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编者按：2011年6月24日，中国“杭州西湖文化景观”在法国巴黎举行的联合国教科文组织第35届世界遗产委员会会议上顺利通过审议，正式被列入《世界遗产名录》。
民俗画家吴理人被誉为“画说”杭州西湖第一人。他生在西湖，长在西湖，与西湖朝夕相伴，用画笔描绘西湖，为西湖景观几乎倾注了他的全部心血。本刊特发表这篇专访，以庆贺西湖申遗成功。
作为中国七大古都之一的杭州，自南宋以来就有四时赏花的习俗，并因此留下了不少赏花胜地，如西溪探梅、马塍看花、荷塘泛舟、湖山寻桂、重九赏菊等，且官巷口还举办花市，生意兴隆。
其中最热闹的，莫过于农历二月十二日的花朝节，这是纪念百花的生日。今年2月底，杭州市西湖区委书记郑荣胜在上海黄浦江畔宣布，杭州将传承传统花朝文化，以花为媒，培育花产业、花文化、花经济，让沉寂百年的花朝节再度复兴。
消息一出，四座叫好。节日一至，繁花似锦。
但是，看到群芳的杭州人总有些遗憾：当年花朝节是怎样一幅图景呢？
有人告诉我：不妨去看看著名的中国民俗风情画家、有“画说杭州第一人”之誉的吴理人的画吧。那些水墨丹青里，有真正的老杭州风情——当然，包括花朝节的盛况。
就这样，我找到了这位留着小胡茬，和善、敦厚、朴实，举手投足间又充满艺术风度的画家。
见到吴理人是在一个初春的下午，阳光、和风，暖和得让人熏熏然。吴理人的工作室，就在柳枝初发、各种船舶“突突突”穿梭来回的京杭大运河边，窗明几净的中国京杭大运河博物馆里。
一张檀木几，两杯香茶。他用不打扰周围来来往往观展客的轻声细语，打开了话匣子。
“为什么选择画老杭州这项事业？”
这是我抛出的第一个问题。
“杭州人，当然应该画杭州。我始终觉得，只有了解一个地方的过去现在、洞悉一个地方的风俗民情，才能画出最好的作品。”吴理人如是说。
他搬过好几次家，印象最深的是幼小时住在贯桥。50年代，他家的隔壁就是一家茶馆，放学了，就同其他孩子一起去隔壁听大书。再隔壁有家小书摊，一分钱可以看两本。要么就到对面面店里捡香烟壳，叠好了可以比赛拍洋片。高兴了，孩子们一窝蜂到孩儿巷去躲猫猫儿，在一所老房子里转进转出，后来才知道，那原来是大师丰子恺的旧居。
这样的童年大家都差不多，但是小时候的吴理人还是有些同人家孩子不一样，他4岁时还没懂事就开始画画了，街坊邻居都知道。后来读书了，一到图画课，全班50多张画纸都叠到他的桌子上，他很快就画好了。六年级时，他和同学画了一张2米高的油画“毛主席去安源”，画就立在校门口。
吴理人画画是跟父亲、姐姐学的。父亲原是个琴棋书画样样拿得起的中学校长，姐姐是美术特级教师。良好的家庭美术熏陶，让绘画理所当然地成了儿时吴理人的爱好和特长。从小学到中学的美术课，几乎都成了吴理人的专场演出。毕业几十年后的同学会，老同学们见到他第一句话还是：“你从小就最会画画啊。”
说起这些童年的记忆，吴理人格外腼腆。之后，他又不无得意地讲起年轻时做美工助理的经历：“那时候我做一部电视剧的美工助理。老美工想要刁难我，突然修改场景，要我在第二天早晨开工前完成50多朵牡丹花的场景绘制。那时候已经下午四五点钟了啊，他料定我是做不完的。结果我让人帮忙裁纸碾磨，40多分钟就完成了。”
1985年，吴理人28岁，事业蒸蒸日上，却飞来横祸，遭人诬陷，被作为“大案”隔离81天，最后查不出什么，只好说他“脾气不好”。吴理人一怒之下交了张请假条一走了之，临走丢下一句话：“啥时弄清爽啥时回来。”几年后给他平反，他却发誓再也不捧“铁饭碗”。
没有了工作，他反而可以一门心思画画了。他画杭州，画乌镇，画西塘，画绍兴，画所有看到的江南民居。上世纪80年代末大批旧房开始拆除，老街开始改建，看到自己笔下的老杭州正在消失，吴理人决定专画杭州。这时的他不仅身无分文，而且常常是家无分文。住在米市巷时，他家只有20平方米，一张小八仙桌一半是他的画桌，另一半吃饭。拆迁到莫干山路一个墙门后，他的画桌是一张方凳，颜料等等只好将就放在地上了。
这样一画，就是20年。
这些岁月里，吴理人踏遍杭州的街巷里弄，走过京杭运河沿线，绘就了包括照片在内的30000多幅作品。他说自己的心愿是画出1000幅精品，集画成册，画说杭州。如今，他已经画完了20多本写生本，几千张成品。
“欣赏您画的老杭州、老西湖，在我们外行看来，觉得多了些味道。在技法、思想上，您有哪些独到的见解？”
听完吴理人讲述的创作史之后，我又抛出了第二个问题。
他的回答是，画杭州没人能画得过他，他是用心在画，用他的经历、情感在画。
他在杭州的老街巷里到处转，在老墙门四周东张西望，那些警惕性很高的大伯大妈还当他是小偷，有时好一点，当他是拆房队的。他就拿出自己的画儿给他们看，“噢，是画家。”于是拿张凳子，拿杯茶，讲老房子的故事给他听……
杭州人自己说，老杭州“是座破烂的城市”，但在吴理人眼里，一些“破烂”里都是故事，是老杭州最丰富的表情。那些衰败的街巷、零落的民居，因为有人在走动，有人在生活，所以充满了老杭州的人情味。
老杭州是啥样子的？一条条小街，宽不过两辆黄包车；一个个墙门，白墙黑瓦，堂前天井；一排排沿街商铺，木板门晨开暮闭；一座座石桥，夏天芭蕉扇摇摇乘凉最好……有人看了“噢哟”一声说：“这就是我住的地方！”
