A girl who lost her father since childhood, by working part-time, pulling a big board to sell fruits to earn tuition and study for college, and realized her artistic dreams, and now her works are frequently awarded in national competitions, she is an inspirational figure - Zhang Yunhua, a master of arts and crafts in Anhui Province.
First, pull the scooter to earn tuition
Zhang Yunhua was born in Xiao County, Anhui Province, which is known as the "Hometown of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting", and since she was a child, she has been infected with the art of calligraphy and painting in her hometown, and she has aspired to be a calligrapher and painter since she was a child. When she was only nine years old, the originally happy family suddenly fell into trouble due to the unfortunate death of her father, who worked at a supply and marketing cooperative. Her sick mother, who took her and her two younger brothers to guard a few acres of land to spend the day, was forced to stop school because she had no money to pay tuition, and Zhang Yunhua, who was preparing to attend junior high school, was forced to stop school and help her mother farm at home and take care of her two younger brothers. Whenever she saw the children of the same village carrying school bags to school, she was very sad, and in the end, she still insisted on going to school despite her mother's obstruction, and without tuition fees, she went to work in the township yellow peach canning factory and used the wages she earned to pay tuition.
Whenever there is a holiday, Zhang Yunhua in addition to helping her mother to do farm work, is to go to the township to work in the yellow peach canning factory to earn tuition and miscellaneous fees, that year and month the food market lack of health supervision, canning factory additive corrosion hurt Zhang Yunhua's hands and feet skin, helplessly she lost the opportunity to earn money, again forced to drop out of school. Father's original unit leaders looked at Zhang Yunhua's family is too difficult, and finally let Zhang Yunhua's mother go to the town supply and marketing cooperatives to become a salesman, so that Zhang Yunhua once again carried a school bag to the campus, although the mother has a stable job, but life is still hard, the mother not only has to be a good salesman, but also to plant a few acres of land on which the whole family depends, no way, because it is far from home, the mother lives in the store department with two young brothers, Zhang Yunhua can only live alone in the old home because he is near school, At that time, she was a little girl of about twelve years old, she had to wash and cook her own clothes, the most bitter was thunder and rain and night, and she was a little girl who could only suffer in fear. Because her mother was illiterate, Zhang Yunhua learned to plan the plate assiduously, and in addition to helping her mother to transport goods to the warehouse of the supply and marketing cooperative for dozens of kilometers every month, she also had to help her mother's store department keep accounts and inventory.
When Zhang Yunhua was in high school, because her brothers also had to study, she was once again forced to stop school because she had no living expenses for tuition and miscellaneous expenses, and for tuition fees, Zhang Yunhua had to run back and forth for more than a hundred miles to find her father's former friends to borrow money. She took advantage of the holidays to go to the township grain and cotton purchase points to work as handymen, help the purchase points plan to make accounts, and when the fruits came out, she went to The county of Lishan County, a hundred kilometers away, to wholesale apples and pears, and pulled a large scooter to sell in the villages of her hometown market town. In order to save money, she asked the principal to let her put a coal stove next to the dormitory to cook rice, she brought turnips, greens, potatoes, steamed buns from home every week with plastic bags, and ate them herself, after three years of high school, she was admitted to Huainan Normal College to study art education, in order to earn tuition and miscellaneous fees for higher colleges, Zhang Yunhua In addition to working, pulling a scooter to sell fruits, she also used her spare time to do tutoring, taking the drawing board to the market to paint portraits of people. The years of college study were spent in the tuition and miscellaneous expenses while studying.
Fortunately, when she was a freshman in college, she won the Xu Beihong Art Competition with an oil painting and received a 500 yuan prize for the first time in her life.
Second, endless study and further study
After graduating from Huainan Normal School, Zhang Yunhua was admitted as an art teacher at Xuqiao Junior High School in Taihu County, where in addition to teaching art classes, she also served as a history class and class teacher for four years. In 2001, Zhang Yunhua was admitted to the Taihu County No. 2 Middle School, a key high school at the provincial level in Anhui Province, with excellent results, and served as an officer of the Political and Educational Affairs Office. At that time, the campus generally only paid attention to the main courses of further education, and the sub-courses of art and music were not paid much attention. Zhang Yunhua mainly did some chores in school, such as writing art style characters, drawing sample newspapers, and publishing wall periodicals.
