Beside the inborn fear of death, what I fear most are mediocrity and despair. When all my attempts to make a living by every means had failed, in a shabby flat in another town, I read once more the biography of Van Gogh --- «A Lust for Life». This yellowed book, worn and torn by my flipping it through time after time, seemed to hold a kind of beginning; like the classics of the ancient time, it brought home rules and morals which seemed plain and common. It made me understand: there is no such thing as grandiose in this world, even less a life always as desired --- keeping extravagant hopes is a waste of effort. To live, the first priority is to work, day after day, year after year; then days, however plain, will shine like Van Gogh's "Sunflowers".
From Nie Chong-Liang's Journal
The Story of a Home Returnee
In the year of 1958, Nie Chong-Liang was already edging toward middle age in a blink of time. The vicissitudes of life had carved deep marks on his forehead, around his brows, and on his sculpture-like square face.
In 1942, Nie Chong-Liang was born into a family of scholars and gentries. His great grandmother Zeng Ji-fen was the daughter of Mr. Zeng Guofan. Influenced by the family, he was exposed to art from an early age, and he fell in love with painting. He often read and looked over all kinds of Western paintings and he took a liking to Russian Itinerants and French Impressionism. In the early fifties, a British water color picture exhibit was once held in Shanghai; Nie Chong-Liang was still in primary school. When he learned the news, he was so excited that he rushed to visit the show. He lingered long in the exhibit hall, in front of painting after painting with mastery techniques and clear bright colors; and he did not wish to leave. There was one water color painting by Turner, the colors were transparent and iridescent, the dry-brush technique was employed with the utmost freedom. He looked up and observed it very carefully, and forgot about the passing of time. The short exhibit was over in just a few days, but it left a deep impression on his mind, forever lasting.
Eighteen; Catastrophe; Escape
1958 was in the age of "Great Leap Forward" movement. Nie Chong-Liang, then 16, left home with his belongings and went south to the mountainous area of Mingbei to support the light industry of Fujian Province. He became a metal worker there. The innocent boy, just coming into society, did not imagine that a catastrophe was about to show its evil and terrifying face to him --- a youth just beginning to understand life. In an accidental event, he was framed; the trouble rose overnight --- he was labeled as an anti-revolutionary and escorted into the deep mountains to cut trees for making charcoal, to perform heavy physical labor. He was only 18 that year.
In the days when freedom was lost, painting became the only joy in Nie Chong-Liang's lonely life. When he went to graze cattle deep in the mountains, he tied the cows by his side to let them eat grass, and then he sat in the grass, took out some low quality letter papers to put on his lap, and with the water color box used by primary school students, he would concentrate on painting the natural scenery of the wild mountains. He remembered the story of "Wang Mian painting lotus" in the text book for primary schools, and could not help feeling sad when he thought that such things actually happened to himself. Dusk was closing in and he suddenly remembered the herd --- they were lost! He was locked up by the local commune for quite a few days.
He endured all these in silence, but he could not take the accusation forced on him without any cause or reasons. For this, he started to scramble for help all over the places to appeal. But in that age, people were all scared and uneasy, nobody wished to listen to him. He could not bear the indifference and contempt, and in a fit of determination, he secretly got on the train on a dark night, and fled back to Shanghai. Only until many years later was that charge proved to be completely ungrounded, and the court designated Huadong Bureau to clear the name for Nie Chong-Liang.
In 1961, Shanghai was in the "Natural Disaster", everyone had only one feeling: hunger. Food was rationed; no residency, no food. But compared to Mingbei Mountains, this was hardly any difficulty. The most important thing was that he now could have sufficient time to immerge in what he loved so much --- painting. Early every morning, he would find something to appease his stomach, then he would rush to Changning Art School and to study drawing under Mr. Xu Renyuan. Afterwards he went to study water-color with Mr. Chen Xidan in the cultural center in Jingan district. But the time studying with teachers in the classroom was short after all. He spent more of his time reading again and again some fine albums on arts and paintings from foreign countries, to study them attentively, to copy paintings assiduously, to study by himself. The elderly people who used to frequent the Outer Beach Park in the early sixties might still remember the students with easels studying from nature by the quiet boulevard --- Nie Chong-Liang was one of them. In the difficult times he only ate one meal a day. Sometimes when he had no money to buy paper and paints, he went to places like pun shops to exchange clothing or other objects temporarily not needed for cash to keep painting. The tea house at Chang-Huang Temple, the pier at the sixteenth post, the moving faces of elderly people chatting at leisure, the lost looks of wanderers --- these, accompanied by the music of charcoal, were all recorded onto Nie Chong-Liang's sketch book.
