was the first time I started painting seriously , and with oil. I worked everyday for 2 weeks straight in an artist’s friend’s studio, a small warehouse inside a vocational school. The plum rain season of Shanghai was frequented with rainstorms, earlier that year I traveled to the silk road for the first time, Xi’an, Qinghai, Chengdu, Tibet and Xinjiang, it was life changing. Also that July my parents sent me off on a one-way ticket to Vancouver, embarked on the journey as an immigrant to Canada. I never painted until now.