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Hi,Dear Friends
How are you?
September 10 is China’s Teachers’ Day. I would really like to wish all the teachers in the world happiness, health, and more success!
I am so sorry that I haven’t sent any letters to you since I wrote to you last time on July 4, although I had written on July 29 and August 30.
On one hand, I was busy; on the other hand, I am facing hard choices.
Below are my main jobs from July 4:
- On July 14, I completed a proposal for a library for our potential cooperation in 2026.
- On July 24, I completed a paper titled “On Founding a ‘Poetry, Painting, and Music: Comprehensive and Artistic Chinese’ New Subject in the International Chinese Teaching Field” in Chinese. On the same day, I started to work on its English version.
- On July 27, a Sydney branch of one of the biggest international art training organizations and I started a small class at their studio that will last until October.
- On August 12, I completed my “E-bridge Cross-cultural and Comprehensive Art” Teaching Syllabus
- On August 13, the founder and leaders of the Sydney Chinese Culture School -- Mrs. Zhang Jin and Mr. Lin Bin came to see my creations and then we had a good meeting for over six hours. They thought that my “World Cultural Map Series” is creative and meaningful; they encouraged me to continue working on it while giving me many good ideas. We would also like to collaborate on both interesting projects.
- On August 19, I submitted the Chinese version of my paper to an academic journal at one of the best universities.
- On August 23，I completed its first English version and will submit it to another academic journal soon.
- Since August 24, I have been working on the nine line drawing drafts of the second one of my World Cultural Map series. The first two one will take another six or seven months to complete them.
- September 7, Mrs. Michael Ji and I finished our partnership relationship at E-bridge Sydney Studio. Both of us will respectively be the owners and delegates of Michele’s Sydney Elder Healthy Club and Shirley’s E-bridge Cross-Cultural and Comprehensive Art Studio to continue our work and cooperation.
Now, I am facing some new choices:
One: Given that I must cumulatively stay in Australia for 2 years within five years, but I have only cumulatively stayed here for less than 1 year, I need to decide when I should go back to China to complete my creation while accompanying my father who is going to turn one hundred years old.
Two: Since I have been working with Chinese Australians in Sydney for 4 months, I need to think about the target market: whether I should mainly develop my Cross-Cultural and Comprehensive Art Project by working with native English speakers as I did in the US, or if I should continue this project by working with native Chinese speakers in Australia?
With these questions, I have made four appointments with four groups of local successful people.
Yesterday, I consulted the first one of them: Mr. Dahai Yu, who is a famous researcher on Sydney and Australian history and the author of an important book “On Sydney,” and got the following inspirations:
-- Take advantage of my own strengths: Since the third part of my World Cultural Map is about Australia, why shouldn’t I take advantage of this – staying in Australia now – to learn and collect first-hand data as much as possible to do the necessary preparation for my art creations?
-- Learn to control costs: No matter whether I'm in Australia, America or China, what I should do is choose the lowest-cost place to carry out creative work such as drafting or coloring.
-- Free my mind: Jump out of a country’s state/provincial design limitations and create my World Cultural Map series with a wider perspective…
Also, in the past 2 months, I have read a lot of books on philosophy, and got some of my ideas:
Artworks are one of the carriers of an artist's philosophical concepts, but they are not appendages of philosophy. Therefore, an artist's creation must take into account the social function of their work as well as follow their inner feelings.
So next, I'll consult more groups of people for their good advice before making my own decisions.
Do you think these are good ideas? If you were me, what would you choose?
Do you have anything special to share?
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Sincerely, I am just a lifelong learner in the arts of painting, music, English, management and Chinese art teaching, and work on the website in my free time. I would really like to do something with what I have learned and make this website a little electronic bridge for cross-cultural and integrated/comprehensive art and Chinese language studying. This way, I can help others while improving myself.
Thank you always for your understanding, guidance and assistance and if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to write to info@ebridge.cn .
Shirley Yiping Zhang
September 11, 2025 (Sydney Time, Australia )
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