Dungeon; Colors; Wheat Cutter
Life is like a top; though always spinning and unstable, it should at least have an anchor
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In 1963, Nie Chong-Liang was 21, and still lived a life without means and security. He finally made a choice in the journey of life: to join the youths to support the frontier, to go north to Xinjiang, to join the army for land reclamation construction. When the train slowly drove out of the old North Station, he would not even dream that he would be away for a long long 18 years. Even harder to imagine was that Xinjinag, this vast and mysterious land in the northwest, would be the fire stone to trigger and to refine his artistic passions, the Eden to command the joy and sadness of his life.
Talimu. Sky, azure and transparent; land, desolate and sparsely populated.
Grazing sheep, digging ditches, colleting firewood, farming, hunting --- day after day, a life of heavy labor encompassing nomadic grazing, farming and planting had started. Although he was tossed into a desolate desert, Nie Chong-Liang was secretly thankful that God opened another window for him while closing the old one. Looking far away to the end of sight, to the distant sky, he let his romantic thoughts travel with the long sweeping wind and roam free between the azure sky and the Gobi desert. Beauty, was actually residing in this desolate land and bare sky; in the end of the mud road by the tall poplars reaching toward heaven; in the scattered steps of the happy donkeys; in the dreamy changing light of an oil lamp in the mud house. Every thing one saw from near to far formed beautiful pictures.
He brought pencil and paper to work and drew or sketched from nature during the breaks. When he went home in the evenings, he would light the oil lamp and keep painting. Winter had arrived; severe coldness tinted everything brown. A ray of sunlight came in from the door crack and fell on the mud wall, light and shades played subtle changes amid the monotony. There was not a bit of color in the mud house, but his eyesight found an apple sitting on the window pane --- that was rationed to him from the farm for the Spring Festival, now it just happened to be good for sketching. On the rare holidays, he went away alone to deserted places to concentrate on sketching. It even happened a few times that the highly alert local folks suspected that he was spying for the enemy.
Nie Chong-Liang's talent was quickly appreciated, and the leaders transferred him to the art and culture troupe of the regiment headquarter; he was appointed as art designer whose responsibilities were to paint stage sets for performances and to design dance costumes. Although the job was not professional painting, for Nie Chong-Liang, it was quite enough just to be able to play with colors often, and to scribble and smear with paints. But, fate seemed to play tricks on him; bad luck once more descended upon this young man. In 1969, the waves and tides of the Cultural Revolution was like those excited by huge stone failing into water, the residual waves that reached the frontier were quite enough to stir up the people who had long been living a boring existence. Nie Chong-Liang was accused of spreading antirevolutionary words and thoughts. Categorized as an antirevolutionary for the second time, he was thrown into the dungeon together with over 30 other people. Because the law enforcement sectors happened to be paralyzed at the moment, he could not be convicted. As an uncharged political prisoner (informal prisoners being reformed through labor), he was sent to the reform camp to do labor.
Prison, for some, is the abyss of suffering; for others, sand induces pearl --- pain is only the journey to beauty.
Summer, he squatted in the golden wheat field to cut wheat. When a wind came, the dense and thickly grown wheat danced in waves and sang in chorus. He watched the wheat ears reflecting the glorious sun, the flame-like colors flickering and moving up and down in the wind, he could not help being moved to tears. The dazzling colors in front of his eyes looked so much like Van Gogh's paintings. Many years later, when he returned to Shanghai, when he was composing the picture "Wheat Cutters", what occupied his mind were still that beautiful patch of wheat, those wordless wheat cutters working in the scotching hot field, the cut bundles of wheat, and the extending naked ridges.
Making adobes bricks was a heavy and monotonous kind of labor for the ones imprisoned in the dungeon. He carefully observed the changing colors of the mud when it dried gradually while he was working. When he realized that even the most primitive labor in the world could inspire men's artistic reveries, he immediately forgot about hunger and fatigue. One day when work was over, at dusk, through the door crack he happened to catch sight of the wife of a prisoner who lived in the next room; she had her back to him, and was limping toward the shabby room with walls of mud and thorns. An innocent woman's receding back image impressed deeply onto his mind. He hastily took out paper and composed a sketch. This later became his oil painting "The Home Returnee". The blue sky, the setting sun, the silhouette at dusk, the subtle variations of colors, all speak the helplessness and disappointment of the one coming home.
Eight years of life in the dungeon finally ended; Nie Chong-Liang was transferred to work in the farm. On the first day when he regained his freedom, he went to pick apples in the orchard. It was the first time when there were no security guards following him. The air was suffused with the fragrance of ripe fruits. The afternoon sun shined brightly on all; and the orchard looked iridescent. "Art is beauty, definitely not prettiness", his thoughts wandered silently; he felt intoxicated. Too much time had been lost; he must quicken his pace of painting. In the following ten years in the farm, he painted without stop; and accumulated hundreds of pencil and pen drawings, and numerous water colors studies. Time had ripened art, and had also molded his strong and enduring personality.