这就是吴理人笔下的老杭州。用圈里人的眼光看，吴理人是个业余画家，但是，画老杭州已经成了他的专业，成了他的全部生活。
另一方面，吴理人画山水，比一般画家更能感受杭州的味道。他画西湖，不着意于山水，而是回忆童年时在西湖边避雨，看到雷雨强风之中，西湖荷叶翻起，韧而不屈之美。就是如此，才与其他画家形成了质的区别。
他到处写生，在写生中积累了大量的写生经验和写生作品。所谓抽象，是说他作画不是对真实民居、桥等景物的简单复制，没有完全拘泥于表面形似，而是求整体神韵。所谓意象，则是指画面体现的含蓄内涵、空灵厚重的意趣，是“外师造化，中得心愿”的结果。此外，他还注重画面的气势和整体走向，但大块面的整体上又不乏精练的局部，其作品特有一种韵律和美感。
他的杭州山水画构图注重层次，以气取胜，用笔坚劲，浓淡枯润多变流畅，还追求心理上、画面外的意境表现和精神升华。他强调自然而然，有感而发，用心画来，水到渠成。所以他的作品中始终充满了一股灵气。特别是作品中体现出来的那种悠远而又古老的老杭州风韵，不仅与画家所选择的再现手法相得益彰，而且给人以无限美感与深远的记忆。
“今后，您会把画杭州、画西湖的事业继续下去么？”
听到这个问题，吴理人的眼睛里流露出许多感慨。
“坚持、传承”，这是他说的最重的几个字。
吴理人说，想用自己的画，画出一部民俗史。那些用清淡的笔墨勾画出的钱塘风情，不只是山水和花卉，更融入了绵远的历史感和深刻的人文精神。“画这些画，不只要懂国画，还要有扎实的西画功底，更要有对历史文化的了解和对这座城市发自内心的热爱。我想在自己的画中，去掉当代绘画里普遍的浮躁之气，而体现一种气质，将文化内涵融入画里。”他把杭州独有的吴越文化、南宋文化、运河文化、西湖文化都化成了水墨丹青。
吴理人到底画了多少画？恐怕连他自己都说不清。有些卖掉了，留在手上的还有好几千幅。他说，这些画他不会卖：“我希望杭州能在我的笔下被更多人认识，被更多人喜爱，为下一代留下更多有关这座古老城市的记忆。”
所以，他给自己订了一个目标，就是完成一幅《京杭大运河民俗风情全景图》，希望它能成为一幅运河版的清明上河图，流传下去。
就在结束本稿采写的前夕，我又得到一个信息：
吴理人和京杭大运河博物馆合作，免费开设了培养孩子、提携后进的美术指导班，每周六下午授课。因为报名的孩子太多，为了保证教学质量，他就把孩子们分为两批，两周一次讲授。
面对这位憨憨的“画家伯伯”，孩子们交口称赞：“他不像美术老师只教我们绘画技巧。讲课时候，吴伯伯还给我们讲故事，比如他小时候杭州是怎样的风景啦、他画画前后是怎样采风思考啦之类的，反正特别有意思。”
看着孩子们纯真的脸庞，我忽然觉得，杭州民俗画的事业，实在太值得延续——今天的实景，恐怕又是明天的民俗呢——感谢老杭州，感谢吴理人。□
Hangzhou Artist Retains Ancient Urban Scenes
By Xiao Qi
If you want to find out what Hangzhou looked like 30 years ago, you may have a number of choices. If you want artistic impressions of the city of these yesteryears, you go to Wu Liren to find out. Wu Liren, in his early fifties, is a local artist dedicated to capturing the lost charms of his hometown in drawings and paintings.
I have a chat with him one sunny, breezy spring afternoon in Hangzhou. We sit in his studio in the Hangzhou-Beijing Grand Canal Museum. The diesel engines of barges make loud noisy as they push their way up or down the canal outside the windows of the studio. The man now and then glances at young visitors milling around the museum while chatting in a light voice. We talk over a cup of green tea.
I ask why he chooses to focus on Hangzhou of its good old days. He has a ready explanation. “As a Hangzhou native, I feel I am bound to portray my hometown in artistic creations. The best artworks come from an artist’s profound knowledge of the place and history.”
