About 3-4 years old, my father took me to the Woods near the village to sort out cicadas. Because my grandmother's family is in Fangshan rural area, my father poked a tree with a bamboo pole, and my brother (uncle's children) and I picked cicadas on low trees and small trees. We sometimes talk about it at parties. My uncle climbed the tree to pick cicadas and accidentally slipped down from the tree, and his thigh was scratched by branches and sewed more than a dozen stitches. Sometimes cicadas without shells can be found, and adults will clean the door and bake it on the fire. This is also the first time I have come into contact with the materials for making hairy monkeys.

My father specialized in making hairy monkeys in the 1980s. At that time, he had a job, working in the tourism bureau. At first, he was also a hairy monkey. Later, his brothers got together every day to be hairy monkeys, and the windowsill, bookcase and aisle at home were all filled with their works. Later, I learned that he signed a contract with the Beijing Friendship Store, delivered goods to the Friendship Store regularly, and started a hairy monkey business.

At that time, the policy did not allow, the unit criticized, and the family complained. Isn't this just doing nothing? In particular, he simply resigned from the unit and put the file in the talent center, which made everyone unable to understand. He had a terrible argument with his family. I was young at that time, and I didn't know much about these things, which was very contradictory. I haven't even contacted my father for years. But watching my father's enthusiasm and persistence in hairy monkeys from an early age also touched me. Growing up in such an environment, the basic materials and production methods have been engraved in my heart, and the hairy monkey has also branded my childhood and growth with an indelible mark.

After I graduated, my father found me a job. Probably because I was afraid that my family would object or delay my future, I was asked to work in a hotel at first. I went into my father's hairy monkey studio again because he asked me to do him a favor. He said that the municipal government of Wulanchabu, Inner Mongolia, came several times and asked him to give lectures in Wulanchabu to teach Mongolian Mao Xiu (a unique traditional handicraft skill of the Mongols, and our family is also the inheritor of this skill) and let this skill return to the Mongolian grassland. He's going to give a lecture for a year and asked me to look after the hairy monkey studio. To tell the truth, when I saw my father in trouble, I couldn't help but promise to take care of him. It is precisely because of this situation that I stepped into the world of hairy monkeys, and also let me see my father's achievements in studying hairy monkeys for more than ten years.

It is false to say that there is no feeling. Seeing these lifelike hairy monkey works, I really understood his pursuit of hairy monkey art and was moved from the bottom of my heart. It was also from this period that my father and son studied and made together, and I began to gradually understand the craftsman spirit of their generation "from one industry to life". Under his guidance, our father and son created eight series of hairy monkeys, which fundamentally subverted the tradition of single theme of hairy monkeys.

My father and I had more time to talk and study together when writing the book "Beijing Craft Wonders-Making Hairy Monkeys", and he also told me many things I didn't know. He said that the creation of Eight Series of Hairy Monkeys originated from his life and work experience. I'm confused. I only know that he jumped the queue in Inner Mongolia after graduation. I don't know that when he jumped the queue, he was elected to the Shanxi Opera Troupe (Shanxi Bangzi) and the Youth Peking Opera Troupe in the local area, and even recruited by the army. He worked as a literary and art soldier for eight years and learned literary and art skills such as singing, jumping, acting, fighting and singing. After leaving the army, he was responsible for grassroots cultural and sports work in the district trade union, and personally formed table tennis, blue team, drama troupe and acrobatic troupe until he retired from the tourism bureau on 201/kloc-0. At this point, I really understand that the all-encompassing creative themes in his works, such as piano, chess, books, painting, blowing, pulling, playing and singing, all originated from his rich life and work experience. These rich life and work experiences are now carefully refined by him into creative resources in the production of "Hairy Monkey".

From this stage on, I changed my impression of my father. I always think he is a little stubborn and stubborn. He doesn't preach much at ordinary times, but he repeatedly told me that in this line of work, we must first "stand loneliness and poverty." The process emphasizes that "success lies in details; Sometimes when I make a work, he thinks it is not fine enough, which will make me smash it and redo it. I insist that "you don't have to smash it, you can sell it cheaply", and he will say rudely: "Doing art is like being a man. If you fool others, you fool yourself. What is bad today is not defective products, but your irresponsibility. " He gave me the most profound and meaningful sentence, which I will remember all my life, that is, "being an artist is being a man."