Shao Liyu, an old Chinese lady living in French, recalls when she first came to France, “I did not want to talk with local people because of the cultural differences.” Not long ago, she turned to patch painting, using leftover of cloth discarded by the garment factory. “I shared my childhood, the stories my grandma told me when I was a kid, and my personal memories and experience on my patch paintings.”
Using pieces of cloth instead of a pen, Shao expresses her homesickness in her “Beijing diary”. From great amounts of leftovers, Shao carefully collects the suitable materials in terms of colors, textures and cloth marks that fitted the themes. “When I first saw an end of Indian silk, the color of which is similar to the Chinese red wall, I gathered some odds and ends.” The folk customs, neighborhoods and people lived in traditional courtyards and Hutong of old Beijing concretized on the pictures. It usually took her a month to finish a cloth patch picture. A Chinese French painter Chen Dehong praises Shao’s work with a quotation of famous Chinese painter and activist Xu Beihong- “Ning Zhuo Wu Qiao”, which means that it is better be clumsy-real work rather than an exquisite duplication. He added, “Shao's works are of creativity and sentiments. They are unique in terms of the theme, the subjects and contents which cannot be copied.” Shao's colleagues and boss encouraged her to hold a personal exhibition.
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