The moment you open our deck box, the scent of ink from forty years ago washes over you, transcending the digital flood.
Those pencil sketches of celestial beings traced by flashlight in the Mogao Caves, those wolf-hair brushes dipped in breath-warmed ink in -20°C studios, those veteran artists debating the pattern of a single piece of armor until dawn – they all crystallize now into the gilded lines resting in your palm. This is no ordinary deck box; it is a "passport," imprinted with the life's work of a generation of masters.
The last light in a Shenyang studio, 1984. Frost flowers bloomed on the windowpane at 3 AM. Xin Kuanliang set down his wolf-hair brush, rubbing frozen fingers over the line art for "Three Strikes Against the White Bone Demon." Four painters huddled around a single lamp, fiercely debating whether Sun Wukong's armor should be rendered in Dunhuang ochre or Tang tri-color crimson. "Lao Zhang, feel this rice paper," Lin Zhen suddenly said. "Doesn't it resemble the hemp paper Xuanzang used to translate sutras?"
From 1983 to 1986, these artists measured civilization with their footsteps: copying the flowing sleeves of the Water-Moon Guanyin at the Yulin Caves, studying Tang Dynasty gilded patterns in the Famen Temple crypt, even traveling to Jingdezhen specifically to observe kiln-transmuted glazes for the fiery patterns of the Red Boy. When the original film reels of "Havoc in Heaven" underwent their eighth color separation at the Shenyang offset printing plant, the master printer's fingernails were stained with rainbow ink – this was not merely printing; it was a pilgrimage towards the aesthetics of the High Tang.
These very images that nourished our fathers' generation are being reborn now: young people deconstruct swirling cloud patterns into streetwear designs, use digital pens to recreate Princess Iron Fan's Dunhuang-inspired eye makeup, even deciphering "Sun Wukong's Philosophy Against Inner Turmoil" within the art. As a CAFA professor noted: "When you touch these images, your fingertips trace the sigh of Wu Cheng'en as he laid down his brush."
Let this card binder hold a spark of 5,000 years of civilization.
Let this deck box become your "passport" traversing time.
Over four decades, this artwork has journeyed a path more legendary than the quest for scriptures: from the flashbulbs of the Frankfurt Book Fair to textbooks in Guangxi village classrooms; from treasured archives in Paris art schools to research topics for New York sinologists. The moment the deck box opens, may every Chinese person hear – the heartbeat of the child waiting by the TV for the "deng-deng-deng-deng" opening theme, that deep-seated romance and solitary courage embedded in our very blood.
From the frosted window of a 1983 Shenyang studio, to the animated wallpapers glowing on young people's phones in 2025...
Let us now follow the ink stains left by the frozen knuckles of those master artists...
And reawaken the battle cry within our blood: "Your Grandfather Sun is here!"
That heartbeat waiting for the "deng-deng-deng-deng"...
That romance, deep-rooted and everlasting.
--------------- Thank You! ---------------
