Life Dedication to Sculpture

After learning that we are going to visit his sculpture gallery， Professor Ye Qingwen asks us to take him along so that we will not need to pay for 60-yuan tickets. So we go to his house first on our way to the gallery.

We are amazed to find that the 85-year-old professor is quite healthy. He walks downstairs without anyone’s assistance. Nor does he need a walking stick. And he has very good memory， giving us clear-cut instructions where to go through the labyrinth of urban roads.

We visit Ye Qingwen Art Gallery unveiled in April， 2010 in TIandu Town， a large-scale real estate development in Yuhang District， a large suburb in the north of Hangzhou. The two-story house has a total floor space of 680 square meters and 161 sculptures are on display.

The professor’s lifelong achievements are more than the sculptures on display in this gallery. In fact， this gallery in Hangzhou is his second individual gallery. The first gallery named after him is situated in Lanxi， a city in central Zhejiang and his hometown. On display in that gallery are 122 sculptures. All these masterpieces in two galleries are donations by the artist.

Among the exhibits are the originals in plaster of his sculptures which Ye began to keep since the 1940s. They are very valuable. Many private collectors have offered to buy his originals， but the sculptor declines to sell. He wants them to be in the hands of the state government so that more people can see them.

Talking about the past， Ye Qingwen says that he is the lucky one that survived the war. He was born in Lanxi. His parents and four children led a peaceful life until the Japanese troops invaded Lanxi. Ye Qingwen and his younger brother Ye Qingwu trekked westward with the school on the run and they moved to Yushan in Jiangxi Province. When the Japanese soldiers came， the school was no more and students fled. The young brothers escaped to a village and the Japanese soldiers came along， looting the village and killing local people. It was raining hard and the young brothers fled into mountains and hid in a derelict temple. Ye Qingwen suffered diarrhea. After sick for a month， he did not have a hair on his head and he went blind. His skin was like that of a mummy. Finally the Japanese soldiers left. The two brothers came down from the mountains. They wandered for six months before they finally joined the school again. With the care of the younger brother， Ye Qingwen slowly recovered. The brown skin peeled off and healthy new skin came back. The parents finally located them and got them back to Lanxi.

While their parents took over and focused on Ye Qingwen who had been sick for such a long time， Ye Qingwu， the younger brother， unexpectedly fell sick three days after they had been home and died a few days later. He was 14 years old.

Ye Qingwen still grieves for his younger brother today. Tears come to his eyes when he recalls the death of his younger brother.

Ye Qingwen was a gifted painter even when he was still a boy. Villagers would come and ask the teenage boy to paint for them when Spring Festival came up. His father died in 1946. His mother had saved some money so that Ye Qingwen could get married. But Ye wanted to be an artist. He used the money to get some training. In 1947， he came to Hangzhou with five silver dollars in his pocket and a bag of food to sit for the entrance examination for the national art academy.

Ye Qingwen never had had any proper training. He was dazed when he saw plaster busts on the examination site. Other examinees had charcoal. He only had pencils and blank newsprint. He did very poorly in the examination. But he was offered an opportunity. He could attend classes if he was willing to work for the academy. He agreed. He did monotonous small jobs in the academy and studied for a year. The next year， he came out the top examinee and enrolled himself into the sculpture department with a scholarship. He chose sculpture because he could not afford paper for drawing and because sculpture was a comparatively inexpensive art to learn and master. Years later some people joked that the world lost a painter with great potentialities but acquired an outstanding sculptor.

After graduation in 1951 at the academy， Ye Qingwen remained at the academy to teach. He turned out to be a great teacher. Before the new China came into being， all the plaster busts used in the academy were modeled after foreign people， which looked quite different from Chinese people. In order to acquaint students better with the Chinese temperament and appearance and body structure， Ye Qingwen began to make busts based on Chinese in 1953. Over years， Ye made series of plaster heads， busts， and full-bodied statues of men and women， the old and the young. These have been in use in the China Academy of Art for the past 50 plus years. They are musts for art students across China. Some are used even in foreign countries.

The exhibits at the two galleries testify fully to Ye’s brilliance as a sculptor. Each of them relates a story. The scariest of all must have been the one that occurred in 1968， a year when China was being plunged into tumult and was madly in love with Chairman Mao. Ye Qingwen was asked to create a 13.9-meter-tall statue of Chairman Mao which would stand somewhere on the campus of Zhejiang University. First he made a model of 10 centimeters. After it was approved， it was enlarged to a statue of 3.2 meters in height. Then it was blown up to 13.9 meters. This was a procedure that guaranteed that the final statue would be an accurate copy of the original design.

These steps went off without glitch. But after the 3.2-meter-tall plaster statue was completed， something happened. The model was severed into two pieces in order to be shipped to a factory workshop where the final statue was to be made. As soon as the two pieces were shifted into the workshop， someone became incensed. “How could Chairman Mao be sawn into two pieces? Counterrevolutionary!” After mouthing his anger， the fuming guy stomped off. Seeing a disaster looming， Ye hastily asked the workers to put the two pieces together. When a gang of “revolutionaries” trooped in murderously， they saw a complete statue. As they did not have an excuse to explode， they left in silence.

Three months later， Ye Qingwen faced a group of students and workers in a classroom in Zhejiang University. He was asked to explain why the head of Chairman Mao was off the body. Ye patiently explained the technicality of the statue making to the angry mob. The reasonable explanation made the hostile challengers speechless. Ye was let go. On October 1st， 1968， the statue was unveiled on the campus of Zhejiang University. It still stands there today， a landmark of the university.

Ye Qingwen felt greatly relieved after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was over. Though he was no longer young， his creativity was unstoppable after the chaos. In 1984， a wood sculpture he created won a prestigious top award at 1984 national fine arts exhibition.

Immediately after retirement， Ye Qingwen had more time for commissions from all over China. During this period marking his intense flowering creativity， he created statues of historical personages such as Lu Xun， Confucius， Zhuge Liang， Zu Chongzhi， the ten marshals of the new China， and local celebrities of Lanxi.

And Ye Qingwen has had all the resources at hand and is able to paint and draw. He has created quite a few paintings in the traditional way. Many of his paintings have won awards at home and abroad. On his visit to his family members in America， he held lectures and a solo exhibition and a training course.□