“Always start with the eye.”

Hongyue watched as Shen laoshi dipped his calligraphy brush with one swift, elegant motion into the ink stone, then swiped the brush head against its side, intuitively and without thought. He then painted the bird’s eye with small, precise strokes on the near-translucent rice paper.

She had observed her art teacher demonstrate countless times before, but could never get over the awe she felt when he painted for them. Within minutes sometimes, with a fluidity and assuredness that made her envious, a creature would suddenly appear on the paper: a hummingbird or a rabbit or a horse.

Like magic.

“Because if you don’t capture the spirit of your subject in its gaze” — Shen laoshi continued to paint as he lectured — “there is no point in going forward. No matter how technically correct your painting might be, how perfect your strokes, none of that matters.” His hand danced over the rice paper, and his entire body shifted with him as he painted. A sharp beak appeared, then the bird’s head, followed by a tufted chest in gray.

“As brush artists, we aren’t replicating precisely what our eyes see. We are not photographers.” He lifted his chin then and grinned at them, the handful of students clustered at the large walnut table around him. “As artists, we infuse life with our brush strokes.” A wing emerged, the round body then the tail, its feathers appeared with quick and bold strokes before he swirled his brush in a bowl of clear water. Her teacher then dashed a streak of orange on top of the bird’s head and a dab on its beak. Pausing, he considered the small painting before adding a fat gray worm, dangling from the bird’s pointed beak.

“Our aim is to elicit emotion through our art. To touch this” — he tapped two fingertips against his chest — “that is the way we connect and speak to the viewer.” He finally whisked long, thin strokes of verdant green around the plump bird, suggesting wild grass, before setting the calligraphy brush down. “This is your next assignment, to paint a bird of your choice and capture its spirit on paper.” He nodded once and took a step back, so Hongyue and her fellow classmates could examine his painting closely. No one spoke as they studied the bird. She noted the delicate variations of ink from black to the most subtle gray, a whisper on the page.

Her teacher made it look so easy, effortless. But Hongyue knew better. She often felt her heart lifting as she painted, her focus only on her creation. But what she intended to express on paper almost never came to fruition as she wanted. Lacking.

She thanked her teacher respectfully before saying farewell, just like all her other Chinese classmates did. The humidity hit her like a wall the moment she stepped outside Shen laoshi’s ground-floor studio. New York City’s Chinatown was filled with throngs of people out on a Saturday afternoon, grocery shopping and meeting with friends to eat at the various small cafes and restaurants lining the cramped streets. She navigated the crowds instinctively, with her head down, watching her red Converse move across the filthy sidewalks as she mulled over everything her teacher had said.