Hello everyone, I'm Humble Chen.
I've had a problem since I was a kid, do I have to surpass Leonardo da Vinci or Van Gogh?
I was 8 years old at the time, and I was convinced that I had a fairly high talent for painting, as evidenced by the fact that he said so every time he paid tuition to his art teacher.
So I asked my mom which master I wanted my son to surpass before he became an adult.
But my mom said that surpassing Leonardo da Vinci was a bit costly. Each pigment alone can be worth half a month's worth of vegetable money.
I listened and shifted my enthusiasm to the text in time. Now 30,000 words of stories are coded out every week, which consumes only two kilowatts of electricity, saves energy, reduces emissions, and most importantly, does not cost money.
But I know of a big brother, according to the world's vision, he should have given up painting like me - he was 49 years old, he relied on scrap collection for a living, but he spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy oil paint, and painted thousands of oil paintings in 5 years.
This is a story that lets me know how brave people should be in the face of reality.
It's really hard to say, a bright man is a painter, or a waste collector.
He lives in a village on the outskirts of Shaoxing, surrounded by factories and construction sites. The rental house is about 15 square meters, he lived for 16 years, and now the monthly rent is 300 yuan.
The room's more than a meter-tall waste carton, rusty electric fan, and dusty computer all show his identity as a waste recycler.
And a few tables filled with paint, quick-drying oil, paintbrushes, and a dozen or so colorful paintings hanging on the walls are telling everyone: Hey, he's still a painter.
The waste and paintings are placed in the bright home
During the day, he sold a pound of waste paper shells, which could be exchanged for 1 yuan; selling a pound of plastic bottles, he could exchange for 1 yuan 2, but he had to buy tens of thousands of yuan of oil paints, using the British Qiao qin for 75 yuan and the Rembrandt for 175 yuan, both imported.
At night, he sat in the scrap heap, copying Monet, Chardin, Leviathan, Monsende, and among his favorite painters were Renoir and Guo Runwen.
Sitting here when it rains, you can paint 2 pictures a day
Collect the rags but insist on painting? The contrast between the two is too great. At first, he uploaded his own paintings on Kuaishou, was noticed, and made a video of his story. The video was forwarded by the People's Daily, on the hot search, and got tens of millions of views, netizens said that this is the modern version of the "Burrow Ming".
You can go to Kuaishou to search for it
After watching the video, I had an interview call with him, but he basically did not mention painting, only said his previous part-time work experience. But he doesn't want to show how bitter he is, but says he's "optimistic and going with the flow."
"It doesn't matter, for the sake of life, what you can paint, you won't think much about it later."
He even said as if he didn't care if he could paint later.
He was clearly guarding against something.
I didn't know why this was the case, so I immediately bought a ticket to Shaoxing and planned to meet him in person.
On the day of the meeting, MingGuang wore an old gray shirt, a pair of pants covered with paint, and a pair of slippers, and waited for me at the door of the village committee. I followed him through alleys to a low iron gate.
A light stood at the door of the house
When I entered the burrow, The Light seemed embarrassed, "This place is too small."
He sat me down and took out a porcelain jar from the cupboard, and the customer gave it to him, saying it was very good Longjing tea. During this time, he deliberately spread a towel on the stool and boiled the bowl three times with boiling water.
I talked to him for 2 days and I wanted to hear him tell the truth.
Ming Guangming is 49 years old this year, collected 18 years of waste and painted oil paintings for 5 years.
From 2016 to 2019, for 3 full years, Bit Guangming burned every painting of himself, bringing the total to nearly 500. He used a knife to cut, tear, and then take it to the garbage dump at the end of the alley, throw it into the fire and burn it, the process took less than 2 minutes.
A painting that was torn up by the light of day
Bit Light doesn't get the attention of others in the first place. On the contrary, when he first started painting oil painting, he was always reminded by the world: you are a waste seller, oil painting does not belong to you, how can you paint well?
This feeling of "not belonging to you" was all too familiar to him.
He was passed down to his uncle by his biological parents from an early age, whether it was the original family or later, which family did not belong to him, and he still did not even know his birthday.
He was taken to a farm in Gansu by his uncle who was a soldier, and he saved his living expenses to buy a copy of "Dream of the Red Chamber", which was torn up on the spot by his uncle. My uncle said it was a book that taught people to fall in love, and he couldn't fall in love with local girls because he didn't belong there and would get into trouble.
