How are you? Have you had a good week? I do hope you have and enjoy your weekend.

I am working hard on my English study, painting and book writing, therefore, this is just a short letter to say hello to you and to share something I have done in the past 8 days.

The first lesson of the second semester of us in Chinese National Academy of Arts will be painting from nature in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province since March 15, 2015. I do wish to attend it because my parents live there but my travel schedule in the USA in the fall has been made sure and I must hand in my manuscript of the second volume of Poetry, Painting, Music: Comprehensive and Artistic Chinese to the publishing house ahead for 6 months if I want to carry it with me according to the appointment between the publishing house and me, I will not go back school before completing my book and the main content of the DVD.

Anyway, the good news is: I have reached 100% of the attendance rate from 0 on December 30, 2014 and have completed 120% of all Examinations Papers in the system of the English School. Therefore, I should be able to distribute some of my time in something else.

The best things is: I am in the mood to write book right now and I have composed a piece of new music to match a Chinese poem tonight, even though I have had storage several times more than the need. Meanwhile, except I am looking for some native English speakers as my volunteer English tutors to correct what I have written and introduce him or her in my book as a return, I will hire a native English speaker to coach me to read and to sing in a right English pronunciation face to face in Shenzhen, before I go into the music studio.

Besides, other than raining, I have been keeping jog since Feb 10. Until today, used for 280 minutes, I have jogged 7,000 meters already. Compare with my previous speech, it is too slow and too hard, but, you can not imagine how I am happy from regaining the ability to work on my favorite sport and how much confidence it has given me.

Many times, when people walked up to me and my legs were too paint to move fast while one of them seemed like shorter than the other and stood on the cotton... I encouraged myself: Shirley, did not feel frustration but thought of the little tortoise in the story of Tortoise and Hare ( both of a Tortoise and a Hare run a race. The hare run very fast, but she got sleepy on the halfway; while the tortoise run quite slow, but he kept doing and never stopped, then he won finally).

I am now running a race against time. I am working slowly, but I will never give up my dream of serving this world with the cherish cultural heritage of Chinese created but belongs to all humanity; while creating something beautiful to develop it base on the traditional culture's studying and researching.

I am not sure whether I can see my dream to be true; I am sure people will eventually understand me and what I am doing on and give me a hand finally. Do you think so?

Not only to make a beautiful dream but also to perform it with consistent effort day and night as the little tortoise did is just the motivation supports me to hard work right now.

How about you? Do you have anything special to share in the past week? Would you like to give me a hand on the meaningful cause ?
Sincerely,


Shirley Yiping Zhang
Feb 28, 2015 (Beijing Time)