Born in 1957, Wu Liren grew up in old downtown Hangzhou. He was little bit different from other boys of his age: the genius boy started drawing at the age of four. The child artist enjoyed a reputation in the neighborhood. He often did drawings for all other classmates in the art classroom when he was in primary school. At class reunions, everybody remembers him. He was the class artist.
The kid artist got the art from his father. His sister is now a special-class art teacher. An all-round scholar, the father worked as a schoolmaster of a middle school before he fell down in the world due to political reasons in the 1950s. The father had been exiled to the countryside before the junior was born. The father came back home in 1958 and worked as a bricklayer until he passed away during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Wu remembers the down-and-out life of his family in those difficult years. In one painting he paints his mother and younger sister washing rags at a river dock.
The Wus has moved homes in Hangzhou several times. He says his childhood years in the neighborhood of Guanqiao in the 1950s and the 1960s are most memorable. His family lived next door to a teahouse. Every afternoon after school he and other boys went to the teahouse to enjoy a story-telling performance. Two doors from his home was a picture-book rental shop where one could pay a cent to read two books. Sometimes they boys went to an old house in a lane not far from their homes, where they played hide and seek. After he became an adult he got to know that Feng Zikai, a prominent artist in the first half of the 20th century China, once lived in the house.
Wu remembers his early years as a young artist. In the first half of the 1980s, he worked as a commercial artist. His master and he once worked as artists for a television production. One afternoon, the master gave him a mission impossible: he was supposed to create a setting of more than 50 roses before the next morning. He got the assignment at five o’clock. The master thought the young artist would have to work through the night. Wu Liren completed the work within 40 minutes.
