The Last Poppy · Zhu Yong

Author: Zhu Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The opium poppy bkbk505412
Preface: Leng Bingguang said, "This collaboration is the closest contact we've had so far." The first contact was a few years ago, when I published The Weight of Sound, with a cover featuring Leng Bingguang's painting. From then on, I began to notice this name that glowed with a hint of coldness, wondering what kind of person it belonged to. Later, I found that Reader magazine had used his paintings as illustrations multiple times, and I purchased his art book. Published by Jiangsu Fine Arts, it's called Leng Bingguang's World, and I've treasured it ever since. Eventually, I got to know Leng Bingguang. I was surprised by his simplicity—contrary to my initial expectations. We've grown accustomed to defining people's appearances based on their identities. In our imagination, officials, intellectuals, merchants, and painters each wear their own masks, like herbs in a pharmacy, each belonging to its own category and never mixed up. If a painter looks like an official or an intellectual resembles a merchant, it would cause us discomfort. Some say writers can never be handsome; if they are, they won't write good stories. And what about painters? Their appearance can't be ordinary—if it is, they're not good painters. Very telling, but not entirely reliable.
Three friendships often leave me forgetting every detail of the interaction. What remains is a feeling, as if a story has no process, only a conclusion. That's why my interaction with Leng Bingguang was brief, but the outcome has been long-lasting. Leng Bingguang is very quiet. His paintings are delicate—so much so that it seems they shouldn't be made by a person. If it's said that God has blessed his hands, it's an overstatement; at least those hair-thin lines should have been done by a machine. I prefer to face the results of his paintings rather than the process—not out of pity. During research trips, when he was painting, I would sleep, and when I woke up, he had finished his work. Every night, his blade had to go through a trial—their works are completed in one go, with no room for revision. The slightest tremor in his grip could ruin everything. His posture while holding the blade is a bit like that of a surgeon; his black paper in front of him is covered with sensitive nerves that are a touch away from pain.
I admire Leng Bingguang's decisiveness. He decisively said, "I can never be perfect. Do you want to take even the joy of my mistakes away? My flaws are part of my personality, and you can't learn them." Contrary to his name, Leng Bingguang's paintings led me to find the south—sensually. There's no clear geographical location, but every lush leaf suggests a connection to sunlight. Under his cold knife, a world of passionate vitality emerges. Every cell is expanding. His black-and-white paintings not only contain dazzling colors and light but also the clamor of many voices, as Chen Danqing described: vast, bright, deep, and resonant. Leng Bingguang's paintings are like the night, making it easy for our dreams to wander. Everyone could be carried away by them, unable to resist the temptation that comes from the girl in our dreams. Her dreams are written on her face. Leng Bingguang's paintings give me a sense of dual dreams.
Leng Bingguang also said that beautiful works (including love and all art) contain a degree of misunderstanding or at least illusion. Without misunderstanding and illusion, would art and love exist? Much later, I found that almost every name of Leng Bingguang's art book is the same—Leng Bingguang's World. Every time he publishes a book, he removes unsatisfactory pages from the previous one and replaces them with better works. The art books are like a moving exhibition, where he constantly adjusts. He does this to ensure that each new collection surpasses the previous one in quality, and he hopes to produce an ideal art book at the end. Mr. Wang Jiaming recently joined Sanlian Bookstore, and I coincidentally met Leng Bingguang there. I suggested that Leng Bingguang publish a book at Sanlian—not an art book, but one with both images and text. I threw the stone and hurt my own feet—good advice quickly turned into my own heavy workload. Reading paintings is interesting, but writing about them is difficult. That year, I didn't start writing. The next year, I wrote a little, but it was all wiped out by a computer virus. Now, it's the third year. I've written thirty thousand words over three years. It's the slowest book I've ever written. Leng Bingguang doesn't rush me; he paints only ten pictures a year. We're both slow. Freedom can sometimes be the greatest limitation. This book was hard to write, and one of the reasons was Mr. Wang's tolerance. Freedom sometimes makes me lose the need to speak. Freedom leads to silence. Paintings are like dreams, unexplainable. I've said a little about my own thoughts in this book, some of which are unrelated to the paintings, and some are. But I hope it's all a misunderstanding.
July 2004, late night
Postscript: Afterword/By Bingguang Leng
A few years ago, when Zhu Yong and I chatted about this "erotic" reader on a spring night free of any bad marks, I guessed that no matter how hard Zhu Yong tried, he could never reach that place of flowing water and falling flowers. Indeed, Zhu Yong stopped at his reserve and "didn't love truth anymore." Zhu Yong is a serious person. He never finds inspiration in his own life. He seems distant from the crowd, but his thoughts grow closer to people—and I also don't find inspiration in my own life, but I directly take moving details from life. The deeper I paint, the clearer my inner thoughts become. So my works are detailed, complex, and contain a faint eroticism—but their comfort is sincere, intoxicating, without poison.
In truth, neither the people in my paintings nor I enjoy much pleasure. "I" and "she" merely display a personalized form of freedom, a simple taste of life; everything is just an impromptu creation of human nature. But its charm lies in this unfettered spark of freedom and eroticism, a kind of improvisational response—actually, Zhu Yong often awakens our intoxication with freedom in his passionate writing. Zhu Yong is a perceptive person. His deep reflections and awakenings are cold and sensitive, perfectly suited to the rebellious tone in his writing—I also consider myself a reasonable person, but I don't follow logic in my creation; I express myself freely—I reject the past, yet I don't want to surpass anyone; I don't use worldly knowledge, nor do I judge with reason. So I'm just a wanderer, a creator who works by intuition, constantly approaching the "heart's" disaster.
In Zhu Yong's writing, his sense of propriety matches his physical presence—always elegant and refined, never grotesque. But his clear reasoning and directness are like an old knife hand. Reading Zhu Yong and his words, we feel as if we've met a stranger. He exudes a kind of loneliness that makes us feel alienated in familiar situations. And Zhu Yong, in turn, builds his connection with people and history through this alienation. Zhu Yong is an introverted person, with a beautiful silence like a forest. In his forest, there is sincerity and secrets that no one can decipher. Zhu Yong is a person of conviction. Those who don't understand him can only glimpse a small part of his strength. Zhu Yong is also a person with pure writing—he reflects the shadow of his pure soul in his clean words. In reality, it's hard to accurately evaluate his vivid writing or to summarize the solemn and composed voice in his works in a few words. He explains his thoughts and his voice in history with spirit and wisdom—these reserved voices and thoughts move us. Solitary memories, like deeply buried poems, are planted in our hearts.
To plant is to sow.