ource: Southern Metropolis Daily Page GA11 2013-03-05
Written by: Yu Siyi
Translated by: Chen Zhiyong

"Come and draw again? This side today,” a passing housewife saw Chen JIngzhi and struck up a conversation with him.

Last Saturday, when the exhibition of celebrities of the Xu family at Xudi on Gaodi Street was going on in the Memorial Hall in Qiyi Road in Yuexiu District, Mr. Chen Jingzhi, a local Cantonese with gray hair, was carefully drawing the original site of the Xu family ancestral hall (now the retiree activity centre of Education Bureau of Yuexiu District) dozens of metres away in the old alley.

Mr Chen Jingzhi, now 61, is a designer in Architecture Design Institute of Sun Yat-sen University. He grew up in Xiguan and is deeply attached to the old city of Guangzhou, so on weekends bringing his small bench he often draws the old city in his sketch book in one corner of the city or another.

Opening his sketch book, we can find the scenes of Duobao Road in Xiguan and Xudi on Gaodi Street. The drawing that day is his fourth sketch of Xudi. Chen told us that the gate of the Xu family house was the most difficult part. He drew twenty columns and seven rows of window tracery carefully one by one; he spent two days on that.

"I just want to make some record of the old buildings, that’s what I want for now,” Chen said. Since 2010, Chen has been visiting old streets for almost two years. He used to draw the old Xiguan, but when he saw that the government began to preserve Xiguan Mansions in recent years, he thought, “I can draw them later.” When he learnt about the redevelopment plan for Xudi on Gaodi Street, he did not lose a moment in recording them.

We learn that Mr. Chen’s next plan is to draw the ancestral halls around Deng Shichang Memorial in Haizhu District. “Those are buildings of the Qing Dynasty, different from these here,” he said.