In 1985, the 28-year-old artist was witnessing his career takeoff when he was wrongly accused of a crime. He was acquitted after 81 days in police custody. Enraged by the unfair treatment, the artist took a long sick leave. Though he was rehabilitated a few years later, he chose not to forget and forgive. He quit the job and became a full-time artist on his own. He traveled across Zhejiang and created quite a great amount of paintings.
His decision to retain his hometown in his paintings came about in the late1980s when the dilapidated old city was disappearing at an alarmingly fast rate, replaced by a new urbanization.
To translate his decision into reality was hard, for he was financially down and out in these years. As his old house was demolished for construction, he had to stay in a rented home of 20 square meters. But he persisted.
In the next 20 years he painted nothing but his hometown. His sketches, paintings and photographs now amount to a huge collection of 30,000. His ambition is to create 1,000 fine paintings of Hangzhou and get them published in albums.
Wu says no one in Hangzhou captures the charms and looks of yesteryear Hangzhou better and more than he does. He has put his heart to his pet project. He puts his story and emotion into sketches and his paintings. He loves wandering through the labyrinth of lanes and narrow streets of old downtown Hangzhou and oftentimes he is mistaken by some old residents as a thief. Some suspect him as a spy for companies that want to tear down old houses but are definitely unwilling to pay fair compensation for relocation. He shows his drawings to these people. When they find he is an artist, old residents become warm. They fetch chairs, bring him a cup of tea and sit around him relating their life stories in these streets and lanes.
The old-generation Hangzhou residents agree unanimously that the city was dilapidated, but Wu regards the dilapidated downtown as a cornucopia of stories and legends of a kind of life that is disappearing fast.
How did the old Hangzhou look like? Wu Liren’s sketches are a truthful record of everyday life of the city he has seen. Narrow streets are just wide enough for two tricycles to run side by side; courtyard residences feature white walls and black-tiled roofs and a patio; streets are lined with shops where multiple plank doors are removed in the morning and put back in the evening; stone bridges are everywhere; in summer nights, people sit in outdoors and cool themselves with fans.
If measured with professional art standard, Wu Liren may be considered an amateurish folk artist. For Wu, capturing the old Hangzhou is all he does with art and it is now his way of life.
As the West Lake is the most eye-catching part of Hangzhou, it is only natural that Wu recreates it in his art. However, he draws more than the scenery. He recalls a scene in a summer day when it was raining hard. Watching the storm on the lake from a shelter, Wu was deeply impressed by the lotus leaves that turned against the winds. The beauty of the lotuses in the storm is now deeply in his aesthetics of his graphic memories of his hometown.
While reinterpreting the beauty of the mountains and the lake in Hangzhou, Wu seeks an overwhelming energy and flowing rhythm, creating a big space for spiritual sublimation. To him, Hangzhou looks natural, ancient, and yet endearing.
I ask whether Wu will continue to draw Hangzhou and the West Lake. He will persist and he will carry his cause forward to the future. He looks determined and fully committed when saying these words.
Wu says he aims to create a history of folk lifestyle of Hangzhou in his art. “One needs knowledge of traditional Chinese painting as well as that of western art before one can embark on such an ambitious art project, but the most important thing is one needs to understand history and culture and one must have a love from the bottom of the heart for this city before one is able to create such paintings. I want my artworks free from the flippancy that can be seen everywhere in today’s world of art. I want to inject a quality, a sense of culture and rich content into my art.”
He does not know exactly how many paintings he has created in his career. He has sold many. And his collection at home holds thousands more. He says the thousands are not for sale. He hopes his paintings will open a door to the old charms of Hangzhou and will keep memories fresh for next generations.
