In winter in Myanmar, the weather is always gloomy, and the sun can't be seen for half a month.
The winding Yangon River passes through the mountain gorge, and blue-gray clouds cover the mountains surrounding the river with low pressure, as if water can drip out at any time.
"Gu's calligraphy and painting shop is right here."
Starting from the old capital before Myanmar moved its capital inland and now the largest city in Yangon, drive east for about fifteen minutes. Facing the sparkling water of the Yangon River, there is a row of old-fashioned shops.
This is a relatively prosperous commercial area. International tourists visiting Myanmar can see this string of British-style buildings with gray marble walls after getting off the cruise ship on the Yangon River. Most of these buildings are quite old, and there are some mottled marks on the decorative surface left by the years. The earliest houses were left over from the Anglo-Burmese War, so they have a history of more than a century.
A man wearing a black T-shirt stood in front of a calligraphy and painting shop, looking up at the signboard written in Chinese, English and Burmese.
He looked to be in his thirties, with sunglasses on his face and a shaved head without a single hair. The skin above his collar and below his head showed half a tattoo of an angry Buddha's head. Behind him were two young men smoking cigarettes. The group of people exuded a cold temperament that was incompatible with the surrounding environment.
"Let's go, this is it. Brother Hao said, let's wish Mr. Gu a happy New Year."
When you open the door and walk into the calligraphy and painting shop, the music of the Blue Danube can be heard in the air.
The decoration here is very exquisite, a bit like a small museum covering hundreds of square meters. In the glass frame on the wall is a pair of large or small paintings, ranging from oil paintings to ink paintings. The separate air conditioner heater and dehumidifier make a small, tinny hum.
The two boys behind the bald head curiously stretched out their hands to feel the warm air blowing from the air conditioner.
The temperature in Myanmar is not low in winter, sometimes even reaching above 25°C. Heating facilities are almost never available here. However, calligraphy and painting shops are, after all, secondary markets for selling valuable artworks, and they need to maintain a constant temperature and humidity environment all year round.
The person looking at the calligraphy and painting shop was a thin boy of 16 or 7 years old who looked like a student and wore glasses.
The boy was sitting on the beanbag sofa in front of the corridor at the door, with a drawing board and palette in front of him.
When the bald group entered the door, he was holding a paintbrush in his hand, painting on the canvas. The dark T-shirt with the original Gundam printed on it was stained with a little bit of oil paint. Coupled with his excessively pale skin, the whole person looked... It looks like a colorful look.
"What are you drawing?"
"Mercedes-Benz classic car S220, 1:18 scale. Photorealism, the school's final assignment, due after the Spring Festival." The boy pointed to the antique car model made of resin and metal on the coffee table in front of the drawing board, and A few photos of the actual car.
The painting boy’s name is Gu Weijing. He is just seventeen years old this year and his ancestral home is Wuxi, Jiangsu.
Their family has made a living by painting for generations. According to the genealogy records, it is said that their ancestor is Gu Kaizhi, who was famous for painting "Luo Shen Fu Tu" during the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
It is no longer clear whether the ancestor of the Gu family is the legendary Gu Kaizhi, but it is true that Gu Weijing’s wife and grandfather were court painters. During the Jiaqing year when Myanmar paid tribute, he was ordered to follow the Qing court’s return group to Yangon, and he took root here. .
After all, he is already the fifth generation of Yangon people to run this Gu Gallery.
"Why should I go to school if I have this skill?"
The bald man with tattoos poked the head of his younger brother who was still looking around in the calligraphy and painting shop, and asked them to put the tropical fruit basket they brought on the coffee table at the entrance of the gallery. Walking to Gu Weijing's side, he exclaimed with admiration.
"Minge la (note, Burmese, good luck), this is the New Year's red envelope from Brother Hao to Mr. Xiao Gu..." As he said, he took out a bundle tied with a belt from the pocket bag around his waist. Green banknotes.
The bundle of banknotes was very heavy and heavy, and seemed to be as thick as the palm of an adult man's hand.
Facing such a generous gift, Gu Weijing not only felt no joy in his heart, but also felt unspeakably irritable.
These people came to the store not to buy paintings, but to come to him.
It stands to reason that an ordinary middle school student would not be able to offend these ruthless people who look like they are gangsters, but Gu Weijing has good painting skills.
In art, a profession that relies heavily on talent, it is said that every big figure in history who can leave a glorious page in the history of art showed unique characteristics at a very young age.
For example, at how old was Mozart he was able to play the violin in front of the king, the calligrapher Wang Xizhi liked to eat steamed buns dipped in ink when he was a child, Leonardo da Vinci painted eggs that were extraordinarily round, etc...
Although classmate Gu Weijing is not a big shot, he does have some talent.
From the time he first picked up a paintbrush at the age of four, he displayed an extraordinary quality.
He has a good sense of spatial structure - like a scanner, he magnifies the escape wheel of an old mechanical watch dozens of times, and then uses a brush and ruler to draw the meshing appearance of each gear in precise proportions.
For a painter, with such a sense of spatial structure, it is not difficult to be patient and paint for a month or two, and carefully copy the famous paintings or paintings on antique porcelain one by one to achieve a very high degree of similarity.
