The Painters of Hongcun

Hongcun, below Huangshan, is a village that doubles as a syllabus: every art academy in the country sends students here to paint the white Hui houses and their reflection in the lake. The shore is a row of easels, dozens of them, brushes ticking like a quiet industry.

A teacher with excellent English and better humor lent me a stool and a canvas. I painted for two hours at the end of the row, looking mostly at the water like my neighbors, producing something a kind person might call a roof. The student beside me appraised it and said, diplomatically, that perspective is difficult. It is.

I left the canvas with the teacher, who accepts tributes from the talentless with grace. The lake got painted eighty times that day and holds still for all of them. That is the village's real lesson: some subjects have infinite patience with our need to render them.