Night school encouraging the pursuit of art

Teachers specializing in different arts and crafts are helping students of Minhang District's citizen art night school and creating a trend of art pursuit among the public.

At a Gundam model class in the district's Aegean Place, Li Yilin, born in 1994 and one of the youngest teachers, delivered his lecture in a friendly and easily accessible way.

Li specializes in cross-border e-commerce trading in game cards.

Miu Yunhao, 53, one of Li's students, recalled her life in Japan when she would send her son a model car for his birthday and help him make it.

"Now since I have more spare time, I decided to try the more difficult Gundam modeling and see if I have a knack," Miu said.

She enrolled in the art school in 2022 and chooses three different classes each semester.

"I am approaching retirement and I decided to spend the recent years in exploring diverse hobbies," she said.

At his ship models workshop in Caohang Village of Meilong Town, Yang Shengmei, 72, waits for his students every Monday night. His fingers have grown calluses due to years of carpentry.

His son Yang Cheng, another teacher, would be busy preparing ship model material for the class.

In a span of 12 classes in around three months, students managed to assemble four ship models including the historic Jiaxing boat for Communism revolution meetings, a Shanghai sand boat and Western boats.

Feng, a researcher from 708 Research Institute of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, would always sit in the front row of class, busy cutting cloth for a sail or polishing the hull of a model ship.

"Ancient boat modeling is much more difficult than I had expected," said Feng. "We have to manually pull straight a rope or forge a wheel rim."

Su, a resident of Changning District, never misses a ship modeling class.

"I saw I made progress in each class and that's very fulfilling," she said. "The night school gave me inner peace."

During breaks between her work and chores, she would retrieve sail cloth and needles and threads from a carry-on bag, and make some stitches.