In the winter days in Myanmar, the weather is always gloomy, and the sun is not seen for half a month.

The winding Yangon River passes through the gorges, and the blue-gray clouds cover the mountains around the riverside at low pressure, as if they can drip water at any time.

"Gu's calligraphy and painting shop, this is it."

A fifteen-minute drive east of the former capital of Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, faces the sparkling waters of the Yangon River.

This is one of the more prosperous commercial areas, and international visitors to Myanmar can walk down from a cruise on the Yangon River and see this string of grey marble-walled British buildings. Most of these buildings are old, and the surface of the decoration has some mottled traces left by the years, and the earliest houses are still left during the Anglo-Burmese War, which is more than a century old.

A man in a black shirt stands in front of a calligraphy and painting shop, looking up at a sign written in Chinese, English, and Burmese Chinese Chinese.

He looked to be in his thirties, with sunglasses on his face, no hair on the top of his head, half of an angry tattoo of a Buddha's head on his skin above the collar and below his head, followed by two younger brothers who were smoking cigarettes, and the group exuded a cold temperament that was incompatible with the surrounding environment.

"Let's go, this is it, Brother Hao said, let's greet Mr. Xiao Gu for the New Year."

Pushing the door and walking into the painting and calligraphy shop, the sound of the blue Danube River can be heard in the air.

The décor is exquisite, a bit like a small museum with hundreds of square meters, and the glass frames on the walls are a series of large and small paintings, ranging from oil paintings to ink paintings. Separate air conditioners, heaters, and dehumidifiers work to make small, fine buzzes.

The two little brothers behind the bald head curiously stretched out their hands to feel the warm air blowing from the air conditioner on the side.

Winters in Myanmar are not low, sometimes reaching more than 25°C, and heating is almost never available here. However, calligraphy and painting shops are a secondary market for the sale of valuable art, and they need to maintain a constant temperature and humidity environment all year round.

Looking at the calligraphy and painting shop was a thin sixteen- or seventeen-year-old student who looked like a boy with glasses.

The boy sat on the beanbag couch in front of the hallway of the doorway, with a drawing board and color palette in front of him.

When the bald group entered the door, he was holding a paintbrush in his hand and smearing it on the canvas, and the dark shirt printed with the ancestor Gundam on his body was stained with some oil paint, and with his excessively pale skin, the whole person looked like a colorful look.

"What are you drawing?"

"Mercedes Classic S220, 1:18 scale. Photorealism, the final homework of the school, to be handed in after the Spring Festival. The boy pointed to the coffee table in front of the drawing board, a model of an antique car made of resin and metal, and a few photos of real cars.

The boy's name is Gu Weijing, who is just 17 years old this year, and his ancestral home is Wuxi, Jiangsu.

According to the genealogical records, it is said that the ancestor was Gu Kaizhi, who painted the famous "Luo Shen Futu" during the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

Whether the ancestor of the Gu family is the legendary Gu Kaizhi is no longer examinable, but Gu Weijing's wife and grandfather are indeed court painters.

In fact, he is already the fifth generation of Yangon-based people who run this Kooon gallery.

"What do you have to learn if you have this craft?"

The bald tattooed man flicked the head of his little brother, who was still looking around the painting shop, and asked them to put the basket of tropical fruits on the coffee table in front of the gallery. walked to Gu Weijing's side and sighed in admiration.

"Mingala (note, Burmese, auspicious wishes), this is the New Year's red envelope given by Brother Hao to Mr. Xiao Gu......" he said as he pulled out a bundle of green banknotes tied with a strap from the waist bag he was wrapped around his waist.

The bundle of bills was heavy and thick, and it was a lot of weight, and it looked like the thickness of an adult man's palm.

In the face of such a generous gift, Gu Weijing not only did not have any joy in his heart, but was a little irritable in his heart.

These people didn't come to the store to buy paintings, but to him.

It stands to reason that an ordinary middle school student can't provoke these ruthless people who look like they are on the road, but Gu Weijing has a good skill in painting.

In the profession of art, which is very talented, it is said that every great person in history who has left a brilliant page in the history of art has shown distinctive characteristics at a very young age.

For example, Mozart was able to play the violin in front of the king at a certain age, the scholar Wang Xizhi liked to eat steamed buns dipped in ink when he was a child, and Leonardo da Vinci painted eggs with extra circles......

Although Gu Weijing is not a big person, he is indeed a little talented.

From the first time he picked up the brush at the age of four, he showed an extraordinary quality.

He has a good sense of spatial structure – magnifying the escape wheel of an old mechanical watch dozens of times like a scanner, and then using a paintbrush and ruler to draw the exact proportions of each gear engagement.

For a painter with such a sense of spatial structure, it is not difficult to be patient and paint for a month or two, and carefully copy the paintings on those famous paintings or antique porcelain to achieve a high degree of similarity.

His grandfather has sighed more than once that his grandson was really born in the wrong era, if he had been born one or two hundred years earlier, not to mention becoming famous and starting a family, it is estimated that he would not have starved to death just by virtue of this human flesh camera ability.

It's a pity that this kind of objective reproductionist painting is worthless in modern times when printers are everywhere.

