My dearest daughter,

　　When I began to write this notebook you were just near a half of one year. How I expect that you will be an accomplished artist and an extraordinary one.

　　Please remember, this notebook records all my experience and what I have gained from painting in my whole life. It is the crystal of my hard practice for dozens of years. Though unsystematic, or only with fragments, it contains the contents many people may have not grasped even if they have practiced for a long time. Learning Art is different from learning other subjects. Apart from your painstaking effort, you must have genius, or you will at most be an inferior painter rather than an artist.

　　I have a deep love for the painting art. My devotion to it has never decreased, although my life is poor, and my way is tortuous, and even the life misery has damaged my body, causing me almost fall down. I still concentrate on my painting even if I have only one ruined brush and one piece of wasted paper. It is the art that makes me happy, that frees me from depression and suffering. For the art, I have borne numerous tortures and blows. I paint and paint, always soundlessly sweating, day and night, and I have got piles and piles of painting works no one can count up. I know, it’s impossible for anyone to become a master depending only on his genius, but he must depend also on his diligence. What you have gained from your diligence is more stable and more dependable. From the dialectic viewpoint, quantity is necessary for your progress because a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change. I always find that each time when I have painted quantitatively my painting usually gets a higher level.

　　Learning to paint is a process to cultivate painstakingly, to sweat heavily and to test your perseverance. If you cultivate without honesty, just trying to snatch leisure or unwilling to do with painstaking effort, it is impossible for you to get a big melon at last.

　　If I am asked what I have in my whole life done to the painting, I can proudly answer: I haven’t let it down and I have never been lazy at the least.

　　I often wonder, who, among my children, can carry on and forward what I have gained from painting. My dearest daughter, if you will one day set your mind on painting, I hope you can really understand this gift full of your daddy’s effort and labour, absorbing it in your own art and carrying it forward. Never ruin it casually, because no gain comes without pain. These gains condense my countless success and failure, some of which cannot be found in any book, some are those the others have never experienced, and some are those any other outsider would not give willingly.

　　I expect, you will be talented, intelligent and diligent, and on the other hand, you will be noble-minded and extensive-learned.

　　You shall be merciful to everyone and be tolerant on everything.

The Southern Mountain, Chongqing, 1992

1995年11月与女儿摄于重庆