The First day 2001

　　Place: Hu Ming's Home in Sydney

　　There were stacks of Hu Ming's paintings have been carefully placed along the walls. She took them out one by one to show me. "These were all painted in New Zealand." She arrived in New Zealand in 1990, and started painting oils three years later.

　　The image looks a bit weird, fish are poured from sky; frog kind of animals running between the legs of people; goat with red boots; icy stairs; cat is frozen into square; and giant dragon, opens its huge mouth.

　　Ling: Hu Ming, I'm not smart enough, I cannot get the meaning of your paintings.

　　Hu: Most of these are my wild imaginations. Some of these are from my childhood dreams, just like the one with a little girl and dragon. The dragon woke me up from dreams, it stucks at the tree trunk, and I can still clearly remember the noise that it made.

　　Few dreams from my kindergarten are still fresh as yesterday. Imagine, in a dark corridor, half a face with staring eyes appeared from a half length glass door, and that's me. The corridor was full of foxes, standing there, queueing up and laughing, they were doing gymnastics. And a big fish pond, fish were overflowing everywhere as water. But there's no water at all.

　　Hu: I had another dream also from my early childhood memories. My family lived in the compound of the Army Ground Forces Hospital Headquarter. I loved to go into the teaching buildings in the nursing school with my friends, we jumped in from the window of the building that we called "cross building", to see the "giant" - an educational model. The "giant" is about 4 or 5 meters tall, imported and true to life. The skin is soft, the blood vessel is distinct. The eyes are clear blue and transparent with long and curling eye lashes. Both the eye lids and lips can be opened up, with teeth and tongue inside the mouth, even the tonsil can be clearly seen in the throat. Every important part has foreign annotations. The "giant" is female, laying on a platform, sometime naked, some time covered with white sheet, and sometime with patient cloth on. I never got bored looking at her.

　　Later on, the "giant" had appeared in my dreams numerously, always intertwined with dreams after I became a soldier. During the night emergency gathering, she was there when I suddenly looked up. All the foreign annotations were clear enough, sometime she carried a red plastic bag with Mao's Little Red Book in there.

　　Ling: Sounds like sleeping is the warm bed for your creation, why don't you sleep through the whole day instead.

　　Hu: I do like sleeping. It seems like I spend most of my life sleeping. When "everyday reading" time came when I served in the army, I untied the discipline button and curled up into the cloth, started sleeping while holding the book and drooled. The director said I wasn't "reading everyday", but "sleeping everyday". Thus, I got a nick name of "muddle" (Hu is the family name of the artist, in Chinese it has the same pronunciation with muddle). Sometime, when people from the clinical unit came to hand the broadcast draft, they even call me "little muddle".

　　I was the broadcaster, responsible for wake up call, eat call and lights out call. It was miserable, I couldn't get up in the morning. I relied on alarm clock, the one with chicken pecking decorations. But there still happened a major accident. One night the emergent call went off around three o’clock, and the song followed up. All the medical staff of the hospital woke up and trooped up in the field, including the sick and wounded. When the vice-president came to ask me about the incident, I was asleep with the alarm clock. In the end, I wrote a self-criticism for this.

　　The Second Day 2003

　　Place: Hu Ming's Home in Sydney

　　Hu Ming called me to go over and look at her paintings. It's nearly lunchtime when I got there. Hu was making dumplings, she loves eating dumplings. We were talking while making the dumplings. There's a large scaled oil painting in the opposite, three strong and half naked countryside women standing in the corn field. Each of them holding a bowl of dumplings in their hands. Hu Ming said this painting named . She turned over one of the paintings that lied against the wall. A group of countryside women, vivid and lively, the same style just like the eating dumpling one. These women have the hairstyle of southern women back from the Republic of China period, wearing cloisonne hair ornament of lat Qing dynasty. You can neither tell which era the flowery underpants and under wears that they wore are from, nor where they are from, they just suddenly appeared in front of you.

　　I was stunned for a little while.

　　Ling: Hu Ming, these ladies are really hardy. Look at them, bronze colored skin and full of muscles. This is your standard of beauty, isn't it?

　　Hu: Yes. I'm sick of pitiful kind of women, it's annoying. Thirty years ago Michelangelo influenced my whole life. It's probably since I discovered his paintings, I stepped on a totally different path.

