Tall Like a Mountain and Long Like a River: Memories of My Teacher, Shi Yuren

Xu Yake ：Born in Qingdao in 1964, Xu Yake graduated with a Masters degree from the Fine Arts Department of Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute. Currently, he is vice-president and professor the Academy of Art University at Qingdao, Masters Students’ advisor, and a member of the Chinese Artists Association, the China Ceramic Industry Association, and the Shandong Association of Ceramic Art.

Tall Like a Mountain and Long Like a River: Memories of My Teacher, Shi Yuren

Xu Yake

My destination was Nanchang, but since I had some extra time, I had arranged to meet Shi Di, my teacher Shi Yuren’s younger son, for a visit to Jingdezhen, which I had not visited in 11 years. We rode together in silence – almost as if the air were frozen.

When we arrived at my hotel, we sat down together, and I began to ask about how my teacher’s death had occurred. In a sad voice, Shi Di gave me some details about the fatal car accident that took Shi Yuren’s life.

Although he had been dead for several years, he was remembered with great sorrow. I told Shi Di I had two purposes in coming to Jingdezhen: to visit Shi Yuren’s tomb and communicate my respects to my beloved teacher who had spent so much time with me and to visit his widow, Liu Haixian, whose name I could not recall but whose excellent cooking for us students was memorable.

We went to Shi Yuren’s house and opened the door; inside was quite dark, but there she was – the wife of my teacher, almost like a second mother. I sat down, adjusted to the dim light, and looked about at the walls full of Shi Yuren’s work, which Shi Di said Liu Haixian had put up. I had given Shi Yuren a piece of my work just before I graduated, and it was still there, more than 10 years later. That day, we went to Shi Yuren’s tomb in the morning. It was a clear day with a few white clouds. Shi Di, his wife, and young son who was just learning to talk came too. As he drove there along the winding road, Shi Di told me the tomb site had a good hillside location from which a river could be seen. We climbed and rested and climbed some more until we reached our destination where we knelt in front of Shi Yuren’s tomb.

I first got to know Shi Yuren when I was at university, in the class of 1979. At a graduate design meeting, I heard a loud voice with a strong Zhejiang accent. Elegant and passionate, Shi Yuren was giving a critique. When I asked who he was, I was told, Shi Yuren, one of our new country’s earliest masters in ceramic art.

College life in the ceramic art department has given me many fond memories, each of which brought me increasing respect toward Shi Yuren.

During that time, after supper, he would always take a walk back to the classroom where we were all working feverishly late into the night. Shi Yuren’s arrival brought us all a feeling of excitement; he walked around and asked and answered many questions in his Zhejiang-accented voice. He always remembered everyone’s name, and he communicated with his students with kindness and passionate energy. He paid attention to our art-related problems with simplicity and respect. At dance parties on the weekends, he danced with carefree, light elegance and a calm, happy expression – and he was always the last one to stop dancing.

Shi Yuren was a great educator. His personal character and teaching methods impressed all of us. Throughout his career, he taught many of China’s ceramic artists to be successful in art and in business. People still talk about his personal charm and his artistic influence. He brought wisdom, virtue, and enlightenment to the classroom, and most of us fortunate enough to be his students also became art educators. We all live in his shadow and share his light with others. He treated his students with the warmth associated with spring and his subject, art, with the passionate heat of summer.

Shi Yuren never spoke about the persecution and anguish he experienced when he was younger. From him, I came to understand that the true artist deeply, truly loves his native country. Optimistic in spirit, he showed us the meaning of perseverance and the way to self-confidence. Forgiving and friendly, full of patience and fortitude, he showed a smiling face to family, students, and nature. Full of vitality, he radiated happiness to us all who were deeply influenced by his example.

Shi Yuren was not only an extraordinary teacher; he was also an exceptionally diligent, enthusiastic artist. Despite giving his time so generously to his students, he maintained a high level of energy and devotion to his work, according to those who knew him. Through the whole spectrum of foundation skills and techniques to the creative mastery evident in his later years, Shi Yuren continued to model a deep sense of beauty and a profound ideology for his students. Looking at the arc of his life in art, we can make the following observation: Shi Yuren’s life was spent searching to fuse the folk arts with modern arts to create a new aesthetic ideal.

In the 1980’s to the mid-1990’s, Shi Yuren’s art works reached their pinnacle. His blue-and-white pieces were rich, solid, true. The motifs he chose – grass, trees, chickens, ducks, fish, insects – all were rendered in the finest decorative art style. Shi Yuren is like an accomplished conductor: in front of the panorama of nature, he smiles confidently and raises his arms to evoke nature’s lively music; his life-force translates the natural world into a new, enduring language of art.

