My China Syndrome

One day last month, Wee Lass and I sat at the dining table with paint, paper and brushes under the light of the banker’s lamp. The paints are all watercolors, some tubes of which I bought years ago with the intention of teaching myself to paint.

I know it was because of the beauty of the colors I had seen that I wanted to paint. I was fascinated and enraptured then, and still am now, by the shades and tones and hues I saw in paintings. I bought some books about the subject, for the pictures alone.

I fell in love with Ultramarine. Viridian. Cobalt. Purple Lake. Cadmium Yellow. So pretty…

All this before I realized just how much practice it takes to get good at watercolor painting. A few small starts, and then I was distracted by the rest of the pretty, shiny things that constitute Life. The paints languished in a drawer for a long time, with me occasionally taking them out of the bag and just looking at the labels.

One of the pretty shiny things that came along was my Wee Lass. The care and feeding of such a lovely flower put a lot of leisurely activities on hold, certainly in the case of learning to paint. Still, I could never bring myself to throw or give them away. The tubes of paint and the little plastic trays I bought, along with a small number of brushes just held too much sway over my imagination.

So it has been a great pleasure and wonderful surprise to see that Wee Lass has an interest in drawing and painting. She is fascinated with markers and colored pencils (a big stash I have left from my student days), and loves to scribble and color. She was very excited to find out about the paints. We even have a ritual that must be followed: Both trays on the table, each little bin anointed with a small amount of every color. Multiple pads at the ready, each of which must have at least one page daubed with most, if not all, of the available colors.

That particular day Wee Lass was on a “flower” kick. Me, I was seized with the notion of Chinese calligraphy. Yet another subject I knew almost nothing about, yet felt compelled to try. Not unlike my fascination with Chinese cooking. Are you sensing a theme here? So we set to, her with the bright colors and broad swathes, me trying to play ancient scholar with a bamboo brush and a small puddle of ultramarine paint. Wee Lass dove in with gusto, eventually producing what I found to be a quite fetching little “flowertree”:

Tres bon, oui? For some reason I really liked what she had painted, and she did as well. Simple, unpolished but exuberant and glee-inducing. We both had a big smile once she was finished.

While she was doing that, I was sweating the details on a Chinese character, taken at random from the glossary of a Chinese cookbook on my shelf. It is the character for ‘raw’ (sheng), and I picked it by opening the book and sticking out a finger, and that is where it landed. Good thing, too, as it also appeared to be one of the simpler characters to emulate.

Simple it may have looked, but simple it was not to actually paint. Over and over and over I swiped at the paper trying desperately as elegant as the picture in the book. Wee Lass even looked over and quizzically asked, “Daddy, why are you doing the same thing again? Draw something pretty!” Gee, thanks, kiddo. I told her it was because I liked the shape and the color. It took me quite a few tries to get something approaching what I had seen:

Honestly, I didn’t even realize it was the best of the bunch until I set the pages aside to dry. Professional it may not be, but I gasped in surprise and satisfaction. I double checked the book, and sure enough, it was a reasonable facsimile. I felt that illumination of experience blossom in my head. For a brief instant, I was there.

Making these letters does not make me Chinese, and watching my daughter paint out of sheer joy will not make me five years old again. What those things can do, however, is take me outside of myself, and for a few moments I was able to see the world through a different set of lenses. The view was fresh, new and exciting.

I am Chinese, I am young, if only through paper, paint and the joyful mind of a beautiful little girl. I am blessed.