When he grew up, he wanted to draw, no teacher to teach, no money to learn, Bit Guangming could only spend a hundred yuan, collected an abandoned broken computer, fixed it himself, and began to search for tutorials on the Internet.
He added a group of painters, and people released a work, and he asked at the bottom: How to adjust this color? What can be explained in a few words, people are ambiguous and confused, just don't want to tell him.
He groped for himself, and when he didn't collect waste, he painted it at home. I didn't have money to buy an easel, so I just bought a canvas, cut it myself into 50x60 centimeters, glued it to a wooden board pasted on the wall, and painted on the wall.
To this day, various paints can still be seen on the wooden planks on these walls, and the painting techniques he wrote down: "Tree: Dip deep ochre with a pen; Distant Mountain: First on the middle yellow." ”
The handwriting is still not faded
Bit Guangming knew that he didn't paint well, but after some progress, he wanted to take a picture of it and post it on Weibo that no one read, affirming himself. For two years, someone occasionally liked it, and he deliberately replied in the comment: "Thank you for the like." ”
But it's more of a pungent taunt. For example, in a painting called "Dawn of Spring", he painted the sky purple, posted it, and someone said: "This is the autumn rainstorm, I advise you to go out and lift your brain shell to see the sky." ”
Others say, "You're wasting paint when you paint." ”
Later, he shared his paintings and lives, allowing people to see his true identity. At this time, others did not say his paintings, but directly attacked him: "Those who collect waste goods, collect them during the day, and steal them at night." ”
The words stung him. Can't those who collect waste paint? Holding his breath, he wrote three sentences on the easel—
"Don't beg when you starve, don't steal when you starve, don't bow your head when you starve."
At this point, the drawing board was in front of me, but the paintings were gone. 500 sheets, put into a torch.
He didn't want to stay, "there's no need to stay for something that doesn't look good." I don't want to give people away, "No need, I can't understand it." ”
His house was filled with too many clutter, a mountain of scraps, a dozen antique projectors, but it could not accommodate the unsightly paintings.
Bit Guangming first began to paint dead people.
He was only twenty-four years old at the time, and he didn't have time to make money if he wanted to paint, so he tried to make money by painting. He bought a drawing board to paint in the underground passage of Tianhe Square in Guangzhou, treating himself as a street performer. When there was no one, he would draw celebrity portraits, and when people came around to ask for business, they would ask for dozens of dollars. Sometimes it doesn't look like a painting a day, and people don't give money.
Most of the time, he didn't even make money to stay in a hotel.
There is a custom in Guangdong that when the elderly die, they want to paint the remains, and many people take the old photos that have been put away for more than ten years for him to paint and use as a relic. Others say that the light painted this obscure and did not want to approach him. Bit Guangming did not paint, and then went to Zhaoqing Dinghu lake, sihui some small villages to paint archways, painting Guan Gong and Meilan bamboo chrysanthemum, meaning auspicious and happy.
Sketching in the village, every three days to change the place, otherwise there is no customer to say, will be suppressed by local painters.
He was always like this, running and painting at the same time.
It was as if I had escaped to a place to see if I could survive and do what I wanted to do. This kind of life, for him, is not just painting those years, but a small half of his life.
Born in 1972, he left the farm in Gansu at the age of seventeen and dropped out of school in his third year of high school. The reason is that the two younger brothers married earlier than him, and according to the custom of the village, his eldest brother will be looked down upon by the whole village.
After that, he experienced several years of upheaval and displacement, picking up goods at shanghai docks, unloading coal at a railway station in Liaoning, being owed wages at a construction site in Guangdong, and being stolen with nothing.
He often said he was getting old too fast
He was frequently owed wages, "It was the '90s, and the foreman didn't pay the field workers. Those who resisted, the foreman called and said that without a temporary residence permit, would be put in a shelter. ”
When he really had no money, he slept in the park and on the street, and once slept on the street, and was kicked awake and robbed in the middle of the night. He had no money, he was stabbed in the leg, stitched 17 times, and the wound is still there, ten centimeters long.