Wu dreams of creating a huge masterpiece, something that resembles in scope and significance the “Qingming Festival on the River”, a timeless artwork created in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). He will set his painting against the Grand Canal that traverses downtown Hangzhou and past his studio and meanders zigzagging all the way northward to Beijing. □
民俗画家吴理人被誉为“画说”杭州西湖第一人。他生在西湖，长在西湖，与西湖朝夕相伴，用画笔描绘西湖，为西湖景观几乎倾注了他的全部心血。本刊特发表这篇专访，以庆贺西湖申遗成功。
作为中国七大古都之一的杭州，自南宋以来就有四时赏花的习俗，并因此留下了不少赏花胜地，如西溪探梅、马塍看花、荷塘泛舟、湖山寻桂、重九赏菊等，且官巷口还举办花市，生意兴隆。
其中最热闹的，莫过于农历二月十二日的花朝节，这是纪念百花的生日。今年2月底，杭州市西湖区委书记郑荣胜在上海黄浦江畔宣布，杭州将传承传统花朝文化，以花为媒，培育花产业、花文化、花经济，让沉寂百年的花朝节再度复兴。
消息一出，四座叫好。节日一至，繁花似锦。
但是，看到群芳的杭州人总有些遗憾：当年花朝节是怎样一幅图景呢？
有人告诉我：不妨去看看著名的中国民俗风情画家、有“画说杭州第一人”之誉的吴理人的画吧。那些水墨丹青里，有真正的老杭州风情——当然，包括花朝节的盛况。
就这样，我找到了这位留着小胡茬，和善、敦厚、朴实，举手投足间又充满艺术风度的画家。
见到吴理人是在一个初春的下午，阳光、和风，暖和得让人熏熏然。吴理人的工作室，就在柳枝初发、各种船舶“突突突”穿梭来回的京杭大运河边，窗明几净的中国京杭大运河博物馆里。
一张檀木几，两杯香茶。他用不打扰周围来来往往观展客的轻声细语，打开了话匣子。
“为什么选择画老杭州这项事业？”
这是我抛出的第一个问题。
“杭州人，当然应该画杭州。我始终觉得，只有了解一个地方的过去现在、洞悉一个地方的风俗民情，才能画出最好的作品。”吴理人如是说。
他搬过好几次家，印象最深的是幼小时住在贯桥。50年代，他家的隔壁就是一家茶馆，放学了，就同其他孩子一起去隔壁听大书。再隔壁有家小书摊，一分钱可以看两本。要么就到对面面店里捡香烟壳，叠好了可以比赛拍洋片。高兴了，孩子们一窝蜂到孩儿巷去躲猫猫儿，在一所老房子里转进转出，后来才知道，那原来是大师丰子恺的旧居。
这样的童年大家都差不多，但是小时候的吴理人还是有些同人家孩子不一样，他4岁时还没懂事就开始画画了，街坊邻居都知道。后来读书了，一到图画课，全班50多张画纸都叠到他的桌子上，他很快就画好了。六年级时，他和同学画了一张2米高的油画“毛主席去安源”，画就立在校门口。
吴理人画画是跟父亲、姐姐学的。父亲原是个琴棋书画样样拿得起的中学校长，姐姐是美术特级教师。良好的家庭美术熏陶，让绘画理所当然地成了儿时吴理人的爱好和特长。从小学到中学的美术课，几乎都成了吴理人的专场演出。毕业几十年后的同学会，老同学们见到他第一句话还是：“你从小就最会画画啊。”
说起这些童年的记忆，吴理人格外腼腆。之后，他又不无得意地讲起年轻时做美工助理的经历：“那时候我做一部电视剧的美工助理。老美工想要刁难我，突然修改场景，要我在第二天早晨开工前完成50多朵牡丹花的场景绘制。那时候已经下午四五点钟了啊，他料定我是做不完的。结果我让人帮忙裁纸碾磨，40多分钟就完成了。”
1985年，吴理人28岁，事业蒸蒸日上，却飞来横祸，遭人诬陷，被作为“大案”隔离81天，最后查不出什么，只好说他“脾气不好”。吴理人一怒之下交了张请假条一走了之，临走丢下一句话：“啥时弄清爽啥时回来。”几年后给他平反，他却发誓再也不捧“铁饭碗”。
没有了工作，他反而可以一门心思画画了。他画杭州，画乌镇，画西塘，画绍兴，画所有看到的江南民居。上世纪80年代末大批旧房开始拆除，老街开始改建，看到自己笔下的老杭州正在消失，吴理人决定专画杭州。这时的他不仅身无分文，而且常常是家无分文。住在米市巷时，他家只有20平方米，一张小八仙桌一半是他的画桌，另一半吃饭。拆迁到莫干山路一个墙门后，他的画桌是一张方凳，颜料等等只好将就放在地上了。
这样一画，就是20年。
这些岁月里，吴理人踏遍杭州的街巷里弄，走过京杭运河沿线，绘就了包括照片在内的30000多幅作品。他说自己的心愿是画出1000幅精品，集画成册，画说杭州。如今，他已经画完了20多本写生本，几千张成品。
“欣赏您画的老杭州、老西湖，在我们外行看来，觉得多了些味道。在技法、思想上，您有哪些独到的见解？”
听完吴理人讲述的创作史之后，我又抛出了第二个问题。
他的回答是，画杭州没人能画得过他，他是用心在画，用他的经历、情感在画。
他在杭州的老街巷里到处转，在老墙门四周东张西望，那些警惕性很高的大伯大妈还当他是小偷，有时好一点，当他是拆房队的。他就拿出自己的画儿给他们看，“噢，是画家。”于是拿张凳子，拿杯茶，讲老房子的故事给他听……
