Transformation -- Shirley's 454 Friendly Greeting from Beijing, June 28, 2014

Hi,Dear Friends

Hello, How are you? Have you had a good week? Are you enjoying your weekend? I do hope you have and you are.

I started this letter at the airplane from Beijing to Shenzhen June 26.

I should fly June 25 and I had checked in at 8:45a.m. But, the airport was closed for the weather at about 11:00a.m. I had to go back home, returned the ticket, bought a new ticket and flew second day.

It is the 14th day since I wrote to you last time, what has happened on your side?

On my side, except working on my painting assignments, I did something below:

-- Visited Professor Jiang Yaping - the First Chief Editor of the Web Site of People’s Daily, Mr. Wen Zijian – President of Securities Times Newspaper Office; and Mr. Liu Jianlin – President of Shanghai Branch of People’s Daily on June 26.

-- Visited Ms. Yang Guang (she is on the first photo) – Associate Dean of College of International Education, which has the experience to teach Chinese as a foreign language for 22 years at Beijing Institute of Economic Management on June 24. They would like to invite me to be their Specially Invited Instructor, to give my cross-culture and comprehensive art lesson to their foreign students who are major in Advanced Chinese from 40 or 50 countries since Sept, 2014, if my schedule is ok then. Some of their instructors would take part in ny series books' writing and editing work.

-- Attended the last lesson of this semester by Professor Han Xuezhong (he is on the second photo) - Head of the Teaching Department of Chinese Painting School and Mentor of Master student at Chinese National Academy of Arts June 23;

-- Gave my last Chinese poetry, music and painting lesson to my adult students as a volunteer teacher in Shuanqiu Road Resident Community of Beijing. I gave each of them 9 kinds of samples of Chinese Paintings in Song Dynasty, a brusher and an albumn of my paintings as a memory on June 20;

-- Visited Professor Mujiashan (he is on the 3rd and 4th photos) – Researcher and Mentor of master student of Chinese National Academy of Arts and Vice President of Jiangxi Art Publishing House on June 18;

At the same time, I have been thinking serious about my project and my future road. Base on the thinking, a transformation has happened in my mind. In the other words, I have made a choice among the 5 opinions that I had thought in the USA in Feb, 2013. That is:

-- To make my cross-culture and comprehensive art project to be an academy project, or mainly focus on academy + a little business, instead of a pure business project.

With this choice, I will continue my art study, research and creating. Base on the study in Beijing for 4 year,I am going to study art in a Western University.

The good news: Shenzhen's clean air, beautiful environment, best virescence and the excellent service let me feel comfortable and be respected everywhere in my fourth hometown.

The bad news:

-- A stream of water spurted out of a cupboard in my kitchen when I turned on the switch of water, even a door was pushed down by the strong jet of the water on the first day I came back home.

-- 71 costful art books (some of them on the last photo), most of them have hard covers and be in the boxes that I bought in Beijing 2010 - 2013 were ruined in the water that I do not know where it came from. They have been mildewed or attached together, some of them could not be taken out of the boxes, some of them changd to be a thick brick, made a loss about 20,000 RMB ( 3,252 USD). I felt my heart was so ache for the unexpected loss, because I cannot buy them back since they will not be printed in the future and I intentionally collected and bought for my project and my future students, and also for my plan to donate them somewhere some day. They are important much more than any material wealth else.

-- My wash machine and many lights did not work.

-- Whole of my home was full of the musty smell.

The lucky thing is: I have been bringing my favourite art books with me, even though they are quite heavy and the delivering cost between Beijing and Shenzhen in the past 4 years has been higher than their price, they are safe, 7 boxes of the books have come back Shenzhen with me from Beijing right now.

After working hard for 2 days, my new Samsung wash machine with the function to wash and drying has worked for me; all of the wet books that their height is about 2 meters 78.74 inches have been on my window windowsills in the sunshine and fresh air; the water problem has been dealt with ok; most of the rooms have been cleaned and the moldy smell has basically gone...

Now I am writing to you by the window that faces the bushy woodland in my comfortable bookroom. I will be able to start my book writing and editing since next Monday.

Then I will fly back Beijing to attend the graduate ceremony July 15, 2014.

The funny thing was: I thought my old wash machine did not work, then I bought a new one with 5,700 RMB ( about 926 USD) on the same day I cam back Shenzhen on June 26, since I thought it had worked for 13 years already. Then today, June 28, when an engineer came to fix the new wash machine for me, I just knew why the old wash machine did not work. I did not turn on the water switch at all. Then the old one was bought by a rag picker with 30 RMB ( less than 5 USD). :- )

You can clink the link to see the big size photos and notes about them

How about you, do you have anything special, funny to share in the past 14 days?

Sincerely,


Shirley Yiping Zhang
June 28, 2014 (Beijing Time)