I admire children for their innocence of life, and I envy them for the broadness of their worlds. Sometimes, people laugh at me for deliberately exploring the “fancy world” of unsophisticated children for an absurd Utopia, where I can escape from reality. On the contrary, I would laugh at their surrender to the reality and loss of human nature. As far as I’m concerned, if people didn’t have such desire for childish fancy, there would be no construction, such as building, transportation, medicine and machinery, that resists the nature in the world. And without that, I’m afraid that people still live the life of a savage. Therefore, my heart was captured by children at that time. I usually feel the hint of pure joy from children’s life. Experiencing and portraying this sort of joy have become a part of my life.
Passionately reading the book on the essential issue of life and philosophizing the topic on the meaning of life is, so to speak, one of my habitual natures. When I was a child, I prefer art and literature to science. The reason is that the science books I have read are mostly about trivial matters of science, which are far from the essence of life. However, literary works that I have read, even the most familiar Three Hundred Tang Poems and A Compilation of Poetry (Baixiang Cipu), also contain the intriguing truth of life. For example, when I read “The hometown moon tonight springs to my mind, will my friends reminisce in the tower riverside” , I will turn myself into the nostalgic wanderer or one of the reminiscent, with the sadness of departure rippling through my heart. Or the lyric, “Time and tide will not wait for a man forlorn, with cherry red spring dies, when green banana sighs”, reminds me of many seasonal scenes of spring and autumn that elapsed, which engenders a sense of causeless wistfulness. I find adults in the society all lost in the trivialities of life and forget the essence of life; only children can preserve their innocence and see what adults cannot. I would like to say that most of children’s words and behaviour are praiseworthy. The Monk of Eight Fingers agrees in his poem that “I love children without hiatus, for they are as pure as lotus. They smile to your snapping, bear no resentment towards your beating. With an ordinary mind towards different sights, they talk to everyone with new words. What a pity, as they grow old, their innocence has yielded to material interest.” I even carved this poem on the edge of a cigarette tube with a knife at that time.
(Excerpt from “On My Painting” by Feng Zikai)