杭州人自己说，老杭州“是座破烂的城市”，但在吴理人眼里，一些“破烂”里都是故事，是老杭州最丰富的表情。那些衰败的街巷、零落的民居，因为有人在走动，有人在生活，所以充满了老杭州的人情味。
老杭州是啥样子的？一条条小街，宽不过两辆黄包车；一个个墙门，白墙黑瓦，堂前天井；一排排沿街商铺，木板门晨开暮闭；一座座石桥，夏天芭蕉扇摇摇乘凉最好……有人看了“噢哟”一声说：“这就是我住的地方！”
这就是吴理人笔下的老杭州。用圈里人的眼光看，吴理人是个业余画家，但是，画老杭州已经成了他的专业，成了他的全部生活。
另一方面，吴理人画山水，比一般画家更能感受杭州的味道。他画西湖，不着意于山水，而是回忆童年时在西湖边避雨，看到雷雨强风之中，西湖荷叶翻起，韧而不屈之美。就是如此，才与其他画家形成了质的区别。
他到处写生，在写生中积累了大量的写生经验和写生作品。所谓抽象，是说他作画不是对真实民居、桥等景物的简单复制，没有完全拘泥于表面形似，而是求整体神韵。所谓意象，则是指画面体现的含蓄内涵、空灵厚重的意趣，是“外师造化，中得心愿”的结果。此外，他还注重画面的气势和整体走向，但大块面的整体上又不乏精练的局部，其作品特有一种韵律和美感。
他的杭州山水画构图注重层次，以气取胜，用笔坚劲，浓淡枯润多变流畅，还追求心理上、画面外的意境表现和精神升华。他强调自然而然，有感而发，用心画来，水到渠成。所以他的作品中始终充满了一股灵气。特别是作品中体现出来的那种悠远而又古老的老杭州风韵，不仅与画家所选择的再现手法相得益彰，而且给人以无限美感与深远的记忆。
“今后，您会把画杭州、画西湖的事业继续下去么？”
听到这个问题，吴理人的眼睛里流露出许多感慨。
“坚持、传承”，这是他说的最重的几个字。
吴理人说，想用自己的画，画出一部民俗史。那些用清淡的笔墨勾画出的钱塘风情，不只是山水和花卉，更融入了绵远的历史感和深刻的人文精神。“画这些画，不只要懂国画，还要有扎实的西画功底，更要有对历史文化的了解和对这座城市发自内心的热爱。我想在自己的画中，去掉当代绘画里普遍的浮躁之气，而体现一种气质，将文化内涵融入画里。”他把杭州独有的吴越文化、南宋文化、运河文化、西湖文化都化成了水墨丹青。
吴理人到底画了多少画？恐怕连他自己都说不清。有些卖掉了，留在手上的还有好几千幅。他说，这些画他不会卖：“我希望杭州能在我的笔下被更多人认识，被更多人喜爱，为下一代留下更多有关这座古老城市的记忆。”
所以，他给自己订了一个目标，就是完成一幅《京杭大运河民俗风情全景图》，希望它能成为一幅运河版的清明上河图，流传下去。
就在结束本稿采写的前夕，我又得到一个信息：
吴理人和京杭大运河博物馆合作，免费开设了培养孩子、提携后进的美术指导班，每周六下午授课。因为报名的孩子太多，为了保证教学质量，他就把孩子们分为两批，两周一次讲授。
面对这位憨憨的“画家伯伯”，孩子们交口称赞：“他不像美术老师只教我们绘画技巧。讲课时候，吴伯伯还给我们讲故事，比如他小时候杭州是怎样的风景啦、他画画前后是怎样采风思考啦之类的，反正特别有意思。”
看着孩子们纯真的脸庞，我忽然觉得，杭州民俗画的事业，实在太值得延续——今天的实景，恐怕又是明天的民俗呢——感谢老杭州，感谢吴理人。□
Hangzhou Artist Retains Ancient Urban Scenes
By Xiao Qi
If you want to find out what Hangzhou looked like 30 years ago, you may have a number of choices. If you want artistic impressions of the city of these yesteryears, you go to Wu Liren to find out. Wu Liren, in his early fifties, is a local artist dedicated to capturing the lost charms of his hometown in drawings and paintings.
I have a chat with him one sunny, breezy spring afternoon in Hangzhou. We sit in his studio in the Hangzhou-Beijing Grand Canal Museum. The diesel engines of barges make loud noisy as they push their way up or down the canal outside the windows of the studio. The man now and then glances at young visitors milling around the museum while chatting in a light voice. We talk over a cup of green tea.
I ask why he chooses to focus on Hangzhou of its good old days. He has a ready explanation. “As a Hangzhou native, I feel I am bound to portray my hometown in artistic creations. The best artworks come from an artist’s profound knowledge of the place and history.”
