In his old age, he started his own businessGuarding nearly 10,000 paintings but resolutely refusing to sell, he is bent on building a Silk Road Art Museum that can be opened to the public, this is the stubbornness of the Silk Road painter Geng Yukun who never let go.
Since 1975, Geng Yukun and his wife Zhao Yixiong have embarked on the "Silk Road" more than 20 times in nearly 40 years to sketch, investigate and create. He traveled through 8 countries and 238 cities, traveled more than 500,000 kilometers, and wrote more than 8 million wordscollected, sorted out and copied more than 1,000 Gaochang murals that were lost abroad.
My wife Zhao Yixiong's greatest wish is to show nearly 10,000 works to everyone. Our original work is not for sale, this is my wife's will, and it is also my future will.
Some paintings of Zhao Yixiong and Geng Yukun. Four years ago, Zhao Yixiong died. Today, Geng Yukun registers his paintings every day, tells the stories behind the Silk Road paintings through social platforms, and makes art derivatives. All efforts are just waiting for the day when the Silk Road Art Museum is completed and landed. "I want to show you these nearly 10,000 works and inherit the spirit of the Silk Road." Half a lifetime of hard work, all in the Silk Road. Why did the couple set foot on the Silk Road again and again?
The ancient ruins that have been preserved for thousands of years are disappearing at a relatively rapid rate, so we want to do our part as a painter and use our brushes to record as much as possible the current appearance of the Silk Road. Zhao Yixiong gave such an answer in the ** information left before his death.
Flaming Mountain" (by Zhao Yixiong).
In 1975, Zhao Yixiong set foot on Xinjiang for the first time. He went from Urumqi to Ili and then to Tashkurgan. He walked fast under his feet, painting as much as he could. Snow Mountain Pasture, Gobi Hanhai, he can't see enough, let alone finish.
Geng Yukun still remembers what her husband said to her: ".Looking at the Silk Road in the history books, you can only see a faint flash of brilliance;When you really set foot on the Silk Road, you will be in awe of it. You are a painter, and the Silk Road needs you to paint with me.
Young Zhao Yixiong.
Three years later, the couple set off with their sketchpads on their shoulders and took a train for more than 80 hours to Xinjiang. "There are a lot of oilfield equipment on the road, and I heard that the country is going to develop and find oil. As soon as the two of us discussed, let's go to the Taklamakan Desert first to see what the scenery was before the development. Thus began the Silk Journey, circumnavigating the Taklamakan Desert.
In those years, the couple ate naan every day when they were hungry and drank boiling snow water when they were thirstyWaited for the donkey cart in the car, waited for the camel after the tractor;At night, he even shared a room with the dried corpse that the archaeological team had just discovered, and let the cold wind blow the sand all over his face in the roofless house.
Regarding the feat of the couple, the painter Wu Guanzhong once said: "Every time I see Zhao Yixiong carrying a large bundle of oil paintings on his back, I am very moved. They crawled in the dirt looking for the footprints of their predecessors, and listened to their voices in the wind and quicksand. ”
On the Silk Road, Zhao Yixiong felt that the most dangerous thing was to paint in the Tanggula Pass.
At an altitude of 5,400 meters, the couple did not want to leave early, but opened the easel and began to sketch. Geng Yukun has a big heart, and he still sleeps correctly. Zhao Yixiong was worried that his wife would sleep too deeply and would not wake up from lack of oxygen, so he didn't sleep all night. After a while, Geng Yukun's name was called, and Geng Yukun replied unhurriedly in his sleep: "I'm still alive." ”
The intoxicating exotic scenery on the Silk Road is dizzying, not only full of nature's miraculous workmanship, but also a confidant of life like Chang Shuhong. 
On Chinese New Year's Eve in 1979, Geng Yukun and Zhao Yixiong hurried to the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang and met Chang Shuhong, director of the Dunhuang Institute of Cultural Relics and known as the "guardian saint of Dunhuang." Knowing that they had just finished circumnavigating the Taklamakan Desert, Chang Shuhong was excited, squinting at their paintings one after another under the lamp, and couldn't put them down.
What made Zhao Yixiong and Geng Yukun even more surprising was that on the first day of the Lunar New Year, Chang Shuhong let them enter the cave to have a good time. In the winter of Dunhuang, the cold wind is bone-chilling. The couple did not remember how thick the clothes they were wrapped, only the sore nose and hot eyes when they entered the cave with a flashlight, and the fact that they brought water and dry food into the cave early in the morning and refused to come out until it was dark.
On the long Silk Road, Zhao Yixiong and Geng Yukun sang with their wives, and the love of life and death was moving. Zhao Yixiong once said to Geng Yukun, in case something happens to you on the road, I will put your urn in the co-pilot's seat and continue to walk the Silk Road. Geng Yukun laughed and said, I don't dare to think about what to do if you don't have you, I just think that we can go on successfully.
Geng Yukun once regretted that because of malnutrition when he was young, he lost only nine teeth in his early forties, and naturally he couldn't expect to have children. Now I have long been relievedI have done something worth doing in my life, I have loved a person worthy of love in my life, when my hair is gray, I can still leave a room of paintings to the world, and I have the strength to draw an end to my dreams, and I have no regrets in this life.
* **Voice of China.
Edited by Tao Yinsheng.
Reviewed and signed by Xiaoyue.
Executive Producer: Qiao Hong.