Ａ　Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　Ｃｏｌｌｅｃｔｏｒ　ａｎｄ　Ｈｉｓ　Ｓｔｏｒｙ.docVIP

Ａ　Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　Ｃｏｌｌｅｃｔｏｒ　ａｎｄ　Ｈｉｓ　Ｓｔｏｒｙ 　　 1 Collection starting with two pieces of embroidery In 1977, China was under a gray sky everywhere. On the air, there were no more than 3 to 4 radio stations, which emitted revolutionary news and songs everyday. In my childhood, just like any others of that time, I was always wearing clothes of a monotonous color. Mom tied my hair into two ponytails with two bright red bowknots, which became the only bright color that could be seen on me. 　　My dad, 36 back at that time, had given up his career in fine arts, instead, he worked as a professional photographer in Guizhou Pictorial. He took tons of professional pictures of mom but yet, she found a blemish in the otherwise perfect pictures as they were black and white. She liked color ones. She always colored them so as to make them look more beautiful. In those years, it was a big luxury to have a real color picture. 　　As a photographer, dad was always out of the town and every time we asked him where he was going, “To the country, many different villages in the country” was his simple answer. I had always wished that dad was going to Beijing or Shanghai, instead of those poor villages in the country, where there were no beautiful colorful clothes that he could bring back as gifts for me and my younger sister. Occasionally, father would come back with something from the country, but what he brought back was some wild hawthorns. We had always been disappointed till one day father came back with something special, which changed my views and my sister’s. 　　There was a day when I came home after school and father, who had just come back from the countryside, told me he had something beautiful. I went over to dad delightedly and was shown two pieces of embroidery cloth, which I had never seen before: some colors were embroidered into patterns on black cloth. I couldn’t figure out why they were beautiful in Dad’s eyes, as they were way less charming than those embroidered by my grandmot