In China, people often speak of Shaanxi Province as the 800-Li (400-Kilometer) Plain of Qin because the province was under the rule of Qin State during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods (770-221B. C.). Xi'an, now the capital of the province, was made a city about 2,000 years ago and served as the capital of 11 feudal dynasties.
Today, Shaanxi Province plays an important role in the development of West China. Everything there is imbued with a strong cultural flavor, probably because the province was the political, economic, and cultural center of feudal China.
Ansai County is in northern Shaanxi on the Loess Plateau, 40 kilometers from Yan'an, a city known as the Cradle of the Chinese Revolution. The mention of Ansai makes people remember sunshine, loess soil, people with white cloth tied around their foreheads, and the magnificent waist drum.
Most of the people in Ansai are farmers who like to wield an artist's brush in their spare time. Their paintings are simple and unadorned and are executed in the traditional way. They depict people's daily lives - working in the fields, going to visit relatives, or greeting a bride. There is no lack of works with modern themes, and people are often surprised to find that farmers on the out-of-the-way Loess Plateau have an artistic mode of thought in keeping with modern trends.
(China Pictorial 03/16/2001)