Small Town and Van Gogh
After the "Gang of Four" was overthrown, Nie Chong-Liang left Xinjiang where he lived for 18 years and returned to Shanghai. Getting off the train, a distant and strange feeling came back to him. Noisy and cramped streets, crowds of people; he suddenly felt himself like a lonely outsider. The heavy manual labor that he performed for a long time seemed to put a huge distance between him and his birth place. Under the tough competition of a commercial society, people were all toiling for their own affairs. He felt completely dazed and did not know what to do.
Although he gained freedom of life, yet it was more difficult to live in Shanghai. He had no residence status, no job either, but must find food for survival, and could not even dare to hope to have money to buy basic painting supplies. His cousin saw the frustration and despair on the face of this no longer young cousin, and pitied him, and arranged for Nie Chong-Liang to live in a small southern town for a period, for him to shake off the depressing mood and to spend some carefree but aimless days.
Before getting on the train, Nie Chong-Liang saw in a Xinhua bookstore the biography of Van Gogh --- «A Lust for Life» written by an American author Stone, and he bought it for two yuan. Life in the small town was extremely boring. He lived in a wooden room on the top floor of a factory, and every day killed time by reading. He read «A Lust for Life», he read «An Old Man and the Sea» by Hemingway. Although long ages separate him and the main characters in the books, lonely souls are connected. It was Van Gogh who made him pick up again the courage for life. Today, Nie Chong-Liang remembers: It is perhaps a bit exaggerating to say that a book or two can have such overwhelming power, but even just the icy concrete walls and the monotonous gray and darkness outside the window could sadden the already weakened me and trap me into depression and despair. In his eyes, Van Gogh seemed the person sent by God to guide and to inspire him. Ten years later, when Nie Chong-Liang was attacked by a serious illness and lied in the hospital bed with spirit fallen to the ground, he again read the book that was wrinkled by his repeated reading, he felt that he was the most comforted among the patients.
Life in the small town was monotonous. During the day time he wandered around aimlessly. In the evening he sketched the impressions of the day, and he started everything from the very beginning. He became more critical on his creations, and easily tore up the paintings that he disliked to negate himself, till he finally found the effect that he wanted to express. He discovered to his great surprise that even though his paintings sometimes did not match the actual scene, with greater deviations in colors, they were true and believable; but some of his older paintings though looked true, were actually showy and superficial resemblances. Only the soul could communicate with nature; copying nature was a futile effort. In the same period, he was gradually captivated by the impressionism and expressionism of the late 19th century. He realized that style was not achieved by deliberately pursuing some kind of schools, but the two crucial elements for the formation of a style were the experience of life and the cultivation of techniques. Two years of small town life was to Nie Chong-Liang a reflection on art, and a transformation of life.
Woman Eden
1983 is the year that Nie Chong-Liang always remembers. He had never thought much about his own age, but that year he still realized that he was 41 already. Life passed by fast. Dense and hard mustaches surrounded his cheeks; wrinkles were carved on the forehead.
One day in the early winter, like usual, he painted in water color in the wilderness, while kept breathing warm breath onto his both hands; his colorful half-finished pictures in reds and greens were spread out before him. There was a woman, who seemed to have watched him for a long time; he had not noticed all along. Suddenly she spoke: "If you wish, it is better to leave and to follow me to Changzhou to paint there"! The voice rose in the wilderness very suddenly. Nie Chong-Liang was dumbfounded. In the past thirty years, he had met only one kind of gaze: contempt, indifference, and disdain. Never had anyone said a warm word to him, or looked at him with such a special look. He felt a kind of warmth, and tears could not help coming out of his eyes. He did not think long, and followed her to Changzhou on the second day. In her home, for the first time in his life, he could sit down at the table to paint in peace. She did not understand painting, but by instinct she fell in love with this strange middle-aged man. She provided food and shelter for him, watched him paint when she was free from work; sometimes she even invited the workers next door to pose for him. When it rained, she held the umbrella for him; when it snowed, she carried the palette for him. When she went to the factory to work, he sat on the dirt pile by the factory door to wait for her while sketching the scenes on the banks of the canal. Later on, she simply gave up the job to attend to him by his side all the time when he painted. Though life was bare and simple, Nie Chong-Liang was content to hear the caring and loving words by his ears; his heart was at peace.
