I took Li Chuan's arm and walked towards the guest registration area on the left side of the gallery. Li Chuan flamboyantly signed his name. I took a closer look, but didn't recognize a single letter, so I had to sign my "nickname", which was as small as an ant, and stuck tightly to the bottom of his name.
He turned to look at me: "Written so small?"
"You are a big man and I am a small man."
"Is it okay to sign again? People who don't know the details think that my name has a suffix."
I signed another big one with a cap on it: "Is this okay?"
He smiled: "Okay."
"Mr. Wang, there is a lounge specially arranged for you in the back hall of the gallery." The girl in charge of the reception said softly, obviously someone had told her in advance, "Go out this door and go to the left."
"Thank you." Li Chuan put down the signature pen in my hand and asked, "Where is the hanging room?"
"Oh, it's right here." The girl said with a smile, she didn't dare to look at Li Chuan, but her face was flushed.
Li Chuan took off my coat and handed it to her together with his windbreaker. The girl seemed to be in a nympho, holding the windbreaker without moving for a long time, suddenly, she smiled embarrassedly, and handed Li Chuan a card: "Use this to get the clothes, please take it well."
The lights in the gallery were not bright or dark, and faintly sprinkled from the ceiling. Oil paintings hang on the walls. Among them are several classical style partition windows. Post-modern paintings, placed in a gallery of pure classical garden style, look very chic.
"Do you like these paintings?" Li Chuan asked from the side.
"I don't like it very much, and I don't understand it." I said, "But the design of this gallery is quite unique, and I like it very much."
I saw a smug smile on his face.
"You designed it?"
"Otherwise, why did they invite me here?"
"So, Architect Wang, what style do you belong to?"
"Naturalism. Go beyond the limitations of the times as much as possible."
I think of a sage I am familiar with: "Is it like Zhuangzi?"
"Oh, you also know Zhuangzi?" He was surprised, "Zhuangzi is my favorite philosopher."
"Li Chuan, you only know 950 Chinese characters," I laughed, "Isn't it a little extravagant to talk about Zhuangzi with me?"
"Zhuangzi is also very famous abroad, and there are translations in various languages. I have read the French text, and I even took this course in college. It is a pity that the professor is Chinese and his accent is too strong. In the end, I still don't understand it. But , you are not from the Chinese department either, about the knowledge of Zhuangzi, we should be half to eighty two, right?"
"My father loves classical literature and is a practitioner of Zhuangzi's philosophy. He yearns for nature, so he came to the countryside from the city. Our family doesn't use telephones, TVs, and even bicycles. My father told me since I was a child that walking and running Better than anything. But my brother and I betrayed him. No bikes, we begged grandpa to pay for them; no TV, we saved our pocket money to go to video studios.”
He was surprised: "Really? Your father rejects modern civilization?"
"My father said that there is no essential difference between modern and ancient times."
"Well, thought-provoking." Li Chuan looked at me with a smile on his face, which was meaningful. Apart from having a Chinese face, Li Chuan can be said to be a complete foreigner in many ways. It's surprising that we still have the same interests.
The number of people in the gallery gradually increased, and many students from the Academy of Fine Arts came in. Ye Ji even sneaked over to chat with us several times, and even said that he would invite me to go shopping when he was free. I thought female painters were very proud, but I didn't expect her to be so easy-going, so I couldn't help liking her a little.
I secretly looked at my watch, only ten minutes had passed, and asked Li Chuan, "Are you tired after standing for so long?"
"Not tired." Although he carried a cane, he seldom relied on it when standing.
"Hey, I think there are actually one or two people in this gallery who don't look like painters." I looked at a person in the crowd and said.
"Really?" Following my gaze, Li Chuan saw a middle-aged man in a gray suit with a square face and a pen pinned to his chest. He seemed to be looking for someone all the time, and then he seemed to find the person he was looking for, and then he walked straight towards us.
At that time, we were standing with a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts, trying to kill time as soon as possible. They were there talking about Kandinsky and we pretended to listen.
"Excuse me, are you Mr. Wang?" the middle-aged man said.
Li Chuan was slightly startled, and then said, "Sir, who are you looking for?"
"Mr. Lichuan Wang from CG Architects."
