Moe Academy: Resurrection Battle

The Beauty and Sorrow of Life Since I was a child, I have loved planting flowers and grass, and observing the ecology of various small animals. I often planted the roots of vegetables left by my mother in the soil, cultivated them very carefully, and was delighted when I saw them come back to life and sprout new leaves. I also tried to dig up ant nests first to observe their lives, and then bring the ants into the new house I made in the cardboard box, hoping to create an "ant city" of my own. After entering middle school, I began to take in stray kittens, often bringing dying kittens home and feeding them milk with an eye dropper. I always got up in the middle of the night to see if they were sleeping well, and gave them artificial respiration when they were dying. At that time, I lived in the ruins of a fire. After the Japanese-style house collapsed, the original earthen walls used for partitions turned into piles of yellow mud. Or soak the leaves of orange trees in alcohol to make perfume with strange smells. A fire burned down my home, but it burned out a pastoral garden. In college, I entered the Department of Fine Arts of the Normal University. When I was sketching, I often stared at the flowers. I felt that they were beautiful when they were in bud, when they were in bloom, and when they were withering. After sketching for a long time, I became familiar with the appearance of the flowers and could easily see where they were sick due to insect bites or wind. But I found that even if there was a disease, as long as it was formed in nature, there was a kind of "natural beauty" that human power could not achieve. Although I often stole flowers for sketching, I always tried my best to maintain the vitality of the flowers I picked. Even if there was only one leaf left, I would still keep them in water, hoping for a miracle. I would also try to reconnect the broken flower stems, just like a doctor reconnecting a broken bone for a person. When the doctor wrote the medical record, I also wrote down each step of the connection and the subsequent development. As for the withered flowers, I would cut them open with a knife to see the structure inside and faithfully depict them. My professor once asked me: "Painting flowers is not like drawing anatomy diagrams. Why do you have to be so picky?" My answer was simple: "Curiosity! Fun!" To this day, I still do the same thing. My sketchbook is like a biology book. I always have a scalpel and a microscope at hand. I count the number of "primary flight feathers" and "secondary flight feathers" of birds, and study the relationship between their wingbeat speed and feather shape. I also often go to museums to see bird skeletons and record them. Therefore, I wrote three books of flower, bird and landscape sketches. I don't know whether this method of exploring Chinese painting from a scientific perspective can resonate with Westerners. For a while, there were four bookstores in Manhattan Chinatown in New York alone that displayed my books in their windows. In recent years, although I haven't held a solo exhibition, I still sketch. Sometimes I can work on a single flower for two or three weeks in a row. I find that the best way to relax my mind is to sketch flowers and birds. Faithfully record their every flower, leaf, feather and beak. When we concentrate on sketching them, we can put aside all thoughts and reach a state of selflessness. After each sketch, I still do dissection, record the time when the flower blooms, the process of collecting, and write it down in my diary. There is a place in my diary specifically recording the time when various organisms sprout, bloom, mate and lay eggs, as well as the rise and fall of tides. Knowing the tides, I can grasp the best time to walk to the beach by the water and watch the ecology of various water birds and fish after the tide goes out. Not far from my home is the bay and marshland, and among the tall reeds, there are endless wild animals. Watching them is another way for me to meditate.