ChinaDaily[971030-8]

[Chinese News]

China Daily

97 / 10 / 30 /

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1. Shaanxi artists evolving own style
2. Notes (Page 9, Date: 10/30/97)
3. Xu helps patients face AIDS
4. [INLINE]
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Shaanxi artists evolving own style
THE Exhibition of Traditional Chinese Paintings by Contemporary
Shaanxi Artists opened Tuesday at China National Art Museum in
Beijing and will run through November 4.
This Beijing exhibition is the largest ever staged by Shaanxi
artists outside the province, according to Miao Zhong'an, director
of the Shaanxi Provincial Traditional Chinese Painting Institute
and member of the exhibition's organizing committee.
On show are more than 500 traditional Chinese paintings, occupying
six showrooms of the museum. Done by 66 of the most representative
Shaanxi-based artists, the works demonstrate the high level of
artistic achievement reached by these local artists.
The first part of the exhibition features masterworks by 10 senior
artists of the "Chang'an Painting School," which was founded by
Zhao Wangyun (1906-77) in the 1950s and was then spearheaded by
Shi Lu (1919-82) in the 1960s and 1970s.
Some of the finest works by Zhao Wangyun, Shi Lu and Fang Jizhong
are being shown publicly for the first time by the Shaanxi
Provincial Traditional Chinese Painting Institute, with the help
of some individual collectors.
In the early decades of the 20th century, a large number of
traditional Chinese painters tried to blend Western art concepts
and techniques into traditional Chinese works.
It was a prevalent belief then that "sketching is the basis of all
the plastic arts."
But the "Chang'an Painting School" went against the pervasive
trend. They emphasized the free expression of the painters'
emotions and insisted that calligraphy should be the real basis of
traditional painting.
Their motto was: "Drawing inspiration from real life and keeping
up with the changing times while borrowing the best from older
generations."
In 1961, Zhao, then chairman of the Shaanxi branch of the Chinese
Artists' Association, along with five other Xi'an-based artists,
made an exhibition tour in Beijing, Shanghai and other major
cities.
The six artists deeply impressed the viewers with their powerful
paintings of northwestern landscapes, the simple, pastoral life of
the local people and also of the great changes that had taken
place after the birth of New China in 1949.
They caused a big stir among China's art circles.
Thereafter, they were dubbed the "Chang'an Painting School," after
the former name of Xi'an, the provincial capital and previously
the capital of several feudal dynasties.
Other painters of the school include Fang Jizhong, He Haixia, Luo
Ming, Zheng Naiguang, Kang Shiyao and Li Zhisheng.
The "Chang'an Painting School" encountered a grave setback during
the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) when the artists suffered
political persecution and personal hardships.
The second part of the exhibition presents works done by 15 young
or middle-aged Shaanxi artists, including Liu Wenxi, Cui Zhenkuan,
Ma Yun, Guo Quanzhong, Cao Hai and Zhao Yichao, who have earned
acclaim in art circles for their fruitful explorations and
distinctive styles.
Some of them were hailed as successors of the "Chang'an Painting
School," among them, Zhao Zhenchuan, Miao Zhongan, Jiang Wenzhan
and Wang Youzheng.
"Ye Qianyu (a prestigious senior artist) once criticized the
'Chang'an Painting School' for being strong in collective
attributes but a little vague in personal style. In that he was
right," said Wang Ningyu, an art critic.
"But now it would be unfair for anyone to hold this opinion," Wang
said.
Over the past 20 years, artists of Shaanxi have been striving to
explore new territories for traditional Chinese painting in a
diversity of directions.
They have divergent views on the question of inheriting tradition.
For instance, Cui Zhenkuan, Zhao Zhenchuan and Wang Jinling adopt
an affirmative attitude towards traditional scholarly painting,
which is usually cultured, graceful and highly controlled.
They have tried to exploit the art form to the utmost -- according
to their aesthetic values.
In contrast, Zhang Lizhu and Luo Ping'an are strongly against it.
In their pictures, one can see large areas of ink and colour
patches held together with resilient straight lines and curves.
The figures are usually portrayed in a very rough manner.
Also, their perception and expression of the same subject matter
may differ remarkably.
For example, Wang Youzheng likes to reflect the coziness and
loving atmosphere in the rustic life.
But Xing Qingren chooses to express a sense of detachment in his
paintings of rural landscapes.
He depicts people as distorted and unidentifiable and his use of
colour is always sharp contrastive. Sometimes blacks dominate his
works.
The third part of the exhibition features selected works of prize
winners of recent nationwide painting competitions. The artists
include Xing Qingren, Liu Yongjie, Shi Jingzhao, Liu Baoshen, Chen
Guangjian and Peng Li.
Also on display are a two-volume collection of academic theses on
the studies of the "Chang'an Painting School" and its rejuvenation
in the 1990s and an album of 129 selected paintings by 70
celebrated Shaanxi artists.
During the exhibition, a seminar involving senior artists and art
critics from Beijing will also be held to brainstorm the further
development of artistic creation in the province.
In the fields of literature and film, a so-called "western art"
has already taken shape in the vast areas of northwestern China,
particularly in Shaanxi Province; while in the field of fine arts,
it is still too early to discern any over-all direction of
development for the area, said Lang Shaojun, a leading art critic.
But considering that the northwest is a land rich in material and
cultural resources for artistic creation and that there is an army
of honest traditional Chinese painters who are labouring in their
own plots and have produced some positive results, he believes
that China will surely breed a mature "northwestern" painting
style of its own in the new century.
After Beijing, the exhibition will move to Jiangsu Provincial Art
Museum in Nanjing where it will be on display November 11-18.
_____________________________________________________________