"I am."
The man handed over a business card: "Director of Dongfeng No. 3 Glass Factory, surnamed Xu."
I wondered why the director of the glass factory also came to the postmodern gallery
"Mr. Xu, what can I do for you?"
"Wang is always the chief designer of the Champs Building, Vanke Xincheng and Longgang Hotel, right?"
Li Chuan hesitated for a moment, then nodded: "Yes."
"Our factory is a senior state-owned large-scale enterprise that can produce the double-layer breathing glass curtain wall required by these three projects."
"Here... I'm only in charge of architecture and landscaping. You should deal with the construction department."
"We checked your background, sir. You are A&E, which means you are both an architect and an engineer. If you say that you need a certain building material to achieve the design effect, the construction company must buy it."
Li Chuan remained calm: "There are indeed several domestic factories producing this kind of glass curtain wall, but we usually import it from Europe."
"Mr. Wang, our factory can produce up-to-standard curtain walls. In terms of price and installation, you can save real estate developers a lot of money. In addition, you can also gain the reputation of supporting local industries. Why not do it?"
"The production of the outer glass may not be a problem in your factory, but the Lo-E coating of the inner glass may not be easy to pass. In addition, the installation technology of the curtain wall is also very difficult. To connect well with the HVAC system, we usually It is a Swiss professional installation consulting company to be responsible.”
"It depends on people's efforts. Our factory has the first-class qualification for special design of architectural curtain wall and first-class qualification for professional contracting of architectural curtain wall engineering, and has more than two years of construction performance of breathing glass curtain wall. In addition, we specially hired an installation consultant from Switzerland with a lot of money."
"Which advisor?" Li Chuan asked.
"Mr. Andrews of the Deepwood Company."
"Wait, I'll make a call." Li Chuan took out his mobile phone and dialed the number, and then he spoke French for nearly five minutes before closing the line.
"It was Andrews who asked you to come to me?" Li Chuan said, "Is this the back door?"
"I have 3,000 employees, and I have enough production capacity, but I don't have enough orders. 3,000 employees, plus family members, more than 10,000 people. Waiting for food."
Li Chuan didn't understand the idiom, looked at me, and I said in English, "It means waiting for your help."
"Mr. Xu, you are responsible for your workers, and I am responsible for my project, each performing its own duties, what do you think? This is not a TV show, please don't play bitter scenes with me?"
I was dumbfounded. Let’s say this person doesn’t speak Chinese, and he is not ambiguous at all when it is time to challenge him.
"Mr. Wang, you don't know much about Chinese culture. The biggest difference between Chinese culture and Western culture is that our culture emphasizes feelings, human relations, and friendship." Director Xu is neither humble nor overbearing.
Li Chuan asked me in English: "Is this your culture?"
I said, "It's one side. The director of the factory obviously has a lot of experience in fighting capitalists."
"Capitalist?" Li Chuan raised his eyebrows subconsciously.
"That is the nature of your class." I added, still in English, with a clear and unswerving stand on the side of the compatriots of the motherland. Li Chuan froze for a moment, thought for a moment, and suddenly asked, "Director Xu, what kind of air-conditioning system does your glass curtain wall correspond to?"
"The AVA system is energy-saving, environmentally friendly, healthy, and comfortable. Mr. Wang, I don't expect you to make a decision now. I just hope that you can take the time to come to our factory to have a look at the production situation and samples."
"Where is your factory?"
"Shenyang."
Li Chuan thought for a while and said, "Well, come to my office tomorrow for a detailed discussion, okay? This is my phone number. Please make an appointment with Miss Secretary for a specific time." He wrote him a phone number .
The factory manager took the note and shook his hand seriously: "Okay, thank you for giving our factory this opportunity."
"You're welcome."
The factory manager quickly left.
Taking this opportunity, I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, I saw Li Chuan talking with Jiang Hengxi and his wife. I didn't bother, I stood alone in a corner of the gallery and pretended to look at the painting. The school will test listening and speaking tomorrow, and I will silently recite the words in my heart.
After a while, someone stood beside me and asked: "Miss, do you like this painting very much?—I see you have been standing in front of it for a long time?"
