a Guangzhou Artist

I was coming home from the subway today and I encountered this man who
was painting on the street. He was a double amputee and he was
painting very pretty Chinese watercolor pictures (thats what Lee
called them). He was selling them for 20 Yuan each, which is about 3
US dollars. That is relatively expensive by Guangzhou standards for
something that is relatively abundant and easy to come across.
However, from a Western perspective, I've hardly seen anything like
them and I thought they were really pretty. So it occurred to me that
they are worth much more to me than 3 dollars, so I went back
immediately to buy more.

As it turns out, the local police had booted him and his wife from
their spot near the Martyr's Park. He was walking toward me and his
wife was still behind, yelling at the police. He smiled as I passed
but I indicated to him that I wanted more. Getting his wife to stop
yelling at the police took him a bit and then she let me look at the
stack of paintings they had. I got to choose the ones I wanted, and I
bought 5 more watercolors for 100 Yuan. Additionally, he had
watercolors of people and animals that were more complex but were
selling for 50 Yuan. I offered to buy one for only 20 Yuan as that
was about all I had at that point. While the man quickly agreed
(after all I had just bought 6 of his other ones), his wife kept
insisting on 50. I finally showed her that I
only had pocket change left and the man hushed her and agreed to my 20
Yuan offer for a nice watercolor of a farmer.

Honestly, I would have bought his entire stack if I knew I could get
them all home safely. I am worried that they will bleed into each
other or that they will get damaged; Lee says they won't bleed, but
they are very fragile. I will try to find a way to protect them. At
any rate, 7 beautiful Chinese paintings for 17 US dollars, each of
them very frame worthy. In fact, if I was more of a capitalist, I
would have gotten his contact information and had him mail these
paintings to America and I would sell them for 100 dollars each and we
would both get rich. Anyway, I've attached a photo of him painting
one of the watercolors. Very impressive.