[Photo illustration by Alex K. Fong/China Daily]

Peeping through a door more than 30 years ago left an indelible mark that still holds many lessons

When I was 5 my mother took me to a painting class at a nearby "cultural palace" - a three-storey building made up of a ground-floor movie theater and many rooms open to children during the school holidays. There I received my first art message, not in my own class, but the one next-door.

Before that day came, I had done plenty of doodling on sheets of paper my mother brought home from school. (In the mid-1980s it was a minor luxury for an average wage-earning Chinese family to provide their child with an unlimited amount of good-quality painting paper.)

I cannot recall how the idea of attending a painting class came to me, but the moment I realized that there was a possibility to do so, I begged my parents. They agreed despite their meager income.

So that sunny Sunday morning my mother sat me in a class where a teacher, colorful felt-tip pens in hand, was drawing on a sheet of paper pasted on the blackboard. The children followed him in drawing simple lines and filling demarcated blocks to produce an outlandish potpourri of colors. At the end of that class, everyone handed in a disk-faced owl feathered like a tropical parrot.

Then came the break, and I ran out and peeked into the classroom next door. That stolen glance changed my school holidays for the next few years.