Almost 40 years after leaving his home in the ancient Dayan town in southwest China, Wang Rongchang, 61, still speaks heavily-accented mandarin.

The dark-skinned artist speaks little English despite 12 years living in the United States. To his foreign friends, he is better known by his Naxi name, Naruo.

Under this title, he has made a language all his own, painting vividly colored scenes of his home and people based on the unique Naxi pictographs.

The only pictographic writing system still in use, these detailed drawings have described the lives of generations of Naxi, whose kingdom survived in what is now southwest China from the Eighth Century till 1274.

His paintings have been exhibited around the world, but Naruo has disdained fame and fortune, saying the purpose of his creativity is to sustain the culture of his people in a rapidly modernizing world.

Since retiring as an art teacher at Beijing's Minzu University in 2008, his major works have been based on more than 200 figure drawings, which he drew 30 years ago in a village of Dayan.

All his figures wear traditional Naxi clothes, their faces tranquil: a shy young girl sitting near a hen roost, an old lady spinning and young man shouldering a hoe.

Many of the traditions depicted have disappeared and many young Naxi people no longer speak the language or wear the traditional clothes, Naruo said.

Naruo believes few artists now have the patience to spend the time drawing common people. "I drew the people after living with them for two months, so I had enough time to watch and understand them."

He plans to keep the paintings to himself: "I don't want to change them for money. I paint them not for business."

He says modern society is undergoing a chaotic materialization, and many people have lost their innate sense of morality and basic principles.

However, everyone needs the support of their national culture, he says. "They will realize the sorrow in their hearts one day and return to the original national culture."

And Naruo believes it will be the appropriate time to display his work.

"I'll let the world see my paintings when everybody feels a void in their spiritual life and in need of real arts," he says.

He has no desire for luxuries, which he says can destroy an artist. The pension offered by the university is enough for his daily life and work.

"An artist has to live in a relatively tough environment, or he will lose the driving force for creation," he says.

A native of Lijiang autonomous county (now Lijiang city), in Yunnan Province, Naruo studied art at Minzu University, the country's top academy for ethnic studies, from 1972 to 1975, as a "worker, peasant and soldier university student".

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), universities chose students from workers, peasants and soldiers according to the recommendation of local authorities. He was recommended on the strength of his work with the local propaganda department, including a 12.26-meter-tall carved statue of Mao Zedong, which stands still in Lijiang's Red Sun Square.

He taught Chinese painting and drawing in the university after graduation, but decided to go abroad to learn more.

He left the country for the United States in 1986, arriving at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. In 1989, he moved to Washington D.C., living in a lawyer friend's flat, which he also used as his studio.

He was encouraged by the fact that his paintings, which extolled Naxi life, and the beauty of youth and the snow-capped peaks and torrential river valleys of his home, were warmly accepted by Westerners.

"I sent 14 paintings for the first time to a gallery and six of them were sold," he said.

From his student days he had longed to see Austrian-American explorer Joseph Rock's collection of 3,342 original Naxi manuscripts housed in Washington's Library of Congress.

Believed to be the largest collection of Naxi manuscripts outside China, it was accumulated largely by Rock, who spent 24 years in southwest China from the 1920s to the 1940s and was enthralled by Naxi culture.

Naruo spent long hours each day copying and interpreting the ancient texts. Throughout these years he continued with his art, supporting himself by selling paintings, both his own ideas and commissions.

He was increasingly inspired by the form and meaning of the pictographs of Naxi Dongba, or shamanistic priests. He used typical pictographs, such as the sun, birds and water, as themes.

In 2000, on invitation of his alma mater, he returned to Beijing to teach and continued his research on Naxi ancient pictographs.

In his book, An Annotation of Ancient Naxi Pictographs, published by the Ethnic Publishing House last year, Naruo describes his 20 years of research as "lonely and happy", and his current life as "quiet and happy".

The book, a collection of more than 800 pictograph words and almost 100 sentences, introduces the skills of "writing" and painting, and shows his oil paintings with the typical elements picked from the Naxi ancient texts.

Almost 1,000 sentences he collected are not included. He plans to publish more books when he has enough money, but he won't sell them.

"I give them to my friends who really like Naxi culture. I think it's a better way to spread Naxi culture," he says.

His simply-decorated and barely-furnished apartment near the campus is full of painting materials.

Almost 20 pairs of shoes are lined up in the corridor next to the door.

"It's convenient for me to put them on when I go for a walk," he laughs.

Passing the "shoe corridor", one can see a big working desk with painting tools and half-finished works.

On the left is a small bedroom and on the right a bigger one to store his collections and finished paintings.

There is an open kitchen at the end of the living room with a refrigerator always full of raw food.

"An artist should first make his stomach full, and then he can focus on his creation," Naruo says with a smile.

He recalls visiting the artists' town in Songzhuang, on Beijing's eastern outskirts, which has become one of the centers of the city's burgeoning art scene over the last 10 years, drawing artists with its cheap rents and proximity to the capital's growing markets and galleries.

But he disliked the atmosphere. "An artist needs quietness and loneliness. I prefer staying here," he says.

Everyday he rises early, spending half the day painting and the other half walking the campus, visiting friends or reading.

Although Naruo looks down on commercial artists, money was once the biggest obstacle to realizing his cultural preservation dream.

In 2000, the year he returned to China, he spent 50,000 yuan (7,400 U.S. dollars) on a half hectare of land together with houses in his hometown to build a cultural center, where leading foreign and Chinese artists could live, communicating with local artists and residents.

"They can get inspiration from the local ethnic lifestyle and have a better understanding of the Naxi culture, while local artists and children who are interested in arts can learn from them," he says.

He refurbished the houses as artists' accommodation and studios. However, he had to abandon the project due to a lack of follow-up investment three months after its establishment. He sold it to local businessmen and now it is a teahouse.

He looks to Xuan Ke, another Naxi elder, who has devoted himself to the preservation and spread of Naxi traditional music, as a model.

"He made a perfect combination of arts and business. His band is learning and teaching traditional skills while performing commercially."

Sometimes, after finishing painting, he sits at a small desk on the balcony of the 17th floor, looking out at the city, to write down his life with a China-made ink pen and a notebook.

He disdains computers, especially the Internet.

"There is too much useless information on the Internet, which will distract me from focusing on creation."

He avoids the artist salons that have become popular as the the art market has developed.

"The persistent topic of such salons is women, not arts," he says.

He seldom returns to Lijiang as he says it has been commercialized.

"The culture is in my mind. There is no need for me to go somewhere to look for it."

He remembers fondly the life in the United States, completing the Washington Marathon, restoring murals for the Washington Project for the Arts, playing baseball and friends from many nationalities and walks of life.

From time to time, universities invite him to give lectures on Naxi painting, murals and culture, always arranging interpreters for him.

"Why do they still invite me although I don't speak English?" he asks.

"Because I have things that they don't."

(Xinhua News Agency May 29, 2009)