How are you? Have you had a good weekend and Valentine’s Day?

I really hope you have and I do hope all of the lovers in the world will be happy and lucky.

Today is the 6th day of Chinese New Year, most of people have finished their vacation and come back to their work, but the securities market will re-start on the 9th day –Feb 18, 2013 and most of the Chinese schools will re-start on March 1 or someday else in March.

Except inviting my first Chinese painting teacher -- Prof. Tao Hui, his wife and son and my work partner -- Mr. Charlie Zhang, his wife and son to have 2 meals in the restaurants, having some walks out of the door in the nights, learning to cook some new food, I closed the sounds of my cell phone and concentrated myself on my art study, thinking and exploration.

I have corrected the design of the 3rd version of my designers have done for my publication; also I have completed 5 new paintings, written 5 stories behind my new long scroll painting of 《二十四孝》: Er Shi Si Xiao Tu -- the Twenty-Four Dutiful Children and to introduce something about Chinese Rose.

NowI have attached them with this letter to you and hope to bring you a big smile.

I did enjoying the peaceful environment of the city after most of people have left for their homes in the inland - I am not sure how many people have left from Shenzhen, but the city that has more than 10 million population ( there are 2 million people have the Shenzhen IDs, about 80% of people work here only ) has suddenly changed so quiet that my feeling in the streets in the nights was a little bit like the feeling I was in USA.

-- Except Seven Eleven, McDonald’s worked for 24 hours, Wal-Mart worked until 10:30pm, some gift stores still opened; most of Chinese stores have closed. It was the first time of a year, you could see the clerks more than the customers and you could only meet less than 10 people in the streets within about 30 minutes.

-- There were few cars on the streets. For about 30 minutes on my road to have a walk from the night of Chinese Day to the 4th night of the Chinese New Year, I saw 3 or 4 taxies and 1 or 2 cars even though there were full of the cars by the road, but usual, at least I could meet more than 100 cars and more than 100 people around of the garden of my home for the same time.

-- Everywhere you could see the red lanterns, the fresh flowers by the gates of the buildings, and the neon lights made the buildings, the streets and the city more beautiful, enjoyable and clear…

Besides painting, walking, listening to the TV ( when I was painting), the interesting thing was that I have learned to cook some new food. Even though my first salted lemon beef was terrible, but it has really brought me so much delight and so many smiles. So that I am thinking that maybe someday, I will open a new column for my web site – Shirley’s Chinese food… :- )

How do you think of my idea? Do you have anything special to share in the week?
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
Feb 9, 2013(Beijing Time)