Adopted son treats ‘grandma’ to special wedding photo shoot

2021-02-27 - Tan Weiyun

ZHANG Jiagang, 24, now a firefighter in Fenyi County of Xinyu City, east China’s Jiangxi Province, was found abandoned and adopted 24 years ago by Tang Caiying, who is now 85 years old.

Tang and her husband raised their own daughter and six infants abandoned by their parents on their own. In 2001, Fenyi County firefighters started to help Tang’s family after learning of their experience. That help has lasted 20 years.

In 2016, Zhang wanted to return the favor so he became a firefighter as a thank you to the fire service for giving him a chance in life.

In May last year, Zhang, who calls Tang “grandma” on account of her age, wanted to do something special for his adopted parents so he arranged a photographer to take some belated wedding photos. Due to the physical condition of his adopted father, Zhang stood in for him. The photos went viral after they were released online.

Now, Zhang and his colleagues aid two students of poverty-stricken families, and he hopes to pass on the love given to him by his adopted parents and the firefighters.

CHINESE painter Chen Fei’s solo exhibition “Morning Market” opens today at the Yuz Museum Shanghai.

Curated as “a museum within a museum,” the exhibition goes through the artist’s still life creations from the past four years.

With Chen’s characteristic dark humor and split-screen style, the new series portrays fruits, dumplings, vegetables and old junk on a desk, to create a panorama of local life by drawing on worldly realities.

These new works, which resemble 17th century Dutch still life paintings, take on an open perspective. They embed humanistic care for people’s lives in a matter-of-fact narrative, presenting the “physical and secular experience of being in the world.”

In terms of drawing skills, the artist, by borrowing from Chinese New Year paintings, has broken away from the worship of Western classical art and completed a simple yet rich creative expression.

In Chen’s artwork “For Breadth and Immensity,” the painter presents a grand, overpowering feast with Oriental food stuffs, such as tofu, chayote, longan, ginseng and other traditional fruits and vegetables.

It is a complex composition, perhaps suggesting gluttony and overconsumption.

The scenario might easily remind viewers of Western still life paintings, such as wines, lemons or cheese, but Chen brushes his still life artwork

with a China approach.

The “Morning Market” could be seen as the visualization of the painter’s efforts in collecting, sorting and summarizing objects.

They are carefully maneuvered by the brush to create a lively market full of images, inviting the viewers to enter a kaleidoscopic and folded world behind the still lives.

Dates: Through May 9 (closed on Mondays), 10am-6pm

Venue: Yuz Museum Shanghai Address: 35 Fenggu Road

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