_Date: 10/30/97_
_Author: Zhu Linyong_
_Copyright© by China Daily_

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Notes (Page 9, Date: 10/30/97)
New museum
CHENGDU -- An exhibition of Sanxingdui cultural relics opened on
Sunday in Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, a city in Southwest
China's Sichuan Province.
The newly built museum, occupying an area of 80,000 square metres,
took five years to complete and cost 24 million yuan ($2.9
million), according to a local official.
On display in the museum are about 1,000 Sanxingdui cultural
relics, including bronzes, jadeware, earthenware and some replicas
of relics.
Sanxingdui ruins, located in the city of Guanghan, about 40
kilometres north of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, are one
of China's most important archaeological discoveries of this
century.
Archaeologists from China and abroad have explored the site and
discovered the ruins of a wall and many fragile artifacts. In
particular, two huge sacrificial pits, discovered in 1986, were
said to be "the most startling discovery in the world."
The exhibition is one of the activities of the Fifth China Arts
Festival.
State Councillor Li Tieying visited the relics exhibition and cut
the ribbon at the opening ceremony.
Riverside scenes
SHIJIAZHUANG -- A new copy of "Riverside Scenes at the Qingming
Festival," an ancient Chinese painting from the Song Dynasty
(960-1275), has been finished in North China's Hebei Province
after four years of painstaking work.
The original work by Zhang Zeduan, a famous ancient Chinese
painter, depicts the hustle and bustle of the eastern suburbs of
the Song capital of Bianliang (present-day Kaifeng in Henan
Province). It is now kept in Beijing's Palace Museum.
The new copy, using ancient duplicating skills and modern printing
technology, was completed by Wang Kairu, an expert in Tangshan,
Hebei Province.
The copy imitates the painting patterns, colours and shades, and
the hundreds of cuts and stains in the original. Yang Xin, head of
the Palace Museum, praised the quality of the copy.
Opera star extolled
BEIJING will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of
renowned master of Peking Opera Tan Xinpei in early December.
Tan, an outstanding figure in the history of Peking Opera,
contributed greatly to improving the art form and was regarded as
a "grand master" of the genre.
Many well-known Peking Opera actors and actresses, including Tan's
great-grandson Tan Yuanshou, will give performances and attend
academic symposiums analyzing the life and work of the famous
figure.
Commemorative activities will also be held in Tan's hometown of
Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province. (Xinhua)
_____________________________________________________________

