A man of art and nature

The 20-meter-long piece was unveiled in 1979 and hung in a restaurant at the Beijing Capital International Airport.

Today, a print of Ode to the Forest covers the entire wall of the ground-floor exhibition hall in the Tsinghua University Art Museum in Beijing. It is a major attraction at Attuning to Life, Ode to the Forest, an ongoing exhibition until Nov 20 at the museum, which displays Zhu's symphony of colors and biodiversity.

The print of Ode to the Forest is 10 meters tall and 30 meters in length, making it much larger than the original painting, according to the exhibition's curator Sun Yiwei. The print offers the audience a close-up view to examine the rich details of the biological and cultural brilliance of South China. For his final work, Zhu added tropical rainforest scenes found in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province, including a boat that carries the area's ethnic groups once rode in.