Ming Guangming told me that from 1991 to 1997, he worked in Guangdong for 5 or 6 years, not even earning 3,000 yuan, and one year he was cheated of more than 6,000 yuan. Once, when his wallet was stolen, he walked along the railway for several days, picking carrots and sugar cane that farmers planted on the side of the road to fill his stomach.
"When I was young, I thought I had read a lot of books and wanted to find a better job, but after a few years I realized that I was just a grain of sand on the side of the road, nothing, and there were more people who were better than me."
In the year of the release of the movie "Titanic", a bright man saw Jack sketching Ruth, and he felt that he could draw better than him with a snack. After watching the movie, he bought a few dime charcoal pens, picked up garbage along National Highway 107 during the day, and practiced drawing at cheap hotels at night.
In the Spring Festival of 2002, Ming Guangming met his current wife. He was painting on the street, his wife came to see him for days, and the two of them were together. He thought that his biological father's family and his adoptive father's family did not want him, and simply fell into the money. He had four sons, all of whom had the surname of his wife.
But after starting a family, he could not let his wife wander around with him. If Jack fell in love with Ruth and began to paint, then The Light is in love with his wife and decides not to paint.
"Marry a man, get dressed and eat", he gave up painting and was bent on making money to support his family.
In 2005, Ming Guangming left home to earn money, and when he first came to Shaoxing, he was on the edge of the northeast corner of the city. He went to work in the stone factory, it was too bitter, found that the waste collection is quite free, so he did this.
He went door to door to collect waste on the street, which was the edge of the city, distributed with various pharmaceutical factories, chemical fiber factories, clothing factories, but there were not many stores on the street, and how much waste was collected depended on luck. When there are more times, you can collect hundreds of yuan a day, and when you have less, you can collect dozens of pieces.
On a rainy day, even the opportunity to go out and try your luck is gone - if the waste is wet, it will not sell for a price.
The turning point came 11 years later.
The lady in charge of a plastic factory heard that he could paint and thought it was impossible, so she took out 100 yuan and asked him to paint one for himself.
The passion for painting in the heart of the light was ignited again. It took him more than 200, bought some canvases and paints, and painted them five or six times before he reluctantly gave them to the lady boss.
When he showed it to the lady boss, he could observe that the other party was "very reluctant, did not like, vaguely agreed to a few words." But the hostess didn't say much, took out another 100 pieces, and also wrapped up all the waste products in the factory to him.
He finally had a fairly stable income and no longer had to run the streets.
He thought it was time to pick up the paintbrush again.
For nearly three years, he collected scraps while painting oil paintings when no one knew about them. His fingers are thick, calloused, inflexible, and when he looks at his phone, he pokes his index finger directly at the screen, but he clips a steady brush.
In this dilapidated hut, he didn't have to run anymore. In the eyes of others, the burrow is already a scene that he has worked hard to strive for, and he can continue to dream and live a stable life.
The bright house was very tall, close to the highway, and he once took me over the highway railing once to cross the road and go to the village next door to eat a bowl of wontons, and the two of them spent 8 yuan and walked back.
When walking in the alley, he skillfully shuttled and turned, and then turned back to me and instructed me: "When you encounter people with gray hair approaching, you must hide away, many people here do not have low insurance, if you are touched by porcelain, it is a lifelong lawsuit." ”
Halfway through the conversation, suddenly a group of people broke into the door of a bright house. The young man with the nozzle, with a round face and a black T-shirt, unceremoniously walked to the innermost part and fiddled with a few easels placed on the bed.
"Guangming, send me a painting!"
Bit Guangming was a little overwhelmed, and was about to answer when another middle-aged man looked around the cabin, then pointed to a rusty liquefied gas cylinder and said, "What is this, safety hazard, hurry up and move away." ”
Bit Guangming explained that there is no gas in this, it is all abandoned, and it will not be unsafe. The middle-aged man's voice became louder, as if he was playing with the mighty wind: "That won't work either!" ”
Then someone spotted me. Wei Guangming hastily introduced that this was an interview from Beijing. The group immediately became polite, and some people pulled out their mobile phones to take pictures.
After they went out, The Light quickly explained to me that the person who wanted to paint was the village chief. There are many immigrants here, and it is necessary to regularly check the floating population and potential safety hazards. He said the village chief "doesn't usually do this, but today he drank wine."
