Thanks to the referral by Xiaobai Su, I was able to take part in the first Chinese-German Artists’ gathering in November 2005 in the Wuyi Mountains. Within the scope of the symposium, I gave a talk on the current development of art in Germany, straight after which a lively discussion developed. The contributions were published in lavishly prepared documentation by the organisers, Sunshine Art and printed at the Chinese Art Academy’s publishing house. Included in this documentation is the following article which, with slight amendments by the inspirer and organiser of the symposium, is dedicated to the artist, Xiaobai Su.

　　For me, China starts in Weidingen, in a small village near Bitburg. On a cold, autumnal Saturday morning in 2004, Xiaobai Su was expecting us a few kilometres from the village in order to accompany and guide us along the last stretch of the obscure road. Never before had I visited a destination in the Eifel, but then I had never set foot in China before either. I realised today for the first time that not only had we encountered granite here and there on our way, but also a volcanic landscape. We suspected that Luxemburg was to be found beyond the western horizon, whereby behind the eastern horizon in our Chinese province, lays the island of Taiwan.

　　Our Chinese friend, Su, worked and lived in Weidingen’s abandoned, old school1. He had been able to acquire the school house (dating from the 1930s) and the teacher’s house. The overgrown garden had been tidied up and the school square and a large meadow were now all bordered with subsequently-planted flowers. The earlier classrooms were filled with pictures which were waiting for an exhibition in Düsseldorf. Konrad Klapheck2 and his wife (whose first Chinese pupil was Mr Su) were sitting in the house. Xiaobai Su had come to Düsseldorf one day after a long journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway via Moscow with a rolled-up, painted canvas as a sample of his work over his shoulder.

　　My first contact with China occurred in this remote spot in the Eifel. It only took a few hours and finished with a circular walk around the village. I can now imagine that in an analogous way, the Weidingen micro-cosmos is connected with the Chinese macro-cosmos and that both display certain similarities – these being hospitality, reliability, a gift for organisation, punctuality and a gift for improvisation. Half a day in Weidingen and ten days of a Chinese-German artists’ gathering in Wuyishan do seem to be astonishingly similar.

　　It was under these best possible conditions that the artists’ exchange took place. Principally, it had three settings; an exceedingly picturesque mountainscape, from a distance reminiscent of the rocks in the S?chsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland); then the ten round tables in the hotel’s restaurant where we met three times a day in different groups for our meals; finally, there were the artists’ hotel rooms which not only served as places to sleep, but also as provisional studios. Work was carried out every day here and, in line with the congress’s motto “Images from Wuyi”, above all, painted.

　　Some artists worked in the generous studios of the newly-constructed university of applied science, others in the open air thanks to the predominantly good weather. We met up for lectures, theatre performances and discussions in the hotel’s large conferencing hall. A storage room elsewhere was full to bursting with primed and stretched canvases, with piles of drawing paper and a large stock of oil and acrylic paints, brushes and crayons. None of the nearly 50 artists complained about a lack of painting resources. As one of the sponsors, the “China Oil Painting” magazine had not spared any expense.

　　The German-Chinese artists’ symposium was given the title “Images from Wuyi” and both the Chinese and German artists certainly had a firm eye on Wuyi. The gathering was similar to the founding of an artist’s colony which, although limited to a few days, displayed all the other characteristics of a classical rehearsal with the uniting of place, time and action. The dramaturgy was unobtrusive and effective. Such a convention in Worpswede or at the foot of the Bavarian Alps should be set up in a similar way.

　　Like an underground stream and through each day, an open question constantly emerged in conversations, discussions and during numerous studio visits in the hotel and the University of Applied Science, a question which always found resonance: How should we paint? It was about painting and definitely not about calligraphy in the great Chinese tradition. The term ‘tradition’ itself seemed to be highly controversial and, with the after-effects of the shock of the Cultural Revolution, it had become burdened and distorted. In the meantime, there are a multitude of the most conflicting ideas and practices, partially recited with the features of a declining Socialist Realism, yet also with recourse to French provenance impressionism, from expressionist tendencies to an up-to-date mixture of Euro-American pop. Calligraphy as one of the main achievements of Chinese visual art seems to still be subject to the rules of a tough traditionalism. Everything is possible and yet it seems as if that it is only about achieving the goal of participation in the market place.

