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These are the Tai-Chi water painters in Shanghai.

I saw them working in the morning near the Tai-Chi classes in the park.

They painted using large calligraphy brushes in small pails of water.

Their subject seemed to be to be poetry,

possibly inspired at the moment and

lasting 15 minutes or so before evaporating by the early sun.

I joined them the next morning, painting first a travelogue to Shanghai and lastly, an accounting of the previous night’s banquet.

They knew not my words nor I theirs, just pictures evaporating on a hot park square.