Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily (Reporter Guo Honglei) news: On December 22, 2025, Cui Fengchun still got up early. After working at his desk for four hours, he finished the sketches he had made at the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel, then hurried off to his studio to continue painting the local fruit varieties of Xinjiang that he had been thinking about for days.

Cui, 63 years old, is a native of Xinjiang. Entirely self-taught, he has studied traditional Chinese painting for more than forty years and has developed distinctive insights into landscapes, flowers-and-birds, and fruit-and-melon subjects. Many of the art lessons he has authored have been selected for inclusion in art textbooks for primary and secondary schools.

Photo taken on December 22, 2025 shows Cui Fengchun introduces his paintings of fruits and melons in his studio. (Photo by Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily/ Guo Honglei)

Cui is best at painting Populus euphratica and the fruits of Xinjiang.

"There are more than twenty kinds of fruit from Xinjiang that people love," he said. "And I want to create a painted ‘biography’ for every single one." In each volume, he traces how the fruit has been portrayed in Chinese painting through the centuries, adds appreciations of famous works, shares the techniques he has worked out for painting that particular fruit, and concludes with his own finished compositions.

To guarantee accuracy, Cui pores over historical texts, distilling a "history of fruits in Chinese painting" from a sea of sources. In one of his books, he presents more than a hundred of his own grape studies, each illustration accompanied by the cultivar name verified and inscribed by experts from Xinjiang Agricultural University.

Why insist on creating a "pictorial biography" for Xinjiang's fruits and vegetables? Cui's answer is very simple: "It matters."

More than forty years ago, he encountered traditional Chinese painting for the first time and was instantly hooked. After painting a few pieces, his enthusiasm for further exploration was ignited. "Back then, painting was a private joy, a spiritual pursuit," he recalled. "I experimented with every style I could find." Before long self-study no longer satisfied his hunger for technical mastery, so he repeatedly traveled to professional academies in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to learn from established masters.

After completing his formal training, Cui embarked on a systematic creation of works, and the first subject he tackled was the Populus euphratica. "The Populus euphratica embodies the spirit of Xinjiang," he explained. "Because I love this land, I love to paint its Populus euphratica."

Under his brush, Populus euphratica assumes a thousand different moods. He heads out to sketch on location, including Qitai County, Mulei Kazak Autonomous County, Aksu City, and Korla City, every stand of Populus euphratica has been drawn. Armed with only a sketchbook and a pen, he will work seven or eight hours without stopping. In the past decade he has produced well over a thousand studies of Populus euphratica, no two alike, and his paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions across the country.

Cui believes that art springs from life and that creation is a ceaseless process of challenging oneself. One should explore more themes related to Xinjiang through the brush. In recent years the paintings of Populus euphraticas that once covered the walls of his studio have gradually been replaced by a dazzling array of fruit. Step inside and you feel you’ve walked into a living orchard, grapes, Hami melons, apples, fragrant pears, peaches and apricots are all vividly depicted.

His studio is a converted apartment. The walls of the living room are sheeted with tin and felt so paintings can be pinned up in an instant. The only furniture is a wooden table, two metres long, piled high with rice paper and littered with brushes, inkstones and pigment dishes everything within arm’s reach, so Cui can start painting the moment an idea strikes. He works standing, tacking sheet after sheet of paper to the wall and painting several works at once.

His love for Xinjiang is so profound that Cui poured every spare hour and every bit of passion into his artistic dream. From Populus euphratica to fruits, from self-taught trials to inventions of his own, from solitary groping to bound volumes of results, with over 40 years of persistence, he not only fulfilled his dream of painting for himself, but also left artistic footnotes for these rich products of Xinjiang with his "illustrated biographies" of fruits and melons.

"During the New Year holiday, the first cultural and creative products based on my paintings meet the public," he said, laughing. "Let Xinjiang's fruits travel the world together with my brush."

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