The present bottle depicts the Beijing Opera star Tan Xinpei, who lived from 1847-1917. Ma Shaoxuan was an admirer of the opera and often painted bottles of Tan performing a role. For a discussion of the subject, see Ma Zhengshan, Ma Shaoxuan (1867-1939): Inside-Painted Snuff Bottle Artist, Hong Kong, 1997, p. 40.

The inscription on the present bottle can be translated as:
'[Drinking freshly] purchased wine from a jade jar,
[And] enjoying rain in a thatched cottage,
[Is this] seated gentleman.
[His cottage is] flanked by tall bamboo.
[When the sky] begins to clear up and white clouds [appear];
when the lonely birds chase each other,
Laying down the qin in the shade of the lush trees;
From high above a waterfall gushing down...'