Born in 1957, Wu Liren grew up in old downtown Hangzhou. He was little bit different from other boys of his age: the genius boy started drawing at the age of four. The child artist enjoyed a reputation in the neighborhood. He often did drawings for all other classmates in the art classroom when he was in primary school. At class reunions, everybody remembers him. He was the class artist.
The kid artist got the art from his father. His sister is now a special-class art teacher. An all-round scholar, the father worked as a schoolmaster of a middle school before he fell down in the world due to political reasons in the 1950s. The father had been exiled to the countryside before the junior was born. The father came back home in 1958 and worked as a bricklayer until he passed away during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Wu remembers the down-and-out life of his family in those difficult years. In one painting he paints his mother and younger sister washing rags at a river dock.
The Wus has moved homes in Hangzhou several times. He says his childhood years in the neighborhood of Guanqiao in the 1950s and the 1960s are most memorable. His family lived next door to a teahouse. Every afternoon after school he and other boys went to the teahouse to enjoy a story-telling performance. Two doors from his home was a picture-book rental shop where one could pay a cent to read two books. Sometimes they boys went to an old house in a lane not far from their homes, where they played hide and seek. After he became an adult he got to know that Feng Zikai, a prominent artist in the first half of the 20th century China, once lived in the house.
Wu remembers his early years as a young artist. In the first half of the 1980s, he worked as a commercial artist. His master and he once worked as artists for a television production. One afternoon, the master gave him a mission impossible: he was supposed to create a setting of more than 50 roses before the next morning. He got the assignment at five o’clock. The master thought the young artist would have to work through the night. Wu Liren completed the work within 40 minutes.
