On The Dragon Fruit for Chairman Mao-

I remember at the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution”, Chairman Mao, the dictator of China, received some tropical fruit from Sihanouk, the ruler of Cambodia, as gift of friendship.  It became a big news in the media. I had not seen any tropical fruit at that time and was fascinated by the exotic look of them in the newspaper. After I emigrated to the States I was equally amazed that they are regular items on the shelves in supermarkets, shops and fruit stands on streets. Recently I traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountains to do a landscape project. We were staying in Otto, a small town in North Carolina, and amazingly found a large selection of tropical fruit- mangos, pineapples, papaya, Dragon fruit. I remembered the fuss made by Chairman Mao about the tropical fruit, so I painted this and named it "The Dragon Fruit for Chairman Mao". Mao was a dragon in the way he ruled China.

• Ying Li