No matter how vivid your drawings are, you can only carry a cardboard box in front of a tourist attraction and draw a half-foot sketch for two dollars a pair of tourists, and you may not be able to sell a few copies a day.

It's just that I don't know why, the young master of Gu's calligraphy and painting shop has this ability to be known by the bald people.

Gu Weijing had heard of the reputation of these bald people. They have a bad reputation on this street, or rather a bad reputation.

Looking at the dress, you also know that they are not on the right path.

The bald boss is called Brother Hao, and he specializes in counterfeiting for a living.

Of course, I don't have the ability to make dollars like in Fa Ge's movie "Wushuang", but I don't have the courage to engage in some high-imitation antiques specially used to deceive mainland businessmen, but also has a lot of courage.

Brother Hao's influence in Yangon is not small, black and white dishes are very popular, and counterfeit art is very good in the black market, and even exported to RB, Europe and Singapore.

Gu Weijing's eyes swept over the "red envelope" handed over by the bald head, and secretly said trouble.

This pile of money is the largest amount of kyats.

On the front is the white elephant and lotus flower, the sacred symbols of Myanmar, and on the back is a painting of Mandalay Lake, each worth 10,000 kyats.

Looking at the thickness, this bundle is either 5 million kyats, or 8.88 million kyats for an auspicious one.

Even if the Kyats are not worth anything, the bundle will be worth $2,000 at the current exchange rate. In Myanmar, where the per capita monthly income is less than $100, this is a lot of money.

It's not easy to get a red envelope from the underworld.

Take other people's money, and they will let you do things.

Don't look at these who are now bold and like the good big brothers who are fighting for justice and squandering money in Hong Kong films, and it will be the same people who will ruin your family when the time comes.

The underworld will always be the underworld.

"Thank you Brother Hao for your love, but I'm still in school."

Gu Weijing showed a polite smile on his face, politely but resolutely rejected the other party's red envelope.

His gaze swept over the fruit bowl held by the bald little brother on the side, in Myanmar, tropical fruits are not worth a few dollars, and if they are returned and not accepted, the other party will feel that he will not give face.

The Gu family, who is open to do business, pays attention to a harmonious and wealthy person.

He thought about it, put down his paintbrush, found a Marlboro left by his elders from the drawer on the side, and pushed it down the counter.

", Happy New Year, take out a few brothers to smoke. Don't want the red envelope, understand, if my grandfather comes back and knows that I took your money, he will kill me. ”

"How many years will the old thing live? You don't care about him, Brother Hao is your blessing to take a fancy to you, and others don't want this opportunity yet. ”

The younger brother on one side took Marlboro and seemed to be very dissatisfied with Gu Weijing's ignorance of lifting.

The bald head waved his hand to stop the little brother's complaints.

"Mr. Gu and Mr. Xiao Gu are both decent and decent people, and they don't look down on us who are going off the beaten path, the brothers know it in their hearts. It's just that times are different now. Mr. Xiao Gu, Brother Hao said, if you follow him to do things, you will be able to drive a Ferrari within a year. Two years, it only takes two years, you can pick a big house in Yangon Ahole (a famous rich area in Myanmar), and when the time comes, you can change a big house to Mr. Gu. Can the old man still be angry with you? ”

Gu Weijing still had a smile on his face that rejected people thousands of miles away, and arched his hands and said, "Thank you, Brother Hao, for lifting up, it's just that Brother Hao saw the wrong person." The younger brother really doesn't have the ability to eat this money. Lift up your noble hands, lift up your noble hands. ”

"Yes, I'm talking about it for nothing."

The bald head motioned for his little brother to leave, stretched out his hand and patted the counter of the calligraphy and painting shop, staring at Gu Weijing's pupils.

Gu Weijing's face was still smiling, but the hand holding the paintbrush involuntarily clenched.

"Don't be nervous, Brother Hao said, he is a person who talks about rules, and he came here today just to pay New Year's greetings, and has no other meaning. As for whether to raise your hand, Mr. Xiao Gu, what you said doesn't count, what I say doesn't count, it still depends on Brother Hao's meaning at that time. However, I would like to advise Mr. Xiao Gu, what you originally wanted to do, don't make everyone ugly in the end. ”

"This is my business card, when Mr. Xiao Gu changes his mind, call me at any time."

With that, the bald head turned around and strode out of the shop with the little brother who had already lit a cigarette in the gallery.

Gu Weijing stared at the direction where the bald head left for a while, shook his head, and the smile on his face completely faded and became serious.

"It's tough."

As he walked over and turned up the exhaust air volume of the ventilation fan to the maximum and processed the smoke in the air, he thought back to the conversation he had just made, making sure that he didn't give the other party a chance to stick to it.

Gu Weijing picked up the brush again, and continued to complete the work during the Spring Festival holiday before the acrylic paint was dry.

Although he was irritable, his grandfather taught himself that even if he couldn't be pious about artistic creation, seriousness was the bottom line, otherwise he would not be qualified to eat this bowl of rice.

According to the schedule, he has to finish the painting today, and Gu Weijing doesn't like the feeling of wasting halfway.

Just when he put pen to paper again.

[Oil Painting: Lv2 Introductory (23/100)]

"Huh?"

A virtual panel suddenly appeared in front of his eyes.