Gardens there was a radish growing with nine tubers from one root.  They had a fresh, rosy colour with a lustrous sheen, thus appearing as an auspicious event in reverent accord with the will of Heaven.  Therefore, it is recorded: "It is because Our Sovereign's virtue covers all within the Four Seas that such vegetation interconnectedly combines ordinarily separate features—as here when separate tubers grow out of a single root.  Because His Majesty's virtue is vast and His mercy universal, since assuming the throne His splendid goodness has elicited auspicious signs from Heaven, which have appeared so often that they amount to a great number.  Here we see this phenomenon again in a radish in the Imperial Garden that has nine tubers growing from a single root.  This is reliable evidence in support of the truth that an intimate reciprocal relationship exists between the way of Heaven and the way of mankind."

Your minister Tingxi has respectfully painted this picture and composed a eulogy for presentation to Your Majesty.  The Eulogy states:
Because Your Holy Emperor's virtue and mercy
covers all nine divisions of the Empire,
Propitious portents in Heaven and auspicious signs on Earth
accumulate profusely.
As millet blooms with nine heads of grain
and rice sprouts in nine stalks,
So this purple flowering radish
again manifests a nine-fold blessing.
Nine signifies the virtue of Heaven in Qian
for nine is the ultimate yang number,
Thus as nine after nine follows one another
our precious national fortune lasts long.
Since it should be shown side by side
with a nine-headed glossy ganoderma,
I dip my brush in ink and reverently submit
this emblem signifying nine good wishes.

[Submitted by] Your Majesty's Minister Jiang Tingxi, Classics Colloquium Lecturer, Vice Minister of the Left in the Ministry of Revenue, and Academician of the Grand Secretariat Probationary.