In 1985, the 28-year-old artist was witnessing his career takeoff when he was wrongly accused of a crime. He was acquitted after 81 days in police custody. Enraged by the unfair treatment, the artist took a long sick leave. Though he was rehabilitated a few years later, he chose not to forget and forgive. He quit the job and became a full-time artist on his own. He traveled across Zhejiang and created quite a great amount of paintings.
His decision to retain his hometown in his paintings came about in the late1980s when the dilapidated old city was disappearing at an alarmingly fast rate, replaced by a new urbanization.
To translate his decision into reality was hard, for he was financially down and out in these years. As his old house was demolished for construction, he had to stay in a rented home of 20 square meters. But he persisted.
In the next 20 years he painted nothing but his hometown. His sketches, paintings and photographs now amount to a huge collection of 30,000. His ambition is to create 1,000 fine paintings of Hangzhou and get them published in albums.
Wu says no one in Hangzhou captures the charms and looks of yesteryear Hangzhou better and more than he does. He has put his heart to his pet project. He puts his story and emotion into sketches and his paintings. He loves wandering through the labyrinth of lanes and narrow streets of old downtown Hangzhou and oftentimes he is mistaken by some old residents as a thief. Some suspect him as a spy for companies that want to tear down old houses but are definitely unwilling to pay fair compensation for relocation. He shows his drawings to these people. When they find he is an artist, old residents become warm. They fetch chairs, bring him a cup of tea and sit around him relating their life stories in these streets and lanes.
The old-generation Hangzhou residents agree unanimously that the city was dilapidated, but Wu regards the dilapidated downtown as a cornucopia of stories and legends of a kind of life that is disappearing fast.
How did the old Hangzhou look like? Wu Liren’s sketches are a truthful record of everyday life of the city he has seen. Narrow streets are just wide enough for two tricycles to run side by side; courtyard residences feature white walls and black-tiled roofs and a patio; streets are lined with shops where multiple plank doors are removed in the morning and put back in the evening; stone bridges are everywhere; in summer nights, people sit in outdoors and cool themselves with fans.
If measured with professional art standard, Wu Liren may be considered an amateurish folk artist. For Wu, capturing the old Hangzhou is all he does with art and it is now his way of life.
As the West Lake is the most eye-catching part of Hangzhou, it is only natural that Wu recreates it in his art. However, he draws more than the scenery. He recalls a scene in a summer day when it was raining hard. Watching the storm on the lake from a shelter, Wu was deeply impressed by the lotus leaves that turned against the winds. The beauty of the lotuses in the storm is now deeply in his aesthetics of his graphic memories of his hometown.
While reinterpreting the beauty of the mountains and the lake in Hangzhou, Wu seeks an overwhelming energy and flowing rhythm, creating a big space for spiritual sublimation. To him, Hangzhou looks natural, ancient, and yet endearing.
I ask whether Wu will continue to draw Hangzhou and the West Lake. He will persist and he will carry his cause forward to the future. He looks determined and fully committed when saying these words.
Wu says he aims to create a history of folk lifestyle of Hangzhou in his art. “One needs knowledge of traditional Chinese painting as well as that of western art before one can embark on such an ambitious art project, but the most important thing is one needs to understand history and culture and one must have a love from the bottom of the heart for this city before one is able to create such paintings. I want my artworks free from the flippancy that can be seen everywhere in today’s world of art. I want to inject a quality, a sense of culture and rich content into my art.”
He does not know exactly how many paintings he has created in his career. He has sold many. And his collection at home holds thousands more. He says the thousands are not for sale. He hopes his paintings will open a door to the old charms of Hangzhou and will keep memories fresh for next generations.
Wu dreams of creating a huge masterpiece, something that resembles in scope and significance the “Qingming Festival on the River”, a timeless artwork created in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). He will set his painting against the Grand Canal that traverses downtown Hangzhou and past his studio and meanders zigzagging all the way northward to Beijing. □