Pearls of wisdom
Johnny Lu, the 'dragon man' of New York, is spreading a message of tolerance through his unique calligraphy, writes Rong Xiaoqing. Pictures by Tim Knox
It is the morning of October 28, and as New York prepares to weather the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, a chubby, middle-aged man enters Dag Hammarskjold Plaza park, in midtown Manhattan. His hair is starting to recede and he is dressed in a maroon jacket with traditional Chinese-style knot buttons and navy blue trousers. He takes big strides as he surveys the park, his hands clasped behind his back. Then, he stops. On the other side of the street, St George is attempting to slay a dragon outside an entrance to the United Nations headquarters.
The sculpture, named Good Defeats Evil, is made from fragments of United States and Russian ballistic missiles, put together by Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli. It was given to the UN by the Soviet Union as a gift, in 1990.
Johnny Lu's mission is to stop St George and free the dragon. With the assistance of a friend, he unfurls an 80-foot-long canvas scroll. It is a calligraphic work that begins and ends with the Chinese character for "dragon", and it is almost as tall as the man himself.
There are more than 100 smaller "dragons" embedded in this version of the philosophical classic Tao Te Ching, with several sentences of the original changed to include mention of dragons - "Because dragon does not contend, none can contend with him," and "The best of dragon is like water. Water brings good to all things without contending."
One vertical line reads: "Western dragon, Eastern dragon, different places, different connotations," which is nowhere to be found in the Tao Te Ching.
"I created this line myself," says Lu. "This is the whole point of my dragon calligraphy."
Lu is well known in Chinese circles in New York, especially among those from Taiwan. Lucoral & Lupearl, the jewellery company he and his family founded on the island was, in the 1980s and 90s, the largest pearl jewellery supplier in the world. It no longer dominates the mar-ket, but it has expanded to the mainland, Hong Kong and the US, where it has bejewelled first ladies Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Michelle Obama.