There were some empty white walls in the palace, and upon one
of them the emperor Minghuang ordered Wu Daozi to paint
a landscape. Daozi mixed some ink and spread the entire bowl
of ink on the wall. She covered the wall with a piece of cloth,
and uncovered it again, as if making a print. Mountain, water,
forest, animals, everything was included in the dark painting.

Daozi slowly gestured at the painting and said, there are small
rock caves in the mountain…they are very beautiful hermitages.
Daozi walked into? onto? the mountain. She turned around
and motioned for the emperor to follow. Then disappeared.
The emperor remained standing in the palace, and there was
no ink left on the bright walls.

abridged excerpt from Liexian quanzhuan (Wang Yunpeng, 1600 CE)

There have been ciphers, calligraphy, and images of rivers and mountains;
these reversed, hand-lettered, at-scale paintings are none of those things.

The signifier (the painting) refers to the place on the other side of the sign. 

These particular rivers and mountains are in the Sierras in Northern California.