Last week Sunday, April, 17th, 2016. We were honored to have Mr. Yulin Shen (沈玉麟先生) as a speaker of our monthly community forum.

        With his family origin from Anhui, Shen was born in Kaifeng, Henan, China in 1928,  spent his childhood in Shanghai and Nanjing. Since the War of Resistance against Japanese in 1937 he and his family were exiled to Chongqing, Chengdu Sichuan. He graduated at Jiaotong University Shanghai, major in shipbuilding and minor in art, in 1949. Retired from Xingang Shipyard Tianjin in 1988,  and studied as a graduate student at SIT NJ USA in 1989.  He learned oil painting at UW art school in 1995 , and has been teaching “Chinese Culture and Calligraphy ”  at Experimental College UW since 2005.  From his books you will see his interest from travel, poem, sketch, painting, and calligraphy. As educated professionals, his family suffered terribly during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s.  

      沈玉麟，祖籍安徽，1928年生在河南開封，3月後遷移上海，南京。 1937年抗日戰爭流亡四川重慶，成都。 1949年上海交大造船系畢業，1988年天津塘沽新港船廠退休. 1989年自費留學來美在新澤西斯地文思理工學院進修一年，1995年西雅圖華大美院學習油畫，2005年至今在華大實驗學院教中國書法。

       《蘭亭序》是公元353年中國書法大師王羲之的傳世傑作，可惜原作被皇帝唐太宗偷盜葬於墓中 。現在只留下模仿原作的仿製品。人們還可以到浙江紹興的蘭亭參觀王羲之的故居。那裡有“鵝池” ，“碑亭” 以及12位書法家仿王羲之寫的《蘭亭序》碑帖石刻 。

中國文化，千姿百態， 巴黎大學熊秉明說只有書法獨領風騷，畢加索也說中國書法早就是抽象藝術。希望除了舌尖，更有筆尖上的中國文化在世界傳播。