Tuesday 16 July
Don has invited RB and his friend Denis, together with me and my friends, Huang Yun Yu, and Tseng Yu, out to dinner. The discussion soon turns to the tramway workers’ strike, which has resulted in major disruption in central Hong Kong. Denis would like the strikers to be whipped back to work while Don argues they are being paid a miserable wage and he has actually contributed to the strike fund. Denis counter-attacks, “ Good luck to the man who has money & keeps it – why give any to the lazy bs who won’t work?” Don’s nose gets sharper and his face tightens. He says in his thin Australian voice that one must give, for one’s own sake - to have a right relationship with one’s fellow-man.” Denis: No-one’s ever given me anything. Why should I give? Don:” But it is artistic to give.” I catch a sudden glimpse of Don as he sees himself, of what makes him hand out money to strangers and let beggars sleep in his car. Huang Yun Yu meanwhile has whipped paper pen and ink out of his bag and is capturing Don’s intense, ravaged face with a few strokes as Denis replies, “ But who wants to be artistic?”
Time to go home and Don says he would take me if he could remember where he’d left his car. RB accuses him of affectation – never knowing where his car is. Don murmurs something about hysterical reaction – that he’s so afraid of driving there’s the overwhelming need to keep putting off the evil moment. It is RB who drives me back to the University on his motorbike and says, as we part, that I must beware of Don with his impossibly charitable view of mankind. He’s not the saint you might think - he swears all the time at pedestrians when he’s driving, and he can be very cruel about people.
Two Chinese Painters
Chinascapes
The purpose of this blog is to celebrate the work of two artists, Tseng Yu and Huang Yun Yu, my friendship with both of them in Hong Kong 1951-2 and with Tseng Uu subsequently in london and paris. Please start by clicking on Backstory then my first meeting with Huang Yun Yu below. After that, wander freely among their pictures, plus my photographs and stories about us all taken from my diary and letters home. These last are still being posted, in random order.
The purpose of this blog is to celebrate the work of two artists, Tseng Yu and Huang Yun Yu, my friendship with both of them in Hong Kong 1951-2 and with Tseng Uu subsequently in london and paris. Please start by clicking on Backstory then my first meeting with Huang Yun Yu below. After that, wander freely among their pictures, plus my photographs and stories about us all taken from my diary and letters home. These last are still being posted, in random order.
