Zhou Ling was born in Tian Jing, China in 1941. She studied Chinese history and art, as well as Western art from the Renaissance through Modernism at the Central Institute Nationalities in Beijing. Upon graduation, she married her teacher, Liu Bingjiang, causing a scandal at the time. According to official communist norms, a teacher is prohibited from having an intimate relationship with a student. Ten days after their marriage, Zhou Ling was separated from her husband and sent away to work in Yunnan Province -- an area in extreme Southwestern China, which borders on Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. She spent eight years living among the minority tribes.

Zhou Ling's graduation, marriage, and assignment to Yunnan occurred on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Her job in Kunming was to teach art in an Institute of Art and Culture for party officials. The "art" institute was actually a school for propaganda techniques, and Zhou Ling's skills were called upon to make propoganda posters. Zhou Ling said that by 1971, when the Cultural Revolution's political energy began to wind down, she was able to paint by herself.

Bird of Paradise