How are you?

Today - September 10 is Chinese Teacher’s Day, also it is the deadline that I would like to hand in my manuscript to the publishing house (it does not ask me to do that, but I do want to finish the job on the day since I must be in Beijing September 15, because the school will open September 16), so, this is just a short letter to you to say Hello, while to express my sincere appreciations to all my teachers, tutors and professors, and to say Happy Teacher’s Day to you / them.

August 24 to September 8, I experienced the hardest time to complete the record of singings for the Volume 1 of E-bridge Cross-culture and Comprehensive Art Series of Books ?II -1, while completed the book edition (checked and corrected articles, wrote foreword, made records, adjusted the format, connected work partners... ) , fought with sicknesses, worked on the process to retreat from the company...

Right now, these jobs have been completed or basically completed, what I would like to member forever is the teachers, tutors and educators who helped me at the most difficult time.

September 4, the first round of the singing record work was finished and September 5 my music professor who directed me to work on it left for Guilin to send his son to enroll at his college.

After I listened to these records, I would like to adjust and re-record some of them, I called my first music teacher Ms. Ma Xun who was in Beijing and just prepared to move to Xian to get marry. I invited her fly to Shenzhen to help me at 10:30pm September 5, without any hesitation, put down all jobs in her hands, she reached in Shenzhen September 6, we worked in the professional record room in the music company for another 6 hours September 7 and September 8, re-recorded the singings of poems that I wished to re-record.

Do you know? Before Ms. Ma Xuan came to Shenzhen, several nights, I could not eat anything after I came back from the record room for the huge frustration and I almost lost the confidence with myself. Therefore, over the phone call, I asked her to sing those poems that I wanted to re-record. However, instead of simply singing them by herself, she listened to all of the music jobs carefully and she was confidence with me to complete the work by myself. Following her advice, by the good help from the music company and the sound engineer, I went back to the record room.

Can you imagine? When I heard the sincere encouragements and the patient directions from the earphone from Ms. Ma outside of the record room (both of she and the sound engineer sat in another room out of the window and they talked with me via earphones), I felt relaxation and easiness, I was totally involved in how to express the feeling and artistic conception of the poems with my own music. My emotion was changed positive and my sound was changed bright and natural. The work quality was improved at once…

With so much appreciation, I would like to pay her with cash. But, except accepting the airplane tickets, she did not take one coin and she wished me to use my limited capital on the comprehensive art project.

At about 11:00pm, Sunday, September 8, looking at her back disappeared in the bus, my eyes were wet and my heart was full of the appreciations to Ms. Ma and my teachers, tutors and professors.

Yes, at the same time, in Britain, Mr. Mike Joyce worked on checking and correcting all my articles at the time after looking after his wife in the hospital... As Ms. Ma did, he does not ask for any payment.

Also, in Guangzhou, Mr. Jin Fengqiang who is the Assistant President of Jinan University Publishing House checked a part of my music work in person and he pointed out that the melody of the music was very beautiful, the recitations of poems were good, some of singings can be improved...

What Mr. Ma and the publishing house did have really helped me recover my sonfidence a little by a little...

Last December to this February, my music professor Meng Weiye checked and corrected my music score in his sick bed at the hospital and since August 4 to September 4, it was him coached me to sing, played the piano for me, directed me to complete the first round of the record when he was quite busy on his performances with sickness and looked after the preparedness before his son becomes a fresh student in a school in Guilin.

With a grateful heart, I would really like to say, if there was no the good help, selfless consecration and sincere help from so many educators and friends, I would not be able to complete the manuscript of the first book with paintings, music, poems and articles in English and in Chinese at all… I would really like to remember what my teachers, tutors and professors did for me, to return them with my work harder on the cross-culture and comprehensive art exploration, to help the others in the world while to improve myself inside.

Ok, I am going to work on the records of the vocabulary part of the book now. If there is no anything special, I will write to you with my new painting from Beijing next time.

How about you? Do you have anything special to share this week?


Shirley Yiping Zhang
September 10, 2012(Beijing Time)