About the Author

张一平Shirley Yiping Zhang is a dreamer and the founder of E-bridge Cross-Cultural and Comprehensive Art and its project. She discovered the connection point between traditional Chinese painting and modern Chinese language and created a vocal, bilingual poetry and painting series and a part of works of this series has been collected into the publication series which is the main product of the cross-cultural and comprehensive art and its project. Her dream is to create a new subject in the Chinese as a Foreign Language field while creating a new comprehensive art form, exploring a new channel in the cultural transmission field, helping non-Chinese speakers to learn Chinese culture and language, then to do the similar things on Western culture and language to help non-English speakers to learn Western cultures and languages. Therefor, she has worked on music, painting, Chinese poetry and English language for the last 17 years and practiced her dream by creating, teaching, researching mainly in the USA and China for the last 9 years, and hopes to seek out a business model in the USA and then to extend to Australia and Europe.   

Shirley has attended 9 universities and colleges, is a current candidate for Master of Fine Arts at the Chinese National Academy of Arts (CANN), majoring in Chinese painting at both CNAA and China Central Academy of Arts for 8 years (2010 to 2019). She has an MBA from the USA, a Bachelor of Arts from China and attended a DBA program at an American University’s teaching base of China. She is a former College Chinese instructor, a volunteer instructor and teacher in both Chinese painting and poetry with her created music and pictures in the USA and Beijing, will hopefully be an instructor teaching Chinese World Humanities (using this publication series as the main textbooks) at Ozarks Technical Community College in the USA in the near future. She has also been a senior manager, author and editor of book series, a newspaper, a magazine, web sites and multi-media digital productions.

She has published 5 publication series (consisting of a total of 18 books, 6 CDs, 2 DVDs and about 6000 pages of newspaper) in both cross-cultural and comprehensive art field and Chinese securities fields, which were published by 6 publishing houses, a newspaper office and a magazine between 1992 to 2013. The E-bridge Cross -cultural and Comprehensive Art Series Poetry, Painting, Music: Comprehensive and Artistic Chinese（Together with Me, Learn Chinese Culture and Language by Enjoying Paintings, Music and Poetry） volume 1 (one book and one DVD)she created and Together with Me, Speak Real American English (4 books and 4 CDs) she masterminded & translated were published by Jinan University Press in 2013 and 2002 respectively.

Shirley has held Individual Cross-cultural and Comprehensive Art Exhibitions 6 times, sponsored by Ozark Technical Community College, Brentwood Branch Library, City of Pikeville, Eastern Kentucky Exposition Center, Peckville Artisan Alliance, Missouri State University, Springfield Regional Arts Council and Springfield Art Area Chamber of Commerce in Missouri State and Kentucky State in the USA 2009 to 2016.

She has taught more than 4,000 students from 8 countries (of which 99% were Americans) both Chinese painting and Chinese poetry set to music that she has composed in 226 lessons totaling more than 300 hours at 39 American organizations including K-12 schools, colleges, universities and in 2 Chinese schools in Beijing. She also taught College Chinese for 9 years.   

She offered the painting tools for more 4,000 students (paper, brushes, felt pads which she carried from China to the US), donated whole of the income from her art exhibitions, about 200 paintings, 70 Chinese painting brushes and about 200 formal publications to help local people to learn Chinese culture and arts.

Seven of the organizations she has taught at - Park Central Library, St. Agnes School, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School, Immaculate Conception School, Ozarks Technical Community of College, Seymour R-II School District, Springfield Region Art Council - have awarded her Certificates of Appreciation from 2009 to 2015.

She has also been to Australia, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Vatican, Italy Malaysia and Hong Kong to seek her Cross-cultural and Comprehensive Art dream.