"I have a special emotional connection with earth," says the 40-year-old sculptor.

Compared with some artists, Yu is slow in producing works. The sculpture of the Goddess of the Luo, a beauty worshipped during the Three Kingdom period, took the artist six years to create. He can't remember how many times he sculpted it, rejected it and started again.

He calls the process "a practice to cultivate his inner mind". Just like a good Peking Opera actor who has to practice his skills for a lifetime to stage a perfect performance, Yu says he needs time to produce the best one.

Like most families in his village, Yu's could not afford to buy a TV when he was young. The village's outdoor theater, which regularly presented traditional Chinese operas, was his main source of information about the world and where he learned history. He has since kept the habit of listening to, as well as watching, Peking Opera pieces.

Although figures in Peking Opera feature colorful costumes and faces to offer strong visual effects, those made by Yu are exactly the opposite, created with a single color and without faces.

"It's the core of oriental aesthetics to be restrained. The beauty is not at the first sight," Yu explains. "The more you look at it, the more magnificent it feels."

Yu has devoted his past decade to recreating and re-imagining the opera figures that shaped his young mind. Now he is ready for his next phase: a series of landscapes also imagined in the xieyi style, the first of which is also on show. The 2-meter-high bronze sculpture with green mountains, boats and clouds took him two years to complete.

"It's more difficult than creating figures," Yu says. "But I know nature well because of my rural upbringing."

In the footsteps of many landscape artists before him, he plans to travel across China to witness the country's splendor and see the mountains for himself.

"It's not only important to see them with one's eyes," he says, "but just as important to feel them in one's heart."

If you go

9:30 am-6:30 pm, through May 19. 2 West Chang'an Avenue, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6655-0000.

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