　　I joined the army when I was 15, worked as the broadcaster, movie showing worker and also librarian.

　　I joined the army when I was 15, worked as the broadcaster, movie showing worker and also librarian.

　　254 Hospital used to be the old house of the warlord Cao Kun. The library is located on the second floor of this independent French House, and the stairway is the turning circled wooden stairs. The library was closed during the Cultural Revolution. One day I unlocked a historical lock, I was shock looking into the room: there were books everywhere, about a meter high. It was said that theses were all the “poison grass” that off the shelf. I went through them, they were all excellent books! I stole two of them and brought back to the dormitory. One was Hugo’s , and another was Balzac’s . It was brilliant, my tears wet the pillow case after reading . Since then, I started stealing book everyday. Because I was by myself in the broadcasting studio and no one cared. I usually brought two steamed buns on Sunday and sit in the library for a whole day.

　　One day I found Michelangelo's life drawing among a stack of books. Published in Japanese and already turned yellow. I was strike when I opened the book up-I don't even know that human anatomy can be draw so magnificent!

　　I secretly took this book back and hide it under my quilt. I'm afraid of looking at it in day time. Only until the lights out at night, I started copying it inside out.

　　One night, when I lift up the quilt, the catalogue book disappeared, also a pair of shorts. So I bet he or she must had done this purposely for the shorts. This kind of things happened all the time, and I dare not to make it a huge scene, thus, keep it to myself.

　　On the second day, the commander of political department called me in the office. On the desk it's that troublesome book.

　　The commander asked: "Where did you get this?"

　　"From the library."

　　"It supposed to be sealed up, it's part of the feudalism, capitalism and revisionism!"

　　I was afraid to say a thing.

　　The director started talking in a sincere manner: “Hu Ming, the organization has always been cultivating you. But now we are so disappointed on you. Why did you paint naked people! It's not only the representation of capitalist consciousness, but it also indicates your mind is very complicated."

　　At that time, "capitalist consciousness" and "complicated mind" we're two different terms. The former is about political standpoint, and the latter is lifestyle problem, which is even more despised. I was frightened and cried, I thought I was addicted. But it's really funny that the person who reported this didn't mention his or her behavior of stealing.

　　Ling: I would like to ask a rather personal question, I have to admit, when I first saw masters' drawing of human bodies at the year of 14 or 15, I had sex fantasy. Did Michelangelo's body drawings give you the same feeling, which also became one of the elements in your paintings?

　　Hu: No. I started reading the medical books at early age, there's book called , it's full of real human photos, which is revolting. In the meanwhile, I have seen so many dead bodies at the hospital. I really had enough of looking at naked bodies, most of them were extremely ugly. But Michelangelo's are different, they are breathtakingly beautiful and perfect. Also, all the male "important parts" in this book have been covered by cloth, and in this way, they didn't create any sex fantasy.

　　Ling: What happened after Michelangelo had been confiscated?

　　Hu: Michelangelo had already changed me. Later on I found a good place, the bath house. The bath house in our hospital opened twice a week. It was fully packed with 3 or 4 people under each shower nozzle, and there were shaking people waited around. They were all young female soldiers, nurses, doctors. How vigorous the naked scene was after they were undressed!

　　I brought the painting kit to the bathhouse, spread the drawing paper in the steam. Some of the female soldiers screamed: “Hu Ming, you are so indecent, do not draw me!" Some others said: " go ahead, but I'm warning you, no faces are allowed!". The drawing paper got wet by the steam very soon. And I enjoyed my drawing while catching those moving bodies.

　　Ling: That is to say, in your paintings, no matter the countryside women or the female soldiers, their beautiful bodies were from the old time impressions.

　　Hu: Maybe, but only sketches were not enough. My major in nursing provided me advantages.

　　I was promoted in 1973 because one of the Chinese paintings I painted won the Excellence Prize in the group exhibition of the military region. It was titled - a female soldier preaching . The so called "promotion" was me becoming a nurse, which was the lowest rank among the 23 ranks of National Administration.