He knew that he could only repay the loving and compassionate woman by working like mad. He painted at least one water color study each day. He sketched people from life constantly to cultivate and to mold his skills. Nie Chong-Liang's water color paintings became more and more bright and lively. Under his paint brush, the hay stacks are like the essays of autumn. He painted the houses and courtyards of the northwest, sincere, pure and spacious, with the sadness like that in Tchaikovsky's music. When he was tired from painting, he would look at the sky and remember Xinjiang. Even though it was the land where his nightmares took shape, the lush grass and woods, the shining lively creatures, the iridescent colors of nature among the desert, the clouds and the sky --- all these would stir up the passion in his heart, and make him bow close to the earth and caress the beauty hidden behind the desolation. He could not forget his Eden of life.
He decided to return to Xinjinag. It was the first time that he went back there. She was determined to go with him. But when they had journeyed almost all the way, when they were close to Kuerle, Nie Chong-Liang was afraid. Talimu was right after Kuerle. Suddenly he felt a tremendous uneasiness stirring up in the heart. The changes in thoughts are subtle, sometimes they will make it impossible to face a life of dramatic ups and downs. In this old place, the two of them cycled across the desert under the scotching sun of the Gobi desert. Desolate woods, dry river beds, those thoroughly familiar colors, all awoke his infinite memories and reveries. He knew that this land once cursed by him was to him so very dear; he knew that he loved her. Once again he stepped into the orchard of that year; it happened also to be in the afternoon. That time, that scene --- he could no longer restrain his passion; he took out his paint brushes, and in one go finished the initial sketch of "Afternoon Orchards".
Peace; Loneliness; Home returnee
In 1988, Nie Chong-Liang's life had a big turn.
First, introduced by a friend, he was invited by the 3M Reflecting Material Company affiliated with Shenzhen University to paint exquisite artistic portraits on a kind of laser material. He and she went to Shenzhen together, working and creating. One day, he got a letter by surprise. The letter was from Belgium; his work "Wheat Cutter" won the Silver Medal in the European International Modern Art Competition held in Brussels. His eyes became moist. After decades of drudgery and torment, God finally turned his gaze from the noisy common world and looked upon this lonely poor striving suffering monk. From then on, his works won prizes abroad and were sold almost every year. In 1994, "Brick Maker" won a prize, and a few of his water color pictures were collected by the Central Academy of Arts. His work on cultures of Xinjiang called "Donkey and Maiden" was purchased by a private Japanese collector when shown in Tokyo. In 1996, water color picture "Old Style Garden" was purchased by Shanghai government, and was sent to USA for exhibition. In 1997, "Canal Night" was purchased by a Japanese collector. In 1998, "Red Bananas" and other works were purchased by private collectors in New York.
In 1995, Nie Chong-Liang ended 38 years of life of wanderings and sufferings. He finally gained residence and returned to Shanghai. He joined the Shanghai Water Color Artists Association, and started to build his own nest. Life was at peace: the first thing he would do was to make the woman his wife --- the woman who had always accompanied him and supported his artistic career in his most difficult times. They got married.
Peace and freedom has brought force the fountain of artistic inspirations in Nie Chong-Liang; he worked doubly hard to create pictures. In a time when flattery is a fashion, he prefers a simple quite life without showing off, he despises the effort in the art world to follow the common taste. Even though his heart holds all the desolation and sufferings of life, his water color paintings are fresh, pure, bright and lively, devoid of the heaviness of philosophies or religions; they are like hymns in the sunlight. He often composes and designs paintings in his own ways. In the daytime he wanders in the streets and alleys alone, to observe the residential houses of common folks; and he uses contrasting light and colors to depict the joys of life of common people under the sun. In the evenings he paints the night city among buildings and people overflowing with iridescent light an colors. After all, he had been away from the city for decades, his heart is still sad and not at ease; thus the night scene under his brushes often takes on a touch of enchanting loneliness.
When this article was almost finished, the author once again went to Nie Chong-Liang's home. Paintings covered the walls of the living room and all the other rooms. The couple was submerged in the task of organizing paintings. Like an old and tortured buffalo who had tilted the land for decades, he had painted hard and journeyed for decades; finally his first catalog of paintings would be published soon. He was very much moved at this: "I have chosen rich and dense colors as my own language; I did not pursue this deliberately, but it is the result of long experience and sufferings in life, and also the fruit of my own cultural attainment. I do not have a position or status, I am still constantly exploring my own language. In the past 20 years, the scene of the prisoner's wife returning home often came to my mind, and I can not shake away the shadow of loneliness and sadness, and such emotions come into my paintings unconsciously. But my paintings are bathed in sunlight and dazzling colors; after all, a lonely home returnee finally came back home. To be grateful, I think, It is an artist's conscience".
Yes, extending before Nie Chong-Liang , it will be an endless long road leading home.
