WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE CHINESE

Learning Chinese from Google and Youtube can be very rewarding.

I am a woman with many faces, perhaps because my birth sign is Gemini. Between sunrise and sunset, I dress as a nun or yogini, and at night I can be quite the opposite of what a nun is supposed to be. Yet I always hold on to my 168 Buddhist vows that I took years ago in the Tsuglakhang or Dailai Lama Temple, no matter what I do.

I am a writer and a painter, and as you know, I have been learning Chinese style brush paintings these past few months. I am not even sure whether I am good at it. Firstly, I don’t have the proper material. The local Chinese shops only sells 7-Thai Baht brushes that fall apart when you look at them. Forget about trying to find Chinese ink or proper rice paper. I have tried my best finding the right materials in Chinatown… but no, they only sell plastic rubbish “Made in China”. So painting bamboo with inappropriate materials is like trying to build a car with bicycle parts and make it run like a Ferrari.

I also don’t write Mandarin, yet I do my best to calligraphy some characters that I Google. My dear Chinese friends say they can’t read them, but I guess they are all from Canton and missed a few lessons at school. Even I can recognize the words for Love in Mandarin!

Anyway, insecure as I am I always need my sounding boards to check the words I write for my novels, and today I thought that I needed an opinion of an expert Chinese brush painter. I contacted a nice Chinese lady who has videos on Youtube and teaches people Chinese brush paintings. I wanted to know what she thought of my bamboo. There are really nice people in this world, because the lady sent me this lovely letter.

Dear Pantau,

I immediately fell in love with you as soon as I opened up your website. Please do not misunderstand me. Your beauty, your grace and your faith radiated through space. I was deeply touched by your extraordinary life. I salute you for devoting yourself to the cause you believe in.

I went to your blog and saw some bamboo paintings there. They are beautiful. They are you. Each of our painting is a reflection of our heart. The elegance, the strength, and the softness, tenderness is the description of yourself.

I love them. Please go ahead and do more. Totally free yourself, let your hand be the messenger of your heart.

Send me picture of your later works, I will do a video to point out some techniques if you do not mind.

Love and repect to my dear lady,

Haiying Yang
http://www.yanghaiying.com
http://www.youtube.com/yanghaiying
http://chinesepaintingclass.blogspot.com
http://silkpaintingclass.blogspot.com

Isn’t that nice? I am always so surprised to receive lovely letters from Chinese people, because I always fear that they may think I must be anti China, because I am pro Tibet. Those who know me know that I love China (despite the fact that I am blacklisted and unable to travel to China). I love its people, its culture and arts and many of my Thai friends are actually of Chinese descent. Even the man I love happens to be 100% Chinese.
So here is a painting I just made for Ms Haiying Yang. I hope it will find her approval.

My most recent attempt at painting bamboo.