I turned around, and the person who was speaking was a gentle young man with a very classic face of a scholar, stern and elegant, but his hairstyle was a bit weird and a bit bohemian.
"Last name is Li." He handed over his business card.
I glanced at it, it was a painter, I smiled and looked up for Li Chuan, hoping that he would come and save me. Li Chuan was very close to me, but with his back to me, talking happily with Jiang Hengxi and his wife.
"Yeah," I said in a deep voice, "I really like it."
"So, according to Miss, what is the theme of this painting?" He continued to ask, looking very interested, as if he wanted to hear what I had to say.
I quickly looked at the painting carefully. It is full of complicated and scattered lines, and the lines are composed of small characters, which vaguely looks like a human face, but the facial features on the face are a woman's body. I have always claimed to have a rich imagination, but the strange composition still makes my brain go blank.
I swallowed my saliva and was silent for a moment: "This is a human face." Nonsense.
The painter looked at me in bewilderment, waiting for me to continue. I had no choice but to go on:
— "The human face...is public and everyone can see it."
— "But, this face overlaps with the body again... um... the body... is hidden, desireable, invisible..."
—“So this face that overlaps with the body means that the desire has changed from concealment to publicity.” “It’s very interesting, please continue?” The painter looked at me with great interest. But I felt that if I kept fooling around like this, I was going to reveal my secrets, so I had to ask: "What do these messy lines made up of words symbolize? What do the words symbolize?"
"Language?" he replied tentatively, "sound, sign, text, oral, informal communication..."
"So...postmodern desires are to be satisfied through the text, not the senses," I said.
"For example?" The painter was still confused.
"Such as text messages, blogs, emails... Don't you think that the mobile phones and computers that carry them are gradually becoming an indispensable organ in our body?"
The painter suddenly realized: "It makes sense! I am the author of this painting, and your understanding has inspired me a lot. I haven't heard such a bold analysis for a long time. Do you have a phone number? When you are free, can I invite you to have a cup of coffee and talk about painting?"
With a hand on my shoulder, Li Chuan Shi squeezed in and said, "No, she's still a student and doesn't have a phone number."
The painter gave Li Chuan a dissatisfied look, and felt that it was very rude for him to interrupt our conversation. Ignoring Li Chuan, he continued to point to a painting next to him and said, "Miss, I also painted that painting, may I hear your opinion?"
I moved my eyes over, only to see a ball of bright red oil paint, as red as blood. Among them are a few branch-like thin lines, dark red, expanding like blood vessels.
I hurriedly lowered my head and grabbed Li Chuan involuntarily.
I wanted to keep calm, but my mind went blank, I only heard myself say: "Li Chuan, take me out of here!" Then I didn't know anything.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on a very comfortable sofa. The mouth is sweet, as if drinking sugar water. Li Chuan sat beside me and held my hand.
"Want some water?" he asked.
I shake my head.
"Why didn't you tell me," his face was tense, "you have blood sickness?"
"It's not serious." I breathed slowly.
"But, you still watch horror movies..."
"I thought that would cure me."
"It's not your own blood, are you dizzy too?" He became curious.
"I am only dizzy with other people's blood, but I don't get dizzy when I see my own blood."
I wanted to sit up, but he held me down, "Lie down for a while." Then he continued to be curious: "Are you born like this, or is there some psychological factor?"
"My mother bled to death when my brother was born," I said. "I was by her side."
"Your hospital allows children to watch the birth?"
"Not in the hospital, but at my home. My brother was born prematurely, and the medical conditions in the countryside are poor. It was too late when he was sent to the hospital. My mother didn't know that it would be so serious. Before she died, she asked me if I liked my brother. "
Li Chuan didn't speak, and kept touching my face and hair: "I don't have a mother either. My mother passed away very early. A car accident."
"What does your mother do?"
"Let me tell you this," he took a sip of water himself, "I'm an architect, right?"
"yes."
"You'll get tired of listening to it any further," he said. "My brother too, my dad too. My mom too. My uncle too. My grandpa too."
"Your grandma too?"
"Also. Do you still want to continue to hear about my family's occupation?"
"Is your cousin? Do you have a cousin?"
"Too."
"Li Chuan, this, the history of your family is too boring."
"That's it. Hehe."