Sari beauty by Shanghai artist Yao Yuxin. No, I didn't own this painting but I wish I had. I've seen many exquisite paintings by Yao -- and I wished too I had bought them all -- in a number of exhibitions in the 1980s, the most memorable being one of Lin Taiyi reading in the garden. Lin Taiyi or Blackjade, is the delicate and beautiful heroine in the Hong Lou Meng, Dream of the Red Chamber.
I learnt from a fellow newspaper journalist in 1999 that the artist, who had since migrated to the US, had been killed in a car accident.
The Sari beauty was scanned from an arts catalogue Mr Yao gave me in 1990.
-- Francis Chin
The company of beauty
