Angie and Kelsey with Professor Tommy Wu and wife Tina at the Blue Roof Gallery near Chengdu, China.
What a special treat. Today we were to meet Tommy's cousin's granddaughter Li Ping and she was to take us to the Floral Agricultural area. She also took us to the Blue Roof gallery in the area to see the exhibit of works by Women Artists of China, many of whom are her and Tommy's friends. She was a wonderful hostess and guide.
After our gallery visit she arranged for us to visit a friend of hers, renouned contemporary Chinese artist Luo Fahui. The Blue Roof Gallery area is being developed as an artists' community where artists have their homes and studios. We enjoyed seeing Mr. Luo's studio which was attached to his lovely home. The studio was a huge space of over 2000 square feet with a huge 25 foot ceiling and lofts. It was a perfect space for executing his large modern paintings. Li Ping's husband is also an artist and she informed us that they have purchased a lot and will be moving into a home in the artists' community at the end of the year.
As Li Ping was showing us around the property we found a patch of clover and Kelsey started to tell Ping about the good luck that finding a 4 leafed clover is supposed to bring. She was very excited to hear this as Chinese people are always interested in symbols of good fortune and luck. Happily within a few minutes we all found our own 4 leaf clover. Ping was beside herself with joy over finding her 4 leafed clover, hugging us and holding our arm as we walked. She will certainly treasure her clover and we all stuck our precious finds into a book to dry.
After our busy morning of seeing the artist community Li Ping took us to a wonderful teahouse and restaurant in the floral agricultural area. It was right beside a pretty little lake where people were enjoying a pleasant afternoon out in paddle boats and others rode past us on beautiful white horses. Before and after lunch we enjoyed a long session of tea drinking as we tried to teach Ping more English. Unfortunately our communications were very limited and we were sad as Ping was so sweet we really wanted to talk with her.
Ping and Tommy tried to help Kelsey and I on the impossible task of trying to differentiate the 4 different tones of the same words--each one with a totally different meaning. If you say MAH (for horse) wrong you're saying a swear word!!! Oh dear! Kelsey and Tommy had a laugh over this.
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