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Couple's Art Show Recalls Ancient Silk Road

A week-long art show depicting Silk Road landscapes and the people who lived along the famous Asia-Europe trade route in ancient times has been held at Peking University. Works on view included 60 paintings by Zhao Yixiong and his wife Geng Yukun, artists at Beijing Art Academy.
The couple have traveled the 2,000-year-old Silk Road 17 times by car since 1975. Their trips usually began in Chang'an, today's Xi'an, then headed west for about 7,000 kilometers through north-west China, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria before reaching the eastern Mediterranean.

During their journeys, the couple produced more than 5,000 oils and watercolors, 6,000 sketches, 1,700 painted copies of frescos, and large numbers of diaries, photographs and videos. A book covering their odysseys and resultant artworks will be published in January, 2003. After Peking University, the art show was touring other major universities in Beijing, concluding at the China Millennium Monument at the end of this month.