A SPECIAL art exhibition featuring some 100 ox paintings by more than 60 artists from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan commemorates the 70th anniversary of the death of writer Lu Xun (1881-1936).

The exhibition at Guan Shanyue Art Museum is titled "Willing Oxen Serve the People." The title is adapted from Lu Xun's well-known verses: "Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers; head bowed, like a willing ox I serve the children."

Lu Xun, the pen name of Zhou Shuren, is considered one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century and the founder of modern Chinese vernacular literature.

His son, Zhou Haiying, and grandson, Zhou Lingfei, attended the exhibition's opening ceremony last Friday.

The spirit of Lu Xun's verse resonates with the "Pioneering Bull," the sculpture of the Shenzhen symbol, which stands today in front the government compound on Shennan Road Central, Zhou Haiying said at the opening ceremony.

In the early 1980s, Shenzhen builders were known as pioneering bulls, with the courage to try free market policies and open up to the outside world, he said.

"It is appropriate for the artists today to express Lu Xun's spirit with images of oxen, and it is very creative for Shenzheners to commemorate him with such an art exhibition," the writer's son said.

Lu Xun's message is still needed because many of the ugly and evil things he revealed and criticized in his writing more than 70 years ago still exist in society today, Zhou Haiying said.

The Shenzhen exhibition runs through Sunday, Sept. 24. It then moves to Shanghai.

Editor: Wing