They had long been accustomed to the light of painting, and rather than watching what he painted, they were more concerned about the new face coming from the village.
The light opened the dusty computer, waited for a few minutes to start, clicked on the movie "Terminator", watched a paragraph with me, and said to me: "The metal on the male protagonist can flow like asphalt, which is magical."
He said that he loves to watch American science fiction films, and feels that the pictures in them are very beautiful, the imagination is very rich, and it is good for painting.
He wouldn't pass up any opportunity to practice drawing, even through watching a movie.
The time of painting has been long, and the light is also painful. Paint is also an expense. After painting, he also smoked because he often had to use his brain. Sometimes when I can't think of it, I am anxious to shave my hair, and I laugh at myself for "becoming a Qing Dynasty person" because of painting. When he doubted himself, he only painted one or two a month.
But now, he no longer has to sneak around and burn his paintings, and people are starting to see his paintings and are willing to pay for them.
With the order, not only did he not have to burn it, but he could also hang the paintings under the eaves and on the walls. Oil painting is not easy to dry, he has to dry for half a month, and when it is dry, he will send it to customers.
The uncles and aunts in this village are accustomed to "the light of collecting waste and loving to paint.". They can't read paintings, they just say they don't look like them, but they don't think it's strange that they know that this thing can make money.
Even the bright wife felt the same way. Now, his wife is in her hometown with children, and the long distance between the two people has left the two people in contact. Although his wife and son know that he paints oil paintings, no one has asked him, only that he works outside the home and can earn 7,000 yuan a month by painting.
Whether you can make money is still the only criterion for most people to measure whether a thing is worth doing.
Bit Bright also has its own considerations.
In order to improve the effect of oil painting, he replaced the original dozen pieces of paint with imported goods.
He said that the quality of the expensive pigments is indeed good, the painting is shiny, and it is not easy to dry and crack, "even if it is cracked, it is a spider's web-like pattern." Cheap paint 17 yuan a piece, slightly thickened, the pigment will crack out of the seam, the hand will fall down.
If you ask him if he is worth it, he will say, "If you look at the oil paintings painted by Western artists, the colors have been preserved for hundreds of years." ”
The light always loves to start painting after night falls.
At that time, he returned home from work, closed the door, and was no longer a dirty waste recycler. He took one from a row of frames, placed it on an easel, and began today's work, copying Monet, Chardin, Leviathan, and Monsend.
His real inspiration often comes in the middle of the night, when he wakes up suddenly, feeling that something is gushing in his heart, not expressing unhappiness. He rolled over and got up, quickly picked up the paintbrush, squeezed out the paint, and painted until morning.
"Painting is a very small pen, constantly dotting, until the hand cramps, until the brain collapses, and then slap yourself twice, and then see if there is anything beautiful, and continue to repair." 」
But most of the time he doesn't. He usually painted an oil painting in two hours to cope with endless commercial orders. As an oil painting, his works sold very cheaply, three or five hundred, because he showed himself in Kuaishou, many people looked for him to paint, and the orders were lined up more than three months later.
The first order appeared in August 2019, after he sent some of his own paintings on Kuaishou, so someone left him a message: Do you sell your paintings?
He tentatively added WeChat, the other party sent 300 yuan, he spent a few hours to draw, photographed and sent to Kuaishou, and then sent out.
The number of people who came to him to paint slowly increased, and more and more people encouraged him on the fast hand. There were customers in the northeast who asked him to paint snow scenes, and he painted wooden houses, cooking tobacco, and people on sleighs. There are customers who place orders for twenty or thirty pairs at a time, and he almost draws for more than half a month.
Sometimes a painting is posted on the Internet, and many people send private messages saying that they will paint it again and want to buy it. A blue cornflower copied Levitan, bit Guangming painted 17 times, a little helpless.
"For the sake of life, I always paint the same picture."
There are also two paintings hanging on the same painting wall
Now, the order on Kuaishou has given him another four or five thousand more income per month. In this way, he could send home seven thousand dollars a month. The wife has no job, the youngest son has just entered kindergarten, the second and third are in junior high school, and the eldest has just graduated from auto repair, all relying on the light to maintain the livelihood of the whole family.
