Thursday, November 8: Painting classes with Zhou Laoshi

Today I had two classes in the morning and then my Chinese tutor and then I went straight to Fran’s house to start painting lessons!

"See, it's a baby chick... easy!"

Today was the second time I met with my Chinese tutor. It was such a frustrating two hours… we literally spent 2 hours working on tones. If you don’t already know, Chinese has 4 different tones (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th). I think they are impossible. It’s pretty funny because Henry is learning Chinese now through Rosetta Stone so he’s “mastered” the tones. So I’ll speak and he’ll fix the sentence with the correct tone if he knows it. Good teamwork....

We are learning to paint a Chinese orchid 兰涛

So… for the EXCITING PART of my life: Starting today, every Thursday I have a private painting lesson with Zhou Laoshi (laoshi= teacher). Fran (from Tennessee) takes painting classes at the “Oldsters University” here in Ma’anshan. She asked Zhou Laoshi if he would want to give a private lesson at her home for 3 foreigners. He told her (through a translator) that no famous Chinese painter/artist has ever agreed to give a lesson to foreigners but that he wants to. He is a retired painter and every retired painter in China close their door on one final class. He told us that he wanted to close his door with our private painting class. I literally got the chills when he told us this. What an honor! He also told us how honored and impressed he was that foreigners wanted to learn how to paint “the Chinese way”. I am so excited for my new hobby!

After painting class Fran and I made dinner at her house. I could get used to painting, dining and wining every Thursday. 

Today’s class was him teaching us the brush strokes to pain an orchid. He said, “Watch me, remember these strokes and master it for homework.” Right…. Needless today I did not memorize the strokes! He makes it look so easy. The lesson was great. We have a translator that comes with him but I helped her translate a lot of words since she isn’t familiar with art words in English. 

Oh yeah... funny thing that happened during my tutoring session. My tutor asked for hot water (They only drink hot water here because they think cold water makes you sick....). I have a water cooler so I got water out of the hot part for her. She took a sip and spit the water back in the cup. Turned out the water was cold because I had forgotten to turn my water cooler on.  Her face was as if I had just given her a cup of vodka and she was expecting it....