Altay----------- my birthplace

It was quite an emotional moment as I set up my easel on  this stretch of Kolang River to paint this view. Yes, we came to Altay for the day to visit with my childhood friends, some of them, I had not seen for 34 years! Before I  joined  them for the evening feast they prepared for me, I found myself standing here at this particular spot where my childhood home used to stand! Tears came to my eyes as I painted this view, for it was precisely at this spot 44 years ago when I was 6, I first spotted a plein air painter painting the view of a birch wood that is no longer there now. While I was painting , quite a few passersby stopped to chat with me, and a few of them are oil painters as well. One of them was quite eager to invite me for dinner when he realized that a fellow painter who painted with me over 30 years ago  is none other than the now most well-known artist in Western China , Mr. Sun Liming who also serves now as the president of Xinginag Academy of Fine Arts. At the dinner table in the evening I was delighted to see my childhood friend Ma Zhong who is retired now after 30 years of teaching career at Altay Teachers' College. Of all the people, Ma Zhong is the most unforgettable one as there is so much memory of him and me painting and sketching together en plein air when we were both young teenagers. Sadly, he has long given up paintings now, however, he promised me  he would pick it up again. He told me among all the  collections of his own paintings and drawings, there was one pencil sketch of Altay Teachers' College I did in 1978 !  I told him I also stopped painting and drawing in 1979, and never picked it up until 2003! I got emotional at the moment for is not it precisely at this spot ?many many years ago when I was still a teenager for so many unforgettable morning I started a life long attempt of teaching myself English after giving up arts by reading aloud , reading really aloud proses and poems in English language . I still remember how I committed to memory Shakespeare's Sonnet Shall I Compare thee to a summer's day? and Robert Browning's Home Thought Abroad , and Frost's Road Not Taken. A brand new world was emerging over the distant horizon over Altay Mountains then, tantalizing me for a new adventure in life. The rest of the story now suddenly has become distant memory now.