His grandfather lamented more than once that his grandson was really born in the wrong era. If he had been born a hundred or two hundred years earlier, not to mention becoming famous and having a family, he would probably have starved to death just because of his ability with a human body camera.
Unfortunately, this kind of objective representationalist painting is no longer valuable in the modern era when printers are everywhere.
No matter how lifelike your drawings are, you can only carry a cardboard box in front of tourist attractions and draw half-foot sketches for two dollars a piece to tourists, and you may not be able to sell a few sketches in a day.
I just don’t know why, but the bald group of people knew that the young master of Gu’s calligraphy and painting shop had this skill.
Gu Weijing had heard of the reputations of bald people. They have a bad reputation on this street, to be precise, they have a bad reputation.
You can tell by looking at their attire that they are not on the right track.
The bald boss is called Brother Hao, and he makes a living by counterfeiting.
Of course, I don’t have the ability to make U.S. dollars like in Fa Ge’s movie “Wu Shuang”, but I do have the guts to create some high-imitation antiques specifically designed to deceive mainland businessmen.
Brother Hao's influence is not small in Yangon. He is very good at both black and white. His forged art is considered very good in the black market and is even exported to RB, Europe and Singapore.
Gu Weijing glanced at the "red envelope" handed over by the bald man, and secretly said trouble.
This wad of money contains the largest amount of kyats.
The front shows the white elephant and lotus, the sacred symbols of Myanmar, and the back shows a colorful painting of Mandalay Lake. Each one is worth 10,000 kyats.
Judging by the thickness, this bundle is either 5 million kyats, or a lucky 8.88 million kyats.
Even if the kyats were worthless, the bundle would be worth two thousand dollars more at the current exchange rate. In Myanmar, where the per capita monthly income is only US$100, this is a lot of money.
It’s not easy to get red envelopes from the underworld.
If you take other people's money, they will make you do things.
Don't look at these people who look like the generous and generous big brothers in Hong Kong movies now. When the time comes, they will be the same people who will destroy your family.
The underworld will always be the underworld.
"Thank you Brother Hao for your support, but I'm still in school."
Gu Weijing had a polite smile on his face and politely but resolutely refused the red envelope.
His eyes glanced at the fruit plate held by the bald boy on the side. In Myanmar, tropical fruits are not worth a lot of money. If he returns them without accepting them, the other party will feel that he has not given face.
For people like the Gu family who open their doors to do business, they pay attention to being friendly and making money.
He thought for a while, put down the brush, found a Marlboro left by his elders from the drawer on the side, and pushed it along the counter.
"Minge, happy New Year, let me take it out for some cigarettes. I don't want the red envelope. Please understand. If my grandpa comes back and finds out that I took your money, he will beat me to death."
"How many years can this old guy live? You don't care about him. It's your blessing that Brother Hao likes you. Others don't have this opportunity yet."
The boy on the side took the Marlboro and seemed very dissatisfied with Gu Weijing's lack of appreciation.
The bald man waved his hand to stop his younger brother's complaints.
"Mr. Gu and Mr. Xiao Gu are both decent and respectable people. They look down on people like us who are trying to get side jobs. The brothers know it. It's just that times are different now. Mr. Gu, Brother Hao said, you should follow him. , you can drive a Ferrari in one year. In two years, in just two years, you can choose any big house in Yangon Ahole (a famous wealthy area in Myanmar), and then give Mr. Gu a big house. The old man can still be angry with you. ?”
Gu Weijing's face still had a smile that could repel people from thousands of miles away. He cupped his hands and said, "Thank you, Brother Hao, for the compliment. It's just that Brother Hao has misjudged the person. I really don't have the ability to take advantage of this money. Please show me your noble hands, your noble hands." "
"Yeah, it's all in vain for me."
The bald man signaled his younger brother to leave, stretched out his hand and patted the counter of the calligraphy and painting shop, staring into Gu Weijing's pupils.
Gu Weijing still had a smile on his face, but the hand holding the brush involuntarily tightened his grip.
"Don't be nervous, Brother Hao said. He is a man of rules. He is here today just to pay New Year's greetings and has no other meaning. As for whether to raise his hand, Mr. Gu, what you say doesn't count, and what I say doesn't count. It's up to you to see when the time comes. That’s what Brother Hao means. However, I would like to advise Mr. Gu, don’t do something that you and I were willing to do in the end that makes everyone look ugly.”
"This is my business card. Whenever Mr. Gu changes his mind, please call me anytime."
After that, the bald man turned around and strode out of the store with his younger brother who had already lit a cigarette in the gallery.
Gu Weijing stared at the direction the bald head left for a while, shook his head, and the smile on his face completely faded and became serious.
"It's really difficult."
As he walked over and turned on the ventilation fan to the maximum to deal with the smoke in the air, he recalled the conversation just now and made sure that he did not give the other party a chance to get involved.
Gu Weijing picked up the brush again and continued to complete the Spring Festival holiday painting before the acrylic paint had dried.
Although he was irritated, his grandfather taught himself that even if he could not be pious, he should be serious when it came to artistic creation. Otherwise, he would not be qualified to eat this bowl of rice.
According to the schedule, he will finish coloring the painting today. Gu Weijing doesn't like the feeling of doing it halfway.
Just when he was writing again.
[Oil Painting: Introduction to lv2 (23/100)]
"Huh?"
A virtual panel suddenly appeared in front of him.