After a long time, Zhang Yunhua thought that this would waste her art studies, and she decided to continue to study at the art academy. In order to pass the English exam, from the 26 letters of English, she forced herself to learn English, find teachers to tutor, buy teaching aids, listen to English broadcasts, rote memorization, chat and communicate with different foreigners every day through the Internet, and finally passed the English 39 points when she was studying for graduate school, and she actually scored 59 points. In 2008, Zhang Yunhua was admitted to the Oil Painting Department of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts with a good score of 16 points higher than the admission score line, but was rejected because he was a college graduate and not a bachelor's degree, and was eventually transferred to Jiangxi Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute to study ceramics. After agreeing to the original Taihu No. 2 Middle School's request that she leave work for graduate school for three years with pay and return to school for six years, she became a graduate student at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute.
(Zhang Yunhua ceramic arts and crafts works)
Zhang Yunhua originally painted oil painting, painting pottery at first she was very uncomfortable, and then under the guidance and encouragement of the college tutor, she gradually became attracted to pottery painting, and soon entered the role, in the in-depth understanding of the production process of ceramics, she also conducted in-depth research on ceramic painting art. Even her lover, who taught at Taihu Experimental Middle School, under her influence, took advantage of the opportunity to visit her in Jingdezhen on holidays and skillfully learned ceramic making and porcelain kiln firing techniques.
Third, in this life, I love chrysanthemums and lotuses the most
When walking into the Xiaozi Pottery Museum in taihu County's five-thousand-year-old cultural expo garden, most of the porcelain plate paintings, bottles, altars, bowls, and plates printed into the eye are chrysanthemums and lotus lotuses, Zhang Yunhua explained that she has loved chrysanthemums since she was a child, she was born in the north of the Huai River, every autumn and winter, thousands of trees wither, looking at the four wildernesses are desolate, only the chrysanthemums in front of the door are still proud of flowers. It has been suggested that chrysanthemums are often used for funerals. Zhang Yunhua said that she consulted the information and found that chrysanthemums are one of the top ten famous flowers in China, not only one of the four gentlemen of flowers (Meilan bamboo chrysanthemum), but also one of the four major cut flowers in the world. Chrysanthemums have the character of being cold and proud of snow, and only then do they have Tao Yuanming's famous sentence of "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, leisurely seeing the South Mountain". In ancient China, it was known that chongyang festivals were used to admire chrysanthemums and drink chrysanthemum wine. In ancient myths and legends, chrysanthemums are also given the meaning of auspiciousness and longevity. Zhang Yunhua said that she is related to chrysanthemums, her first award-winning work is chrysanthemums, she just joined the work to teach at Xuqiao Junior High School, a cluster of chrysanthemums in front of her dormitory accompanied her for four spring, summer, autumn and winter, and later worked at Taihu No. 2 Middle School, which was also accompanied by chrysanthemums for a long time.
As for why she loves lotus flowers, Zhang Yunhua said that when she was a graduate student at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute, she often took a bus to and from Jiujiang and Anqing, and there were many lakes and fields along the way, and every summer there was a piece of turquoise lotus leaves with white and red lotus flowers. She especially admired the noble character of the lotus flower, "out of the mud without staining, clean and not demon", so the lotus flower also became one of the main subjects of her ceramic paintings.
Zhang Yunhua said that it is not so easy to paint chrysanthemums and lotuses well, and every composition comes from careful observation in life, don't look at chrysanthemums, lotus branches and petals wither, they will be turned into fertilizer to return to the roots.
Nowadays, Zhang Yunhua also repays the society like the petals of chrysanthemums and lotus flowers, she has always insisted on doing charity, often taking part of her income to support poor families, and using holidays to teach children from poor families to learn art and pottery.
