THE address No. 2A Dayabao Hutong used to be the location of a compound with some 20 rooms at the intersection of Jinbao Street and Second Ring Road in Dongcheng District, Beijing. However, the house can no longer be found on the map of Beijing due to the city’s urban planning. But for China’s history of fine arts, it is a place of legend that no one can forget. In the little-known compound lived big names including Ye Qianyu, Dai Ailian, Li Kuchan, Li Keran, Zou Peizhu, Dong Xiwen, Zhu Danian, Wu Guanzhong and Huang Yongyu.

    Li Xiaoke, son of Li Keran, a famous master of Chinese painting, came to Shenzhen Feb. 21 with his wife Liu Ying to prepare for his upcoming exhibition at Guan Shanyue Art Museum. The exhibition will be his largest in South China with 160 works on display.

    Revolving around “No. 2A Dayabao Hutong,” the exhibition will showcase the representative works of the artists living in the compound as well as the anecdotes and documents related to these artists’ personal exchanges, collaborations in art and historical backgrounds. As the chairman of Li Keran Art Foundation, Li Xiaoke wants to pay tribute to these ordinary yet great artists through the exhibition.

    In an interview with Shenzhen Evening News, Li shared interesting stories of the compound which epitomizes the legend of modern Chinese fine arts and recalled how the compound, where his father Li Keran once lived, witnessed the personalities and lives of these artists, how their deep friendships were recorded and how their mutual respect and understanding transformed this place into a land of fairy tales.

    Li’s family moved to the compound in 1948. They lived in a small room in the north of the backyard and the room was further divided into four smaller ones. As Li recalled, “Our room was only 10 or more square meters. On the east, there was a corridor with a sink. Next to the corridor was my father’s painting studio which was adjacent to our living room. On the far west was our bedrooms.”

    However, in Li’s memory, the most noticeable thing was each painting hung in their rooms. “On the very center of the east wall of our bedroom hung the paintings ‘Lotus’ and ‘Mandarin Ducks in Autumn’ given by Qi Baishi to my parents. On the east wall of our living room hung an ink-painting by Lin Fengmian. On the side wall hung Qi’s ‘A Picture of Cherries’ in which the plate was painted dark green and the cherries fuchsia. And on the wall behind the wooden ‘refrigerator’ in the living room hung my father’s favorite replicas of Western paintings. As long as I can remember, there were Rembrandt’s ‘The Man With the Golden Helmet,’ Francisco Goya’s ‘The Lady in Black,’ Von Gogh’s ‘Still Life: Vase With 15 Sunflowers,’ Whistler’s ‘The Portrait of a Sitting Old Lady.’ All these paintings mirrored my father’s open-mindedness and preference towards culture,” Li said.

    Apart from the room he once lived in, Li also remembered clearly the people there. Huang Yongyu is one of those people who later became an amicable neighbor and a respectable uncle to Li. According to Li, Huang and his wife Zhang Meixi together with their 7-month-old son moved from Hong Kong to Beijing in March 1953. At that time, 28-year-old Huang was appointed as a professor of fine arts and he was also the youngest professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Huang’s family lived in the compound for 10 years.

    In his memoir, Huang wrote, “The first to say hello to us was Li Keran and his wife. To their children, I am their uncle who they respect and rely on. When they bump into me, they will stand straight and sincerely call me ‘uncle.’ The children who grew up in the compound are still very close even as adults. We are so familiar and close. It makes me cry every time when I think of them.”

    There is another person who cannot be neglected even though he didn’t live in the compound. He is Qi Baishi who was a “father” to the people living there. After Li Keran was introduced by Xu Beihong to Qi, Qi had a special bond with Li and they were just like father and son. Qi cared about Li and often visited the compound. Children called him “grandpa” and people were so delighted about his visits that they all cheered and greeted Qi. Li Xiaoke recalled, “When I was 2 years old, Mr. Qi painted me a big catfish as a birthday gift and wrote ‘To Two-year-old Xiao Bao.’”

    He added, “People living there were not blood-related but they treated each other as relatives. They called each other Mother Huang, Mother Li and Aunt Sun ... Every Mid-Autumn Festival, people would set a long table in the middle yard and cooked their own specialty dishes and brought freshly picked dates, pomegranates and grapes. Huang Yongyu usually took the children to the zoo with flags made of handkerchiefs.”

    Now the second generation of the people in the compound are in their 60s and some of them have become masters and outstanding figures in their respective fields. They are confident, optimistic, kind-hearted and a little “foolish,” they attribute these qualities to the fact that they once lived in the compound. Li said that when you opened the gate of No. 2A Dayabao Hutong, you opened the gate to Chinese fine arts from the 1920s. China’s fate is closely connected to the artists living in the compound. They may have different personalities and research interests, but they all contributed to China’s legacy of fine arts.

    In others’ eyes, Li, a second-generation art master, must have a natural advantage in the arts. However Li confessed that it was much harder for people like him to make a difference in art. To live up to the endowed advantage, he had to pay a price. He spent most of his life taking care of his father, helping with his work and promoting his art. What’s more cruel is that he had to get used to being ignored as an artist.

    Liu Ying, who has been married to Li for decades, said that Li is not alone, this is a situation that many children of famous painters are bound to face. To face it positively or to shy away from it is a choice that they must make. Li chose the latter and found great success by considering his fate as a positive experience. He works, thinks and endeavors twice as hard as others. As Li’s wife, Liu shoulders all the responsibilities and pressures, always feeling that it is she who fights for a space for her husband in which he could breathe, think and create. Liu said Li and she are very fortunate to see the real lives of many artists from the 1920s. “Their greatness, simplicity and modesty urged us to work hard and to treat art with reverence and awe. So we are more diligent and grateful,” Liu said.

    Li is famous for his brush painting series called “Shuimo Jiayuan With Beijing,” “Tibet” and “ Huangshan Mountain.” (Yang Mei)