Stroll and Pick

Author: Ren Lin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: A touching illustrated book collaboration between the doctor-artist Wei Qiao and the Gansu poet Ren Lin. It selects one hundred illustrations, divided into six parts: "Mysterious Dreams," "Fleeting Time," "Ballads," "Chewing," "Clock Sounds," and "Wandering Journeys." The text is perfectly aligned with the images yet remains somewhat distant, not a simple one-page illustration with one-page text explanation. The words are filled with a faint fragrance, beautiful yet profound, "sorrowful yet not hurtful, beautiful yet not flashy." It also reflects the influence of prose masters such as Zhou Zuoren, Feng Zikai, A Cheng, A Cheng, and Wang Zengqi. The author has rich life experiences, and his capture of rural life details is rare among writers; his portrayal of psychological and life states, supplemented by poems added appropriately with illustrations (some newly written), is deeply moving. In the first half of the text, the author is relatively "hidden," while in the second half, he gradually becomes "revealed." The tone of each piece is not the same, with great tension between beauty and cruelty, "reality" and "fantasy." The illustrated vignette "Idle Thoughts Collected" by Wei Qiao and Ren Lin brings readers a fresh visual experience—there is an art that comes from the depths of the heart; there is a feeling that only stays with oneself.