Fourth, hard work and harvest
As the saying goes: a little hard work is a reward. Nowadays, Zhang Yunhua is a female ceramicist member of the China Ceramic Industry Association, an expert of the evaluation library of the Anhui Province Manufacturing Strong Provincial Project, a director of the Anhui Traditional Arts and Crafts Protection and Development Promotion Association, a master of arts and crafts in Anhui Province, a celebrity of arts and crafts in Anhui Province, a member of the Anhui Artists Association, a member of the Anhui Design Artists Association, and a member of the Jiangxi Arts and Crafts Society.
Zhang Yunhua has achieved fruitful results with hard work and diligence, and her ceramic craft works have won consecutive awards: in 2021, "Close Your Eyes and Listen to the Flower Language" won the gold medal of the 10th "Dadi Award" Chinese Ceramic Innovation and Design Competition, in 2020, "Lotus Heart" won the bronze medal in the 7th Jiangxi Provincial Arts and Crafts "Rhododendron Award" competition, in 2019 "Lotus Heart" won the gold medal of the "Huigong Cup" of the 9th Anhui Provincial Arts and Crafts Exposition, and in 2018, "Drunken Autumn" won the silver medal of the "Huigong Cup" of the 8th Arts and Crafts Exposition of Anhui Province. In 2017, "Wild Twilight" was selected into the "Sixth Anhui Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition Pottery Works Exhibition", in 2017, "Scale Shadow Map" was selected into the "Sixth Anhui Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition Pottery Works Exhibition", in 2017," "Wild Twilight" won the gold medal of the "Huigong Cup" of the 7th Anhui Provincial Arts and Crafts Exposition, in 2016, "Lotus Love" won the gold medal of the "Huigong Cup" of the Sixth Anhui Provincial Arts and Crafts Exposition, and in 2016, "Mandarin Bath Lotus Flower" won the Silver Award and Best Design Award of the 2016 Top Ten Ceramic Masterpieces Selection of China Collection. In 2015, "Late Autumn Nostalgia" won the gold medal of the "Huigong Award" of the Fifth Arts and Crafts Exposition of Anhui Province, in 2015, "Lotus" won the first prize of the Huizhou-Ceramic Art Fair, and in 2014, "Drunken Autumn Love" won the Silver Award of the 2014 China Collection of Top Ten Art Ceramics Selection Silver Award · Best Art Award.
In 2013, "Lotus Heart" won the Best Silver Award and Art Award of the 2013 China Collection of Top Ten Art Ceramics, this work was successfully auctioned by the East-West International Auction Company, in 2012, "Autumn Intention" won the Silver Award of the First Anhui Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition Ceramic Art Biennale Arts and Crafts Ceramics Competition, in 2012 "Different Red" won the Silver Award of the "Porcelain Capital Qunfang" Jingdezhen Female Ceramics Works Exhibition, in 2012 "Light And Light Jinren" was successfully auctioned by Huayi Auction Company in Jingdezhen, and in 2012 "Drunken Autumn" In 2012, Huayi Auction Company successfully auctioned "Drunken Autumn" in Hangzhou and won the Bronze Award of The Top Ten Famous Art Ceramics in China's Collection, this work was successfully auctioned by the East-West International Auction Company, in 2012, "Drunken Autumn" was successfully auctioned in Shenzhen in 2011, "Different Red" won the first prize of the Jingdezhen Mass Cultural Activity Achievement Exhibition, in 2011", "Drunken Autumn" won the 2011 Top Ten Art Ceramics Famous Works and Gold Award of China Collection, this work was successfully auctioned by the East-West International Auction Company, and "Temptation" in 2011 He won the Excellence Award of the 2nd China Mobile Communications Cup China Jingdezhen Gift Ceramic Design Competition, in 2010", "Yingri" was selected into the 9th National Ceramic Art Design Innovation Competition, and in 2010, "Summer Love" won the third prize of art porcelain at the China Jingdezhen International Ceramics Fair.
(China Daily Anhui Reporter Station)