He calculated that the children were still in school, and then the pressure was greater when they grew up, and the four sons wanted four apartments. According to the house price in the town, each set of down payment should be prepared at least more than 100,000 yuan, and the bride price should be 200,000 yuan per person, adding up to more than one million.
He didn't dare to think about it, thinking that his hair would all fall out. "Sometimes it's strange that the bosses of rich families all have daughters, and we are poor and have sons."
In order to save some living expenses, he usually eats instant noodles, or frozen dumplings. When I was fascinated by the painting, I didn't eat the food.
Speaking of his son, Wei Guangming said that he had not returned home after the epidemic, and his son basically did not talk to himself. On Father's Day, only his youngest son, who was in kindergarten, called him and talked a little. "Maybe the son is older and won't be close to his parents."
I asked Mingguang, what do the big words "Zhou Enming Painting Platform" written in pencil on the top of the wall mean?
Underneath the handwriting was a drawing board on the wall— where he had been lying on his stomach
He said that it was the original name given by his biological parents, and he had never forgotten it, and he still thought about returning to the roots of the fallen leaves in the future.
"My ideal good day is also there, that is, I can sleep until I wake up naturally, and I have no worries about food and clothing." At that time, I would go back to chai hu town where my wife was staying and draw something I wanted to paint. ”
How big a person's dream is, sometimes it is impossible to achieve it in a poor life, how small a person's dream is, and sometimes they just want to return to the place where they are rich.
Back at the rental house, he was just about to paint when a stranger called. On the third day after his hot search on Kuaishou's video, more than 40 phone calls came from all over the country, and two media came to shoot from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and Bit Guangming was interviewed by reporters. "The same thing has been said three times, weirdly tired."
The high density of interviews meant he didn't have time to paint. On the phone, the other party wanted to interview him, but he refused. The other party also offered to help him contact the painting professor and go to the lecture, and he said, "I don't have that time." It's okay to go a few hours a month, and the rest of the time you have to collect waste, paint, and make money. "Also refused.
He understood that his primary purpose was to make a living by painting, to paint the same painting over and over again for the sake of his sons' house and marriage.
Wei Guangming once said that his favorite domestic painter is Guo Runwen, saying that his paintings are very classical and elegant. He had a wish that he could see Guo Runwen's paintings with his own eyes.
Guo Runwen often paints portraits, but the light cannot. He wants to make a living, painting portraits does not make money, he can only paint some gorgeous landscape paintings, customers like, easy to sell. Also "can not paint too realistic, labor not to say, painting a little different, the customer will not pay." ”
Not long ago, Kuaishou helped him contact Professor Guo Runwen and said that he could communicate. But The light flinched, feeling very humble, "How can you go to see people?" ”
Later, Professor Guo Runwen sent him a message: Painting is happy.
After all the news was returned, Ming Guangming began to paint an oil painting of "The Waves Lapping at the Sailboat".
After painting the reef and the waves, it was almost time to finish, and he took out a very thin pencil from the cabinet full of waste, dipped it in white, and said that he would draw a few seagulls. This bird is constantly migrating throughout their lives, but they can always adapt quickly to the environment, no matter what kind of coast they are on, they can fly in their own way.
He quickly sketched a seagull on the canvas and flew gracefully on the waves.
He was painting, and there was another painting in the room waiting to dry. It's just that when it's hot, mosquitoes will fly in the hut, and when the door is closed, it will look stuffy. Mosquitoes flew in and were glued to the paint, becoming a small black spot.
He didn't care, he continued to paint.
When the painting is dry, the hand is shot, and it is gone.
Someone once reminded me that if you don't have the conditions to achieve it, don't tell others that you have dreams, they won't listen to it.
In fact, this is the case, his whole dream-chasing process, not to fight chicken blood, but now if he can only live, he will live, if life is better, I will work harder. His life is about painting, little by little.
In this process, he did not go too extreme, did not have much legend, and did not sacrifice beyond ordinary people. He rationally did what he had to do, and the last bit did it. It sounds like it's easy, why don't so many people achieve it?
I would like to use his story to say that if you equate what you want to do with a dream. Then the dream is not a thing equivalent to money, it is not a terrible thing, it should be a thing that you don't leave an excuse for yourself, a little closer.
This is also my little selfishness.
Reporter: Big stick bone
Edit: Matthew Little Whirlwind