In 1984, when my parents were living in Hong Kong and I had the good fortune to visit, my mother and I took a side trip into mainland China.  More than venturing into a different country, touring the backroads of rural China was like entering another time, another world.  Field workers wearing modified mao pant suits/pajamas and pointed bamboo peasant hats guided water buffalo pulling plows through the rice patties.  Similarly clad men squatted at cross roads selling their wares of foreign vegetables and mystery meats and petite and wizened elderly women with long bamboo poles herded ducks down and across roadways.  Everything and everyone was very primitive and poor but at the same time wonderful in their pure simplicity.

Since we were on a tour, we were monitored closely.  Highly choreographed troops supervised each leg of our journey and the rural Chinese version of the chamber of commerce made sure we witnessed the best of what Communism offered.  Chief among these, whether engineered or not, were the artisan colonies.  Clusters of large concrete buildings contained long wooden tables filled with the various media of traditional Chinese art, some cheesy and unremarkable, some outstanding and awe-inspiring.

Above anything else, rustic pottery and Chinese brush painting grasped my attention.  I loved watching the trance-inducing clay on a simple hand-driven wheel.  I relished watching the Chinese brush painting demonstrations.  As is often the case, the artists made it look easy and effortless.  Given the opportunity to try it myself, I did and found it anything but.

That day I took home many prizes but chief among them were and are my two Chinese brush paintings, marked with the chops of the artist, the village, the province, and something else of which I am unsure.  A young Chinaman finished the "Tiger" character sitting before me, adding the stripe to the long vertical line to mimic the tail of the animal it represented.

 I love these pieces as well as the China they symbolize, a China that is no longer there, at least in that province.  Two years later, traveling a similar route with my fiance', we found an invasion of industry, no ducks, no water buffalo.  I can only imagine what it looks like today.