　　The resource of dead bodies for anatomia education was very limit. Some of them were kept from the Anti-Japanese War period, which turned into the color of beef jerky. The muscle looked like stripped monk's ragged robe covered on the skeleton, underneath was the bicipital macule of the arms, and another layer was the triceps muscle. The nervus was spread out like broken electric wires. Students were scared of going there because it was said that room was haunted. You can hear the footsteps of people running at night, and girls were always gathered together. I'm not scared, I wanted to go over at night on my own to practice, so I could concentrate and lift the skin to draw the muscle and bones. The smell of formalin made my eyes watery. The power was cut off sometime, so I had to use torch. Imagine, a dark room full of dead bodies with faint beam, and I was wearing a big mask bent over the corpses, looking.

　　Ling: Did you hear the ghosts running?

　　Hu: Really did not.

　　Ling: Your countryside women were busty and well developed, did you used this kind of presentation to illustrate the abundant fertility of female? Or phallism?

　　Hu: It can be understood like this. To me, its Michelangelo’s strong influence, I’m deeply in love with the vitalized muscle that he painted. No matter men or women, not sure since when female were depicted without muscle.

　　Ling: There is one thing I don’t understand, from your experiences, you have come into contact with so many deaths: the dissection of the hospital, the deaths of the sick and wounded, stripping the skin of dead baby, to excise the organs from people sentenced from death penalty, be presented at the scene of clearing victims from the Tangshan Earthquake. Fresh or dried corpse, soaked or living organ. Some people will become depressed or even nervous breakdown, or at least leaving a grey memory. However, in your paintings, it’s hardly to see that kind of dark decadence, but a completely opposite way to manifest live, healthy body, ruddy face, big smile, and the similar prosperous atmosphere from the Chinese New Year picture.

　　Hu: The characters in my paintings are not real, but the ideal characters that I’m pursing. I do like it. As long as I think it’s needed, I will totally add strong stimulation in my paintings, just for the excellent visual effect. The real world is way too ugly. I would like to lead people into the “real” world that I have created.

　　Ling: There is another thing, your paintings are far removed from the academic skills that I know. Simply a subversion.

　　Hu: Right, many of my painting techniques are the taboo in academic oil skills. I understand that some people who study oil paintings dismiss my style of painting. I have never formally studied oil paintings, or even drawings. I don’t follow any rules or standards. I have to do it my way, even if there is nowhere to go, I have to continue it.

　　Ling: So how did you get the idea of this style/form?

　　Hu: It’s really simple, maximize my favorable strength and minimize the unfavorable weakness. You know, my profession is the meticulous personage in Chinese painting. I have good basic skills. I was doing Chinese painting when I first arrived in New Zealand, but I could not find any authentic rice paper after I used up mine, that is why I started oil paintings. As a result, the meticulous paintings skills were naturally brought into my oil painting creation. And I found out the effect was so very special.

　　In 2003, Hu Ming had her first Australian solo exhibition at Soho gallery, . Australia’s famous Chinese artist Shen Jiawei gave Hu Ming an address book that he accumulated for so many years. Hu Ming sent her invitations according to that book. According to the gallery, they had never seen these many people during an opening ceremony. The influential Australian translator Mable Lee gave an opening speech. Soho is a small gallery, but Hu Ming’s exhibition shocked all the guests. A bunch of Chinese countryside women were vibrantly stood in front with bright and vivid color, which broke the established visual formula that the audiences had already had. People enjoyed calling this series “Big Girl Series”. There were also several paintings of female soldiers in the exhibition, which developed into a larger series later.

　　Hu Ming originally had an extremely feminine name, in 1957 when the idea of “speak out freely, air ones view fully” was prevalent in the air, her mother changed her name to Hu Ming. The name change was appropriate, it means to amaze the world with a single brilliant feat.

　　The Third Day 2006

　　Place: Hu Ming’s Home in Sydney

　　I went to visit Hu Ming, another complete new series.

　　In one painting, a woman is extracting liquid from a gigantic red chili pepper, and another one is bottling in a distance, to get ready to transport to the market. It was titled . In another painting, a woman is half turning into the color of the capsicum that she’s sitting on, called .The most scary one is the one in completion in a large scale of 2 meters, a group of women swimming in a huge half watermelon with several frogs. They did not realize that they had become the monster of half human, half frog and half watermelon. The red woman-like fingernail is growing from the flipper of the gigantic frog. This painting was called .

　　Hu: This series is about genetically modified food.

　　Ling: Exciting. Compare to your previous works, these paintings contain a sense of absurdity, especially the last one, it’s scary.

