By presenting the tarpaulins to truck drivers, Xiong, a Chinese artist residing in Japan, hopes to win in return their promise to help protect the environment on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau.

"The moving 'rainbow' is to symbolize beauty, nature and peace. As an artist, I want to show my concern for society through artistic action," she said.

On a sunny April afternoon, sitting cross-legged on the floor, Xiong chatted about herself and her great plan in her top floor apartment in an old five-storey building in Beijing.

Petite and delicate, modest and polite, Xiong, 45, shows her admirable determination to accomplish what she sets herself to.

Scheduled to start from Beijing on June 10, Xiong and other volunteers will go westward via Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Xining, Golmud and Lhasa to finally arrive at Mount Qomolangma.

On the way, they will give out the free colorful tarpaulins to truck drivers driving the road to the plateau and discuss with them ways to help protect the environment.

In addition, they will also carry out some activities in co-operation with the local environmental protection bureau along the way.

Artist's profile

When she was only four or five years old, Xiong liked painting, she recalls.

At the age of 16, she left Chongqing, her birthplace, to live and work in the Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

For seven years, she worked on a farm, painted for local people, studied in a local normal school and taught painting in the school after graduation.

It was not until 1979, when she was admitted to the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts that her formal art training began.

After graduation, she continued her study of Chinese painting in the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Chinese Painting Research Institute in Beijing.

When the rush among Beijing students to study abroad came along, Xiong went to Japan to pursue further studies in Eastern arts in 1989.

She studied Japanese painting at Tama Art University for two years and earned a master's degree from the Art Research Department of Tsukuba University in 1994.

Over the years, she gave a dozen art exhibitions in Japan and once was invited by the Fine Arts Research Institute of Bunkyo University as a guest research fellow.

Struggles abroad

When she first arrived in Japan, Xiong felt at a loss in the commercial society. "I was on the edge of a mental collapse under the various pressures I faced when I first arrived in Tokyo," she said.

Because of language and financial problems, Xiong had to spend her first few months washing dishes in restaurants, drawing portraits in the street and teaching Chinese in private schools.

"The most terrible thing for me at that time was that I had no spiritual sustenance," she said.

In her time of difficulty, her early experience in Aba beckoned to her, with the plateau's natural beauty and Tibetan Buddhism.

So she went back to the Tibet Autonomous Region to renew her inspiration. Since 1991, she has been going to Tibet once every year.

"When I was farming on the foggy and drizzly mountains in Aba, I felt abandoned as a human being, but I felt protected and supported by the dark mountains," she recalls.

"The spirits of the mountains have entered my body and I can feel them through all my life. It is this mysterious road of yellow dust, connecting past and future, that continually draws me back from Tokyo to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," she said.

However, she felt the spiritual balance she had tried to build for herself through painting was in doubt in 1995, after she had a solo art show in Beijing.

"People who came to see my paintings and the students who attended my lectures showed more interest in my technique than in the spirit I wanted to convey. This was not what I wanted."

So from 1997, at odds with the realities of current trends, she decided to try her hand at design and construction.

She also created a new painting style which she called "sliding," using simple colorful stripes and lumps. The idea came from the colorful, striped aprons Tibetan women wear.

In April of 1998, she came to give her second solo exhibition in Beijing. "But I still felt like I hadn't achieved anything, even though the exhibition was successful and many friends gave me support."

One month later, she went to Tibet again with her paint box and brushes.

This time she painted on the stumps of new-cut trees and the doors of abandoned wooden houses. She also hung colorful portieres in the doorways of maintenance workers' little dormitories.

Traveling on the plateau surrounded by peaks covered with white snow all the year round while the plateau itself was covered with yellow dust, she found it was not only a forbidding place to live but that it also lacked bright and rich colors.

But her paint box and brushes seemed inadequate to counter this.

Rainbow on the plateau

At this moment, she thought of the "rainbow." Xiong says a rainbow is the most beautiful and pure image in nature. Its order of seven colors symbolizes nature's order and the endless cycle of death and rebirth -Buddhism's samsara.

Beyond this, the artist's inspiration happens to coincide with the Tibetan people's belief that the rainbow is the ladder leading to the Buddha.

But how could she give the rainbow movement and life? She thought of the trucks travelling the Qinghai-Tibet and the Sichuan-Tibet highways.

The two roads, starting from modern cities, stretch into primitive nature. They are the lifeline of the plateau. The trucks running on them are the pulsing blood flowing in these life-giving arteries.

Thus in April of 1999, she made seven tarpaulins and gave them to truck drivers on the highways.

In the beginning, she felt they were simply her artistic creations. But unexpectedly, the drivers all wanted to buy the tarpaulins.

"At that moment, I learned that people always pursue beauty no matter how harsh conditions might be. And a man who loves beauty must first like cleanliness."

Another thing that impressed her and helped to bring about her great plan is that when she painted on the tree stumps, some local people said, "She must be an environmental protector. She is painting the wood's blood."

So her paintings, her portieres and her tarpaulins became very popular along the roads on the plateau.

"It was not until that time that I felt I had achieved something. A successful exhibition had never brought me such happiness," she said. "Though quite a few artists and friends praise my work, I feel more encouraged when the common people accept what I do." Her excitement came through as she described her first rainbow.

Environmental concern

Having gained the name of an environmental guardian, Xiong has become more and more aware of the fragile ecosystem on the roof of the world.

She wanted to do more, get more colorful trucks running on the plateau and make people aware of the importance of protecting the environment they live in.

Six months later, with the help of Southwest Jiaotong University where she is a guest professor, Xiong organized 14 trucks trapped out with colorful tarpaulins to drive from Chengdu in Sichuan Province to Qamdo on the plateau.

During the journey of 1,400 kilometers, many truck drivers they met on the way wanted to join them. But they had to leave disappointed because Xiong had only 14 tarpaulins.

So a bigger plan began to take shape in her mind. She wanted to make 1,000 tarpaulins.

She knew very well the difficulties she would meet. In fact, she said, "Thinking of the difficulties, I could not sleep for two nights and cried several times. But finally I made up my mind."

Over the past two years, she has checked out the route, found factories to make tarpaulins, raised funds and contacted environmental protection organizations.

In the process, the delicate woman has revealed her amazing energy and perseverance.

Xiong herself is delighted with the project and has no complaints.

She considers it a rare opportunity to step out from her own narrow world of painting and deal with a wide range of different people.

She also says that during the journey she will let the volunteers, the local people and the drivers take photos of what they see along the way. Then the photos will be exhibited.

Thus more people will join the activity and it will be a great work belonging to everybody.

Several times, she broke into laughter during our discussions.

"Whenever I imagine the moving rainbow stretching across the plateau and the colourful tarpaulins finally disappearing in the distance, I find those old paintings piled up in my studio a bit of a nuisance," she said.

Today, Xiong is still bustling about raising funds. Since each tarpaulin made of environmentally friendly material costs 500 yuan (US$60), the total cost for the journey will be huge.

So far, she has raised enough to pay for a few more than 200 tarpaulins. But she is still sure she will find the pot of gold for her rainbow.

(China Daily 05/09/2001)