　　On a much greater scale, but not dissimilar, the artistic situation in China displays certain similarities with the situation in Spain a few decades ago. An opening to many sides mixed with concerns about the reception, quick learning processes and surprising activities – the world does not change overnight, but strength grows with the courage to break new ground. At the time, we central Europeans surprised the Spanish with their cultural panache with entry to the EU – today it is the Chinese who astound us. Artists from different Chinese provinces had met up with German colleagues from both east and west (for a form of cultural exchange). A stone in the hotel garden acts as a reminder of the first generously organised encounter and on this stone, the occasion and the names of the participants are engraved. The gathering was fruitful and stimulating for both sides and the outcome will, sooner or later, be recognisable where one would like or expect it to be-on the surface of a canvas.

　　Which symbol can capture the diverse, new, familiar and unfamiliar impressions of a stay in Wuyishan? Is there a picture which lies behind the pictures of art, nature and mankind, everyday life and scenery, behind the ‘Images from Wuyi’? Whilst thinking about this, I discover once again a curious stairway which moves steeply up and down the mountains, snakes along the river or reaches over the heights for a short stretch before it completely transforms into upward and downward leading steps. Here one is accompanied by a handrail and there, where it is particularly steep, it flanks the steps or the ridge on both sides over the rocks. Nowhere else in Germany can one find these kind of secured and carefully constructed steps – hundreds of them – carefully worked granite, sandstone or basalt; every stride and step precisely calculated and measured.  It hardly seems possible to make a false step and yet, at the same time, the layout of the long paths undulates and meanders as if they were drawn by a light hand in Indian ink on beautiful paper. The lightness of a Jacob’s ladder and the weight of an assiduous fortress meet or alternate, a game of movement and position which serves the change of place as well as a conscious pausing for a moment. Individually and behind each other, people tread these paths as if they were large or small processions on the loading bridge of a theatre. The observer feels the hand of an invisible choreographer; it is the hand of a Chinese person, yet also the hands of an infinite number of Chinese people who show us these real and walkable yet also abstractly coursing, climbing and falling steps and paths. To physically prepare oneself for these walks, with open eyes and lasting stamina can resemble the first steps of harmonisation.

　　Just two years later in the summer of 2007, I again met Xiaobai Su in his studio in Shanghai; he had opened his studio with an exhibition of his latest pictures for friends, colleagues and collectors. We came straight from the airport having spent three days in Peking and were still feeling somewhat dazed from the plethora of impressions we had gained. In a side street in the centre, there was an empty industrial area behind a wall and, in the middle of this, two plain, spacious factory workshops. Xiaobai Su had furnished one of these as a studio and exhibition space where he also wanted to accommodate other artists and exhibit their works.

　　On this particular evening he had decorated the enormous hall with his pictures and objects. One could see the products of recent years and I was absolutely amazed at the quantity and format of his works which had been created by him in his preferred lavish varnishing technique. A globetrotting organiser and an agent, who commutes between countries and continents on many missions, had found the strength and concentration to dedicate himself solely to his pictures in this remote place. Here again, one could feel the tranquillity and magnitude of the Eifel which he had left and it bid the question, especially after our joint stay in Wuyi, whether the Eifel really are also Chinese mountains – it could be so as long as there in the mega-city of Shanghai and here, in the rural one-time school buildings, the hand of the artist Xiaobai Su is at work and his pictures fill the walls.

　　<1> The spacious ‘Linderan’ property was acquired by Xiaobai Su in 1992 and he lived there as a freelance artist until 2005. He organised numerous workshops there and showed extraordinary energy in his efforts to promote and advance German-Chinese cultural exchanges. In 2005, the artist sold the property to a film producer.

　　<2> Konrad Klapheck, a long-time professor and head of a painting class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf was Xiaobai Su’s teacher, friend and mentor during the duration of his studies from 1987 to 1992 when Xiaobai Su graduated as a Master Scholar.