Art Class is Ending

I haven’t written about art class in a few weeks.

We had a professional landscape painter come demonstrate for us and teach us about traditional Chinese painting. She studied stamp carving, then calligraphy and then painting. There was some confusion after asking for a volunteer and instead of me attempting running style calligraphy she made me some calligraphy. My professor helped me have it framed. It has a dedication to me in it. It’s a short expression about putting your heart in a jar, it’s about friendship. This woman is a professional and the master she studies under is famous. I have this piece of art now that was custom made for me, that I didn’t have to pay for. It’s amazing. I have a poor photo of it. I haven’t hung it on my wall, it’s wrapped up safe in my closet. I really do love art, and I’m really excited to have my first real piece of art. It really couldn’t have been something more special.



We had a professional Beijing Opera singer come and perform. Along with an Erhu player. She also taught us to sing a Beijing Opera song, and made us sing in front of the class. I think I really was the worst. I really can’t sing at all.

The week after that a professional Guqin player came. She seemed sweet. I love Guqin music, I knew that before coming here. Her performance was intense, it was beautiful. Traditionally Guqin was played by the upper class poets and noblemen. It fell out of favor in China for a while, because of this. But it is regaining popularity. But traditionally it was played for oneself and not performed, but this master has clearly taught herself to play with style, her performance was emotive and fascinating. The Guqin is the oldest stringed instrument from China and is fantastic. It’s versatile and can sound surprisingly modern. I bought her CD, she is a local Chengdu artist and I thought I would support her. She teaches music at Chuan Da. I love listening to the recording even if it’s not the same as a live show.

Last week a famous Chinese singer came, she doesn’t sing much anymore. But she brought her students. They sang songs from minority ethnicities in China. They actually only sang Miao (Hmong), Tibetan and Mongolian songs. The students were amazing. They sang with such clear, well trained voices. One girl did an amazing vibrato without moving her mouth, I’ve never seen someone do that in real life. It was a fun class. The worst part was when she asked us to sing American songs. This has happened in Yangjuan, and also in another of my art classes. Americans suck at this, we don’t have any song tradition in most places and families in America. It’s painful. We don’t know all the words to any songs we can remember off the top of our heads, not all together. We ended up singing Amazing Grace both classes.

The class ends this week. Some of the students are from Pacific Lutheran University, from Tacoma. They stay for an American semester, so they are going home before Christmas. So the class is ending. I painted some bamboo for my final work, we have to have a final exhibition of our work. On our last day we are also going to have someone come teach us how to do Chinese paper cutting.

I really loved that class. It was great to get private, personalized demonstrations of many art forms. We got to meet some very accomplished artists. The class was never an art history class. It was a hands on art class. I guess I already had more background in Chinese arts then most of the students on this trip, okay, all of them. So maybe I had a better chance to appreciate it. But I really did appreciate it. I think it really did expand my knowledge and appreciation for Chinese arts and I plan on exploring the arts in Chengdu more and more.