Today
it rained. We woke up to the sound of the water gently swishing down the gutter
outside the window and drip-dripping off of the roof. When I stepped outside of the hotel to make
my way to breakfast, it seemed Beijing was still half asleep, curled into
itself like a contented house cat The rain continued to drizzle down from the
sky.
In
the early afternoon we took the subway to the National Art Museum, grateful to
have an indoor activity to do on a day such as this. We walked through an
exhibit of delicate ink paintings done in a traditional style. Each showed
incredible skill- deft handling of line combined with subtle washes of grey
tones rendered both the sweep of great vistas and the tiny intricacies of a
human face with precision. Most of the paintings were immense, and they filled the
gallery with their presence, requesting respect and silence. Their fine grey
gradations and the blurry edges where the wet ink had soaked into the rice
paper put me in mind of the world I had woken up in that morning- a moist,
monochromatic world, where all sounds were hushed by the steady drip of the
water from the sky.
Yes,
Beijing could be that way, I supposed. But it had surprised me when I had woken
up this morning to find the vibrant city dampened and quiet. I had only spent a
few days here, and yet I felt that I had a good grasp on the character of the
place- colorful and bustling, filled with shouts and laughter, cooking smells,
and countless rickshaws. The city of Beijing was a wrinkled, knowing smile on
the face of China, reflecting its deep history and good nature. But today, a
more reserved and stately Beijing was revealed. It was a new color to add to
the palette I had been composing in my head, a palette of all the colors of this
ancient city.
It
had started in the Forbidden City, my mental palette, when I had noticed the
specific yellow of all of the roof tiles. It was a mustardy yellow, verging on
gold, and it stretched across the Forbidden City, crowning almost every building.
My guide book had said that the yellow color had belonged to the emperor, and
no one else had been allowed to decorate their buildings with it. I had thought
about what power that must be, to own a color. As an artist, I must say I was a
tad bit jealous.
The next
day, on my way to breakfast, I stumbled across a store selling lucky cats. They
came in different colors- red, pink, blue, green, yellow, and black. Each color
meant something different, and although I couldn’t discern what they meant, I
knew they were all auspicious. The round smiling faces of the cat figurines in
so many different hues cheered me, and it was then that I truly started paying
attention to the colors of the city.
The
maroon curtains of the bicycle rickshaws matched almost exactly the rich maroon
of the buildings at the opulent Lama Temple. Gold and bronze Buddha statues
peered out from shop windows, and gold decorated the eaves of the concubine’s
quarters in the Forbidden City. White marble gleamed on bridges where the railings
were carved to look like clouds. The same color was more austere in a statue of
the philosopher and religious leader Confucious. Bright green and blue paintings of dragons
adorned wooden gates. The sky was a paler shade of blue, the trees lining the streets
a more lively green.
Also
green was the bodies of two crickets in cages that I heard before I saw, in a
small courtyard off of a narrow hutong alley. There were orange carp in a bowl,
glinting in the sunlight, and a paler orange cat who shared tea with me in a
quiet teahouse. There was a black bird in front of a convenience store, its leg
shackled to a leather cord that was tied to its perch. The acid pink of plastic
lotus flowers in a garland contrasted with the soft blush of fresh peaches that
were being sold in the very same store.
Truly, this was a city made of color.
But
the color that spoke the loudest here was red.
A bright red like oxygenated blood. In the form of giant red silk
tassels it hung in nearly every shop front window. Red lanterns hung in the
trees over a shopping street, marching in straight lines above the shoppers.
The same red was on cartons of Double Happiness cigarettes, and in the fresh
peppers siting in a bowl in front of a Sichuan restaurant, even on the Chinese
flag itself that snapped in the breeze above Tiananmen Square. Red was the
color of luck, and good fortune.
I
struggled to remember that fact as Zoe and I huddled under her umbrella on the
short trek back from the subway station after the art museum. We were talking
about how much was riding on our next year at the Academy, how simultaneously
excited and terrified we were. The red lanterns in front of a restaurant had
turned dark and saggy in the rain, I noticed. I felt a little like that myself.
But
then I remembered a piece of graffiti I had seen on my way to breakfast that
morning. It had been written in English, black spray-paint on a grey concrete
wall, and was just as colorful as the morning had promised it be- in other
words, completely devoid of chroma. But I remembered the message. “KEEP ON
PAINTING” it had said, with an underline for emphasis. “Ok then, I will.” I
thought to myself.
Keep on painting. Its all any of us
can really do. But in a world as colorful as this one, those words promise
adventure.
On May 25, four Academy students arrived in China to start a two-month residency in Shanghai and Beijing. James Adelman, Elliot Purse, Elizabeth Shupe and Zoe Sua-Kay (all members of the class of 2014) will share their experiences here throughout the summer.