_Date: 10/30/97_
_Author: _
_Copyright© by China Daily_

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Xu helps patients face AIDS
Xu Lianzhi put on her white gown and walked toward a ward located
in a secluded corner of a Beijing hospital.
It was a "secret garden" unknown to most people in the hospital --
it accommodated three AIDS patients.
Xu, one of the two physicians attending these patients, had
treated her first AIDS patient in the hospital nine years ago.
Usually she spent the whole morning in the wards, making routine
tests and chatting with the patients.
"It's far more than a matter of medical treatment," she said.
"They need someone who can listen to them or whom they can talk
to."
To the patients, she is not only a doctor, but a mother, a sister
and a friend as well.
Upon graduation from Harbin Medical University in 1958, Xu began
work in that Beijing hospital.
She had witnessed the deaths of many of her patients, but one case
impressed her so much that she could hardly hold back her tears
when she talked about it.
A young man named Wu, who once worked in a joint venture, had been
Xu's patient since 1992.
Xu kept encouraging him not to give in from the first day he
tested HIV positive.
No matter how terrible the virus was, Xu said, one thing was sure:
that is, the cure for AIDS would be found one day and then AIDS
would be treatable, like tuberculosis.
"I told him he would live longer than a 63-year-old like me,"
recalled Xu.
Wu called her Aunt Xu and shared his story with her. He concealed
the truth from his family, except for his wife. The company he
worked for refused to pay his medical bills because he had AIDS.
"I knew that was the biggest blow to him," Xu said. "I told myself
I must do something to help him."
The doctor sought out a famous lawyer and asked him to help Wu.
The lawyer agreed to accept the case at once. However, a law suit
against the company would expose Wu's disease, so Xu suggested the
matter be settled out of court.
The company did not take it seriously at first and refused to
reconsider his case.
Besides seeking help from the lawyer, Xu encouraged Wu not to give
up.
On the eve of the last Spring Festival, she and the nurses on duty
held a small party for the patients, who could not be united with
their families for the special day.
"We did have a good time, eating, chatting and taking pictures,"
recalled Xu.
She knew it was very likely to be the last Spring Festival for Wu.
She even sang a Japanese song she learned in her childhood as a
special gift for him.
He was moved to tears, holding Xu's hands and saying, "This is the
most special Spring Festival in my life."
And the last one too.
A week before his death, the company eventually agreed to
compensate for its unjust treatment of Wu.
"I still remembered the last moment I saw him," recalled Xu. "He
lay on the bed, with his eyes fixed on one of my photos he kept
for sometime, and said to me, 'Aunt Xu, I don't fear going to
another world as long as I look at it'."
A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, Xu recalled. "It
was the first time in 40 years of this work that I saw a person
leaving the world with a smile on his face."
Besides AIDS patients in the hospital, Xu also worked in the
outpatient department every Friday.
There, too, she tried to make her patients comfortable and
relaxed.
She seldom took any notes during examinations because that would
"make them nervous." Instead, she would write down each patient's
information from memory after their meetings.
As a member of the Beijing Venereal Diseases and AIDS Prevention
and Cure Association, Xu worked for a hotline service on AIDS
every Thursday afternoon for four years.
Gradually patients outside Beijing also got to know her and called
to seek her advice. Some even got Xu's home number and called her
in the middle of the night.
Most callers asked her about AIDS and some of them suspected that
they or their acquaintances had been infected with the virus.
The Chinese aren't immune to the fear and ignorance that have
hampered AIDS prevention in the West, Xu said.
Once a woman from Jilin Province called Xu, fearing she had
contracted HIV by having premarital sex with her boyfriend.
After listening to the woman's description of her symptoms, Xu was
sure she was not infected. But no matter how Xu tried to persuade
her, the woman just did not believe her. She once made three calls
within 15 minutes.
Xu's life was greatly influenced by these calls. Xu and her
husband, who was also a doctor at the same hospital, had to take
care of his elderly parents in addition to helping the patients
they knew.
One day when Xu was cooking, the telephone rang. It was a
long-distance call from an AIDS patient. As usual, Xu was soon
caught up in conversation with the patient.
Fifteen minutes later, her mother-in-law cried in the kitchen,
"Fire! Fire!" Xu had left the gas stove on and almost set her
kitchen on fire.
Now she turns the stove off when the phone rings while she is
cooking, because talks with these patients sometimes go on for an
hour.
"The more I work, the more I realize that AIDS is not only a
medical problem, but a social problem as well," said Xu.
The blow is so traumatic when people first hear that they are HIV
or AIDS infected that their world collapses and they lose the
courage to live, said Xu.
"They think the disease will disgrace them, their families and
even friends. They suffer from both physical pain as well as
psychological stress resulting from society's misunderstanding of
the disease," Xu explained.
Xu has met some AIDS patients who were rejected by their families
and friends.
"So what we must do now is to clear up public ignorance
surrounding AIDS," said Xu.
Anyway, AIDS is no longer as far removed from Chinese people as it
was five years ago, Xu added.
Twenty-one provinces across the country reported a total of 1,253
new HIV positive cases during the first six months of this year,
according to the Chinese Ministry of Health.
The new cases bring the total number of HIV/AIDS patients in China
to 7,234.
Xu has attended many promotion campaigns over the past few years.
"I am glad to see that more and more people are taking the trouble
to find out about AIDS," said Xu.
Last year, she took part in a public information sessions held in
Zhongshan Park in Beijing. But nobody came to her for information
about AIDS.
"I don't think it's because they are not curious. I think it's
because they are embarrassed to ask," said Xu.
This year, Xu found things became much better when she was in
other similar gatherings.
Now Xu is working on a book recording her clinical experience with
AIDS cases and, she hopes, the stories of patients and their
families.
"I hope people will get a clearer idea of how to look upon AIDS
patients or how to face the disease should they get it
themselves," explained Xu.
_____________________________________________________________

_Date: 10/30/97_
_Author: Ou Shuyi was 9 am._
_Copyright© by China Daily_

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Updated on September 24, 1997

[INLINE]

[INLINE]

_[1]The 15th Party Congress_

_[2]Sep. 12 - Sep.18, 1997_

[INLINE]

[3][LINK] _[4]General Secretary Jiang Zemin's
Report to the 15th Party Congress_
[5][LINK] _[6]New Party Leadership elected,
Top Leaders' Profiles_
[7][LINK] _[8]Communique of 15th CPC Central
Committee's First Plenum_

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References

1. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/engtg124.html
2. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/engtg124.html
3. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/report.html
4. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/report.html
5. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/engtgb46.html
6. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/engtgb46.html
7. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/engtgb09.html
8. http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/history/15/engtgb09.html
9. mailto:cd...@chinadaily.net

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