　　Hu: It is absurd, isn’t it? This world is as absurd as this. Human being is currently facing the survival crisis, the advanced technology that they produced plus the ubiquitous business scam, the world is out of control. The so called genetically modified food that is produced through bio-science is contrary to the law of biological autologous.

　　Ling: In my point of view, it is a sudden change from the “Big Girl Series” to genetically modified food. The genetically modified food series can be seen as the continuation of Michelangelo’s transgene. It is no long about praising, but expressing the concern of human survival. This is a serious topic.

　　Hu: I have been living abroad for more than ten years now. It is difficult to see direct elements from Western society from my paintings, but they do really exist and have impact on me. The biggest impact is respect for life, no matter the human beings, the animals or the nature, everything that has life. To cherish the living environment of human beings is one of the most important aspects of respecting life.

　　These paintings were shown in Melbourne, which caused great attention in Australian art world.

　　The Fourth Day 2007

　　Place: Hu Ming’s Studio in Beijing

　　In 2007, I got a call from Hu Ming when I was visiting relatives in Beijing. She’s already been painting in Beijing for ten months.

　　She told me that she rented a studio in Beijing and invited me to go over and have a look. The studio is located in an old building back from the 70s in the city center.

　　Go along the narrow staircase, an old unit on the third floor is the one. There were ten large scaled (about a person’s height) paintings standing along the wall. Another new series of works. It was a scrolled oil painting, 14 meters long, 1.4 meters high. She added historical characters in <87 Immortals> from Song Dynasty. All the male immortals are disappeared, and a bunch of female passerby with cloths from different periods replaces their positions. From Qing Dynasty’s Manchu costume in the beginning to the bikini in the end, it’s a hundred year timespan. They are surrounded by line sketched female fairies, walking from the space-time of civilization alternation. The color tone is sunset melting gold, marble like evening clouds, fascinating…

　　Hu: This painting is called < Relic of the New 87 Immortals-Following the Sun >. It’s about the transformation of female cloths in the past centenary. Let me introduce to you from the beginning: at the beginning of these are the odalisques, imperial concubines and ordinary women back from Qing Dynasty;

　　They are the women from the 20s, large cuff, high collar, scissors hairstyle, Western hat;

　　These ladies are from Shanghai in the 30s, all kind of hetaera, Western maxiskirt, cheongsam with jacket outside;

　　These are the costume of female street beggars, student uniform of the May 4th and the attire of progressive youth who’s on their way to Yan’an;

　　This one, female soldier from the Liberation War era, and this is the female militia; the one with mask on is the female cadre down South, and also the Northern girl with mourning dress;

　　These are the female textile workers, female intelligentsia, female construction works and female salesperson;

　　Here comes to the 60s, female red guards from middle school, unisex Mao style cloths;

　　The mid-aged women in the market from 70s or 80s, flared trousers, afro hairstyle and portable cassette player;

　　These are the trendy new generation from the 90s to 2000, bikini and beanie.

　　Ling: I think rather than saying the depiction of women in various cloths indicates the costume change of a hundred years, the fashion change reflects the political transformation and changing times.

　　Hu: I’m flattered. I’m not that profound. I have no in depth study toward politics and history. My original intention was not to display women’s liberation or historical revolution. My focus was on people, through the change of fashion to represent the transforming people. Look how gorgeous the cloths of the 87 immortals are. Women from every period have their own facial appearance, new meaning is created when they have been put together，and the contrast among aesthetics from diverse era is established. Do you know which one if my favorite? This one, the cadre down South. With a flushed face, she insists to wear the then fashionable mask, her cheongsam and men’s shoes both reveal her mastership.

　　Ling: Ha ha, how interesting.

　　Hu: The last one, which is couchant, wearing a pair of flowery underpants with red star on the forehead, is me.

　　There is always a sense of humor and tease in Hu Ming’s paintings.

　　The Fifth Day 2008

　　Place: Hu Ming’s Home in Kangaroo Valley

　　Hu Ming told me that she had created another batch of paintings. She invited me to the mountains and took a look of those new paintings. More than two hundred kilometers away from Sydney in the hillside into the wood, a grey house is located on the grassy slope.

　　There is a wooden cabin around fifty meters away from the house, and that is the studio that Bob has customized for Hu Ming. It has excellent lighting. Hu Ming loves to be left alone and painting in the mountains, no news, no newspaper, no one speaks English or Chinese, but only winds and birds’ twittering. The idea of time is faded here. She always continues to painting for one or two months without coming out of the mountains.

