Remembering My Art Teacher Chen Jingyu

I drew this of Teacher Chen Jingyu in Procreate.

I grew up in a small village in Changsha. My parents were farmers and couldn’t draw, so they didn’t influence my love for art. I remember my earliest drawing attempts—tracing “Saint Seiya” cards.

In my first year of middle school, there was a policy: if you enrolled in and passed exams in art, sports, or music, you’d get extra points on your high school entrance exam as a “special skills student.” I guess my dad wasn’t confident in my exam skills, so I joined the school’s art class. My school was called “Jiaotang Middle School,” about three or four miles from home, near Changsha Huanghua Airport.

Chen Jingyu was the school’s art teacher and the teacher for the special skills art class. Looking back, she was my first art teacher.

I was twelve in my first year of middle school. Now I realize Teacher Chen was probably only 24 then. She had just graduated from Hengyang Teachers’ College and had been working for two years. She was young, with fair skin, a baby face, big eyes, full lips, and long hair, dressed subtly but stylishly, exuding a mix of oil paint, turpentine, and perfume. Her vibe was totally different from my math teacher, Cao Wenge, physics teacher, Chen Yongquan, and the others whose names I can’t even recall. She was an artist.

In art, there’s always someone better. I believe my middle school art teacher, Chen Jingyu, wasn’t the best artist out there. But at the time, she seemed professional, exceptional, and unique. Her skills might not have been top-tier, but her pure love for art and drawing was rare among professionals I’ve encountered. In class, she was very strict and sometimes stern. But outside class, she’d invite us to her room to look at art books and paintings. It was light and enjoyable.

Believe it or not, I ended up qualifying as a special skills art student and gained 40 extra points, which, along with a decent score in the culture exam, let me exceed the high school entrance score by several tens of points. After graduating middle school, I wrote to Teacher Chen a few times. Later, she transferred to a better elementary school, and we gradually lost touch. I’ve never seen her again since.

I’m really grateful I met Teacher Chen Jingyu when I first started learning art. A good teacher has a lifelong impact. I often think of her and hope to meet again someday. (If anyone knows how to contact Teacher Chen Jingyu, please tell me. Thank you!)

There’s one thing worth mentioning. One day, Teacher Chen handed me a picture book and said, “You should look at Käthe Kollwitz’s work, maybe even try copying it.” I thought the drawings were ugly at first. But since she suggested it, I took a look and tried copying them awkwardly. Years later, I slowly came to appreciate Kollwitz’s art.

During my junior high art classes, there’s one more thing I often remember. After the weekend art lessons, I’d sneak some fruit meant for still-life drawing—apples, oranges, bananas. After a week as still-life props, the fruits smelled so good and tasted so sweet, it’s impossible to forget.