How are you?

This is the last week of my study in the second semester of the class year 2011 to 2012 in Chinese National Academy of Arts. Except continuing to learn, study and complete two paintings of Chinese wisteria (97cm x 180cm and 61cm x 250cm), ordered the paintings I painted in 2012 and sent a part of them to be decorated, I flew back to Wuxi to see my father and my family members Saturday morning, and flew back Beijing Sunday afternoon. During the short travel, also I basically completed a work plan.

Even though I know everything is expensive at the airports, could not resist the temptation of the books, I bought two big books of Chinese poems in English that were translated by Professor Xu Yuanchong who is one of the greatest Chinese translators in Beijing University at the Beijing Airport and a book on philosophy in Wuxi Airport.

I was so excited for I have found the new reference books for my own Chinese classical poems’ translation job, so that I could not help to read it for whole of the time from Beijing to Wuxi, then to compare the transitions of Professor Xu with my own learning jobs in 2005 and I created music for the poem Da Feng Ge ? The Gale Song by Liu Bang (256 B.C. 195 B.C.) in Han Dynasty ( 206 B.C. ? 221 ).

Then I was attracted deeply by the stories and the ideas in the book Retreat in Order to Advance, so that I read it from I boarded the airplane in Wuxi until I deplaned in Beijing and got off the taxi by the school.

Do you know what has touched me most in the books?

The process of an eagle’s metamorphosis:

According to the folklore, eagle is the bird that can live longest in the world, for about 70 years. But in whole of his life, he has to experience three most difficult phases.

When he is young, for helping him to fly, the mother of the eagle thinks out many methods to drive the younger to the edge of the cliff, even she breaks his wings, when the young eagle has no road to go, he has to flap its wings to fly, and just in the process his wings are broken, then recovered, then broken, then recovered, he gets a couple of the strongest wings and he can soar in the sky. Few young eagles that are saved and raised in the yard by people, can only fly the height 2 meters.

Until an eagle is 40 years old, he has to face a pained metamorphosis, because its beak has changed too long and hook, his talons has been encrusted with calcium, his feathers have become too bushy (Another version sais his feather has lost), so that he cannot fly fast, cannot catch the prey accurately and quickly. He has lost the ability to hunt efficiently.

At this time, an eagle will face 2 options, to wait for death or to make a metamorphosis.

Usually, the eagle will choose to descend from the sky, to find a place in the rocks on a cliff that the other birds and animals cannot reach. There, he firstly beat his beak against a rock, until the beak and his skin and flesh are dropped down. Then he will wait for quietly, until a new beat grows up; then he uses the new beak to draw out the nails from his talons (another version said he scratches his talons against the rocks, until they are reduced to nubs) one by one. After the new nails grow out, he will pluck out all of his old feathers with his new beak and new nails.

During the process, the eagle is absolutely vulnerable and defenseless.

Many eagles die in the process because they cannot feed themselves or escape predators.

However, in case he survives, he will re-has his sharp beak, talons and strong wings, he will also re-grow back the beautiful feathers after living in the pain for about 150 days.

Then he will step out on the rocks and soar in the sky with his renewed youth, vigor and stronger strength.

Then he can live another 30 years.


When he will be dead at about 70 years old, he will never die at his home, but he will fly to the sun, to burn out of his feather, then to drop into the Ocean. Then he will fly out from the ocean to start a new life.

After I read this story in the airport when I was waiting for a taxi, I felt shock in my heart. Suddenly I understood why people often compare those great people to eagles? Maybe just because they have experienced the self-discipline and started a brave youth; when they face the most difficult time in their middle age, they chose to experience a new and pain metamorphosis, put down the past honor or disgrace, to re-start their new life with a stronger, more intelligent and capable style; at their old age, they still pursue the sun and brightness, to complete whole of their lives with a beautiful full stop.

I have also entered my middle age, I will meet the point to retire from the company and the familiar work circumstance, to leave from those organizations that I have serviced while they have looked after me for more than 30 years, to enter into a new, strange phase with the sicknesses and a lower income in the near future.

Even though I have been preparing for this day for 10 years already, when I truly face it, I still feel some scare and do not know which way to go.

Anyway, today, when I read the story at the Beijing Capital International Airport, it seemed like I have made sure of the road that I had chosen for myself years ago.

So, as soon as I went back to the little business hotel nearby the school, I continued my work plan and completed it quickly.

I will take off my airplane ticket, but discuss it with my friends and classmates, with a grateful heart, to go on the new, hard, but quite meaningful and helpful life and work road.

I would like to learn from the eagle, to go over the metamorphosis process with a positive life attitude, to re-learn, re-think and continue to explore the arts of life with an artistic life, for another 30 years.

Compare with the hard time I was a corps soldier in the frontier between Russia and China at 15 years old, compare with the difficult phase I just went to Shenzhen ? ate one piece of bread and a cup of water as my lunches for about 3 months, carried the suitcase to find a place to live after a long business day here or there in the nights, and then hid the luggage behind the computer desk before the others entered the office in the early morning… right now, I have had a so nice life and work condition, live in the so wonderful social circumstance, have the right to choose and arrange my own future…


With so much help from my friends, tutors, doctors, bosses, colleagues, classmates and my family members, I am sure, my metamorphosis process from a manager in the multi- media securities information industry become a comprehensive artist in the cross-culture and integrated art field, will not be harder than the eagle; my rebirth process will not be longer than an eagle, too.

I will certainly complete the process of metamorphosis victoriously with a big smile. I will win finally. Do you think so?

How about you? Do you have anything special to share in your life?

I am just a student on Art of Painting, Music, English and Management, to work on the web site in my free time. I would really like to do a few things with what I have learned to make this little web site to be an Electronic Bridge of Inter-Art & Cross - Culture Exchange, Chinese Language Learning & Friendship Making. To help the others while to improve myself.

I would like to appreciate you for your understanding, directions, supports and help.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you are welcome to write to shirley@ebridge.cn or leave your message on Message Board.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
July 15, 2012(Beijing Time)