While creating this painting, I could almost physically hear the sound of the xiao. This quiet motif seems to emerge from the heart of the mountains, breaking through the morning mist. The blue-green landscape is not just nature for me — it is my personal sky and ground. The mountains are alive: they breathe, rise, swirl, and dissolve into clouds. On the man-made terraces, a measured rhythm of life unfolds. Within this strict architecture, one can sense the music of order. For me, this is the image of an ideal world, where human beings do not dominate nature but gently integrate into it.

On the terrace, a jade maiden plays the xiao surrounded by immortals. They neither ask for a miracle nor wait for it — they create it themselves, here and now, with the help of the sound. For me, the legend of the phoenix is not merely a myth but a story of encounter, where one calls and the other inevitably responds, and the beauty attracts the beauty.

While working on this piece, I began to wonder: what if borders exist only conditionally? What if a mountain in China and a mountain on the other side of the world are, in essence, the same? And if the pure sound of the xiao can reach everyone who is willing to truly listen, then art and culture transcend distance, connecting local traditions into a shared space of human experience.