Artist and photographer, Li Xiaoke grew up looking up to his father as a role model.
But growing in the shadow of a man such as Li Keran, a great modern master of traditional Chinese landscape ink and wash painting, brought its own peculiar pain.
Today, however, the son, at 60, has established his own place in the Chinese world of fine art and photography.
An exhibition of his ink-and-wash paintings and photographs, which opened on Wednesday, is a testimony to that.
Entitled Water, Ink, Home for paintings and Tibet -- Eternal Memory for photography, the exhibition is on show next to a major exhibition of his father's works at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. It will end on Sunday.
Most of Li Xiaoke's latest ink-and-wash paintings exhibited demonstrate his endeavor to define his own artistic individuality, drawing on the best of Chinese and some Western art traditions.
From his paintings, the viewer is able to discern how much Li seeks to preserve the charm and allure of traditional Beijing -- with the characteristic grey overhanging roofs of the siheyuan, green poplars sheltering a quiet street or a winter sun setting over an ancient pagoda...
The country is going through a dramatic transformation in which town and city-scapes are changing so fast it prompted Li Xiaoke to say he sometimes feels the once familiar cities such as Beijing are becoming strangers.
Through the medium of his art, he is trying to preserve something of the traditional ambience of those cities, which had endured for hundreds of years.
But Li Xiaoke has extended his home territory far into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of western China, as nearly 100 of his photographs on show demonstrate.
His camera works present vivid portrayals of the Tibetans, from whom Li said he had learned more about integrity, simplicity, belief and sincerity.
"I want to show what I have done so far in the search for my own expression and my own vision," he said.
It has been a considerable challenge to emerge from the shadow of his father, he admits. "The traditional Chinese criteria for artistic achievement demands perfection and an all-roundedness involving creativeness, knowledge, rewards to personal integrity and so on," he said. "A son of a well-known artist, especially, would be judged by a stricter set of criteria than that for his father."
The journey has been long and hard.
He had little time to engage in art as a professional when young, even though he learned to draw and paint under his father's guidance and attended art school in his teenage years.
After graduating, he joined the army and underwent the rigorous training common to infantry soldiers.
After leaving the army, he worked at a leading machinery plant in Beijing manufacturing internal combustion engines, where he worked in the forge. There he daily hammered out 2,000 pieces of gas conveyer parts on an eight-hour shift.
Li Xiaoke has few complaints about the physical hardships of earlier years. "If not for the harsh military training and factory work, I would not have had the strength and tenacity in my own artistic pursuit."
His father traveled far and wide in inland areas, well into his late 70s, seeking inspiration from nature -- the famous scenic landscapes and mountainous areas of Guilin or the Huangshan Mountain.
Li Xiaoke accompanied his father on many of his trips doing his own sketches.
But to find his individuality and his own artistic vision, Li Xiaoke went far beyond his father's beaten track. Since 1988, he has visited the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau 14 or 15 times.
He trekked for weeks to reach the plateau areas that give life to the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and which in turn have nurtured the multi-ethnic Chinese culture.
On one trip to reach the source of the Yangtze, situated some 5,000 meters above sea level in Qinghai Province, he and his fellow travelers hired about a dozen yaks to negotiate the hilly trails, braving blizzard and rain on the way.
One morning when they emerged from their yurts, they discovered seven of their yaks had disappeared. Without the animals, they could go no further in this no-man's land. Fortunately, their Tibetan guides, on horse back, managed to track down the errant yaks who had sought shelter in a valley.
Despite the brushes with danger, Li Xiaoke believes that the roof of the world, with its rugged landscape, capricious weather, snow peaks and glaciers, has opened a fresh and magnificent vista for him.
Moreover, he visited homes and monasteries, joined in local festivities and spent many nights with the Tibetans.
He remembers meeting two brothers in the south of Gansu Province, in the country's northwest. The younger one joined a local monastery to become a monk to help support his elder brother through college. "The young monk probably would spend his whole life in the monastery, but he had no complaint," Li Xiaoke recalled, his eyes brimming.
"He can talk on and on about his travels on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," said his wife Liu Ying, the general manager of Creation Art Gallery in Beijing.
Li Xiaoke says he has found his soul purified by the expansiveness of nature on the Earth's highest plateau and by the honesty and kindness of its inhabitants.
Both his photographs and paintings reach into the heart of the viewer because they convey his depth of feeling and honesty of expression.
"My father always told us that truthfulness will be rewarded," he said.
"I am just jotting down my true feelings and experiences."
(China Daily May 13, 2005)