With boldness and creativity, Shi Yuren was the first to challenge the symmetry of the vessel. He created new designs of great artistry and form by breaking up motifs into fragments. With a light brush and strong visuals, he gave a sense of control to each vessel despite the absence of formal symmetry. His signature little red triangles sprinkled all around add surprise and sparkle to delineate places where layers overlap. This new style completely jumps out from the river of traditional porcelain and shows Shi Yuren’s masterful artistic control. Looking carefully at his late blue-and-white underglaze and polychrome overglaze works can inspire and enlighten future generations.

Shi Yuren’s porcelain oeuvre expresses his creativity from his choice of vessel shapes to the complicated folk art techniques he practiced as he created fragments and then restored them into a new whole. Under his brush, whatever exists in nature becomes even more magical, evocative, and dynamic bringing new life to nature by means of art. All his works convey this lively feeling although his output was small due to time constraints – but it lives forever. His creative spirit moves in tandem with our changing times, as he draws from the tradition of his artistic predecessors to enrich the elegance of porcelain. He functions like a filter: ancient works flow through him and emerge finer and better.

Equally precious is his artistic character also filtered through his ideas about art and his pedagogical practice. Shi Yuren always encouraged his students to create new work, and his passionate, energetic personality set the ideal for the next generation to follow – and subsequent generations as well.

Shi Yuren was a poet in his everyday life. He came and went quickly, walking without smiling, perhaps because of the persecution he suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Maybe a dark shadow had been following him throughout much of his life. Still, I will always remember his open, warm countenance and his way of walking around campus; he was a true model for us. In his art and his lively, magical dance steps, he was a kind of saint: a versatile, multi-talented renaissance man.

As an artist, Shi Yuren was never overly stern, but he was consistently sincere. He would debate the pros and cons of art theory and insist on keeping to the rule; in private, he tirelessly helped us correct our mistakes. With an open heart and honest approach, he never forced students to agree with him. More like a missionary, he always generously gave beautiful things and refined ideas to others.

I returned as a graduate student to the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in 1988. One of the deepest impressions occurred when I was to meet Shi Yuren at the Museum of Porcelain. I was running a little late and became increasingly worried that my teacher might criticize me. On the contrary, I learned that he had already toured the collection with another student, Fang Lili; when he saw me panting and apologetic, he said not a word, but took us through the exhibitions all over again.

Another time, Shi Yuren insisted I should go with him to Longquan in the mountains of Zhejiang Province. The roads were poor, and we had to stay overnight on the way. In the morning, I woke up first, saw with affection that my teacher was still asleep, and decided to clean his muddy shoes. He woke up and grabbed the shoes from me saying I didn’t have to do that for him. His gentle tone made me feel as if he were bestowing a father’s love on me.

When we arrived in Longquan, Shi Yuren introduced me to the famous Celadon Research Institute. Two masters, Mao Zhengcong and Xu Chaoxing, helped me find a place to stay, took me to the Celadon Museum, and explained to me piece by piece the differences between the Older Brother Ge Kiln and the Younger Brother Di Kiln in Longquan’s ceramic history. Before I had quite fully adjusted to life in Longquan, Shi Yuren had to return, but he asked his friends to take good care of me. Two months later, after my works were complete, he made a special trip to come back and pick me up. This is the man I so honor: not only a good person but also a person who works so well to achieve success.

After we returned to Jingdezhen, I had some problems firing my blue-and-white pieces. Again, my teacher stepped in to help me. He asked his older son, Shi Guo, himself a passionate ceramic artist, to help me fire my work in his kiln. I will never forget how happy Liu Haixian, my second mother, was to hear the work had been successfully fired. Everyone expressed their excitement, which made me feel full of appreciation. Here I was – a single student, a long way from home, living in Jingdezhen to study porcelain – and yet I was able to enjoy the loving warmth from this whole family.

One day nearing my graduation, Shi Yuren came to my dormitory and, with a smile, asked me to give him a piece as a souvenir. I quickly said yes and asked him to choose one. He did so, and then went home happily where he put my work on his shelf. After more than a decade, the piece remains in its place. I feel my teacher still misses me, but I cannot see him again.

Today, I wish I could tell Shi Yuren that his student, the one you so carefully taught, is now living near the ocean in his hometown of Qingdao, a city heretofore without a ceramic history. I have built the first ceramic kiln here and worked hard to move Shandong Province’s art education program forward. For 10 years, my colleagues and I have built more than 10 kilns. Thanks to you, my teacher, I have been able to promote ceramics in the Art Department of Qingdao University and to establish a good reputation for the Fushan Kiln Art Studio. Not only me -- but all the students you valued, all of us in whom you invested your time and skill – we continue to do the work you left unfinished at the time of your premature death. Like the kiln fire that has been burning for over a thousand years in Jingdezhen, your academic knowledge, your skills, and your character can all be sustained into the future thanks to our respectful efforts.

Last year, my Fushan Kiln Studio held a 10th anniversary retrospective. For the exhibition’s title, we chose “Flowers of Ceramics in Bloom”. I would like to dedicate this flourishing achievement to you.

Translated by Yenfen Huang and Carla Coch