　　Hu Ming produced another series of female soldiers. As early as 2003 or even earlier, she started painting female soldiers. I especially love this series because it arouses my spiritual resonance, even though I have never had any military life experiences. But I have lived through that era, the era when our youth thrived, both soldiers and non-soldiers.

　　Lin: Did you hear that, your female soldier paintings have been labeled as Russian artworks online, they even condemned the Russians of spoofing and smearing Chinese female soldiers.

　　Hu: Of course I know that. In fact, for people who have lived through the 70s, they would know these are not painted by foreigners immediately when they see the paintings.

　　Ling: You are right, you can just tell the weight of army career in your life through your paintings.

　　Hu: It’s way too important! Think about it, I joined the army when I was 15 and retired from there in the year of 35. I dedicate my juvenile period, youth and half of the middle age to the army, how can I forget.

　　Ling: I like the expressions of your female soldiers, very innocent and pure, that is the manner of dedicating youth and blood to the Party.

　　Hu: Naive, and real.

　　Ling: Exactly! This is the common feature of our young people from that era. I also like the way you depict the details very much. The peeling walls, cracks on doorframe, slogans with dripping ink, broken mirrors, naked light bulbs, the dried sweating shoes, men’s plastic sandals, these are all the symbols that mark our period, they take me back to the old times in a second.

　　Hu: That’s a foolish and pale era, with harsh and rough environment. Both the material and spiritual lives are extremely poor.

　　Ling: Well, the “paleness” is in sharp contrast with the beauty and aliveness of the female soldiers. What I want to know is, most of the female soldiers that you have painted are naked or half naked, but they are different from sexy big girls. Although the latter is naked, the entire image is dissociated outside reality, in the world that you have created. They have dressed up extremely sexy, naked, half naked and transparent military uniforms. I have this kind of feeling: these nude female soldiers are the subversion in the world of army men, they might be the reflection of your unconscious sexual repression?

　　Hu: I have never carefully thought about it in this way, I don’t feel like I was sexually repressed. I started dating boys since 17, which was fun.

　　Ling: I thought dating was banned in the army? Tell me more about it!

　　Hu: Soldiers were not allowed to date, but cadres can. I was promoted before turning 18. My first boyfriend was a thoracic surgeon. The way we dated was just like a spy movie. We used specific gestures to pass on the time and place of our next date. During the dating, he was always out of the hospital door first, I followed him a bit later because a commander was always on duty. Once, he was out first, I took a big broom on my shoulder to pretend. I walked out unhurriedly. We were walking along the seaside with the broom on my shoulder all the time. It’s really funny to think about it now. Dating boys was the most interesting thing in that boring era

　　All in all, during my adolescence, “Libido” was released healthily.

　　There are also some paintings that recorded my military life, such as . We often had readiness exercise or emergent assembly at night. I had the habit of taking off the underpants and changing into the slouchy unisex one that the army sent out when I was sleeping. When emergent assembly call was on, I jumped off the bed and could not find the underpants, so I rushed out by wearing outside army pants directly and without underpants.

　　And also that one of injection, that depicts the basic skills of training nurses. In order to be accurate of the injecting position, we used gentian violet to mark a cross on the buttocks. Finding a point at the one-third of the upper buttocks, practiced on each other. I was feared on pain, so only practiced on pillows.

　　The old times can never come back, I can only go back to the army in my dreams. Over the years, I still dreamed of being late at the emergent assembly, sometime I forgot the quotation book even I had the underpants on, and sometime I just could not find my troop during the march; or, I found out I was the only one wearing vintage uniform, when my comrades were in new uniforms. I also dreamed of the public bathhouse, I could even smell the steam and the soap of Lighthouse brand in the dream.

　　Dreams become eternal when they fall on the canvas.

　　Ling: Army is the masculine world, everything about the place makes women forgot their own gender, and lost their feminine consciousness. This kind of “collectively unconscious” gender distortion has also been revealed in your paintings.

　　Hu: In the army, it is considered as praise if any female soldier has been regarded as “tomboy” by the commanders. I have often been praised as “tomboy”, which made me feeling very proud. I thought it was not too far away to join the party every time when I heard this.