The Versatile Master Artist

”I was probably born around 1970, in a small village 170 kilometers east of Mandalay, a city in central Myanmar, not even marked on the map. I can no longer remember who my parents were...”

The sunset slowly descended,

In the gatekeeper’s room, an old-fashioned oil lamp was lit, the flame flickering like a bean, with a faint scent of wood smoke, slightly choking, reminiscent of the poor-quality ink of the past.

Uncle Ah Lai might be curious, wanting to see what this little fellow, ignorant of the world, is really up to.

Or perhaps he was just drawn by the Myanmar Mirror’s news, stirring memories of the turbulent past.

He fell silent for a few minutes and surprisingly began to recount his story.

The gatekeeper’s voice was hoarse, yet his tone was rhythmic.

As he narrated, it was as if an ancient medieval bard was singing a long narrative poem.

Gu Weijing did not wait until the end to start drawing this line sketch.

About ten minutes after the gatekeeper started narrating, he began to slowly put his pen to paper.

His strokes were so slow that they could hardly be called a sketch.

First, using the white outline technique, he captured the contours of Uncle Ah Lai’s appearance, then listened to the gatekeeper’s story, occasionally seizing flashes of inspiration to sketch a line or two, capturing the fleeting expressions on the uncle’s face.

With the rustling sound of a pen tip gliding over sketch paper, Gu Weijing had a premonition that this might become the highest quality piece in his line sketch series.

The first half of the gatekeeper’s story was almost a portrayal of a motivational life striving to change one’s destiny.

He was born in the 1970s, Myanmar’s most chaotic era.

At that time, the United Nations rated Myanmar as the world’s least developed region.

Warlords, civil wars,

In the primeval forests of the Golden Triangle, drug lords busily planted deadly crops stretching across vast expanses.

Back then, the whole country was impoverished.

Civil wars were fought every year, with more drugs confiscated year after year.

Everyone knew that growing drugs was like growing US Dollars.

The opium fields in the Golden Triangle, covered in poppies, possessed a breathtaking beauty.

The drug economy, like a pipe of opium causing addicts to struggle desperately, pulls the whole nation into a descent toward hell amidst curling smoke.

Drugs for dollars, dollars for guns, guns to fight civil wars and seize drugs. This logical cycle has been operating in the Golden Triangle for seventy years.

Like many children in the Good Fortune Orphanage, Uncle Ah Lai himself was a drug orphan; his parents died in a gunfight between warlords for control of a 3,000-acre opium field.

The 1970s’ drug lords of the Golden Triangle were much fiercer than their predecessors in the United States.

The most rampant American drug dealers in San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlantic City, at their peak, would just engage in shooting sprees with the police SWAT using Chicago Typewriters.

A young artist named Bill Finger had the fortune to witness the daily scenes of these drug lords’ gunfights, feeling this must truly be a damnable hell.

Later, he used it as inspiration to create ”Gotham,” a classic, dark crime city in American comics.

Compared to the Golden Triangle, the evil hell depicted by Bill’s pen obviously lacks sufficient imagination.

Firing a Thompson Submachine Gun was child’s play,

In Southeast Asia, major drug lord warlords commanded armed forces of thousands or even tens of thousands, clashing with chaotic battles, deploying landmines, heavy machine guns, flamethrowers, large-scale artillery, and even armored vehicle assaults.

When the mood struck, they could massacre a village as if in play.

”I don’t care who my parents were or how they died. Perhaps they were innocent villagers caught in the crossfire, or maybe they were involved on one side of the war.”

Uncle Ah Lai said nonchalantly, ”Or maybe they were simply drug dealers, who knows?”

Uncle Ah Lai was luckier than most drug orphans, as he was adopted by his ”Ah Ba” when he was very young.

His ”Ah Ba” was a countryside schoolteacher.

The schoolteacher was a characteristically strict old gentleman who had attended a free church school in the old days, fluent in English and French.

The schoolteacher’s greatest achievement was to teach a few successful students over his lifetime.

And Uncle Ah Lai was the most capable of them all.

He was the first young person within a hundred kilometers radius to be accepted into Myanmar’s best national military academy.

When Uncle Ah Lai went to the military academy, his foster father’s health was already failing.

Ah Lai knelt three times before his father’s bed to say goodbye, and the schoolteacher merely patted his shoulder, softly saying, ”Ah Lai, be a good man and live well.”

Studying, schooling, military academy, drug enforcement, foreign assignments...

Before the age of forty, Uncle Ah Lai’s life could be described as enduring many hardships to finally find success, with plenty of untold sorrows and hardships, yet everything was moving in a good direction.

Peace accord, Kunsha’s downfall, rising to the upper echelons.

”Brother Gu, you wouldn’t understand. When I was in my thirties, driving an open-top military jeep past Yangon City Government Avenue, and the guards stood at attention to salute me... how glorious it was.” He said softly.

Gu Weijing concentrated as he observed the silent gatekeeper recounting this piece of his past, clearly maintaining a calm tone, yet still conveying an unmistakable joy and pride on his face.

Gu Weijing captured that subtle curve at the corner of the uncle’s mouth and committed it to paper.

This kind of smile,

Unless you model it stroke by stroke by observing the person directly, you couldn’t possibly imagine such a subtle arc and expression while sitting idly in a studio.