Huai-hai Battle

Wei collaborated with Chen Qi, Zhao Guangtao and Chen Jian on the painting of the Huai-Hai Battle and received a PLA arts prize in 1983 for their work.

His two oil paintings of Ma in Shaanxi and Zhongnanhai (1993), were chosen again by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and printed as commemorative stamps for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mao Zedong, which was subsequently deemed "the best stamp" in the country.

In recent years, Wei has been invited to paint former British prime minister Winston Churchill and Daewoo Corp President Kim Woo Choong.

  Immortalizing a great man

Back in 1992, 16 years after Mao's death, Wei was invited to visit the chairman's former bedroom, which had doubled as his study. In 1993 Wei was asked to design a series of stamps to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mao's birth.

"When I was standing in front of Chairman Mao's bed in his

Chairman Mao

room, touching the desks he used to work on and seeing so many books on the shelves, I was really shocked," said an emotional Wei. "I realized that I was close to a great soul; close to an unknown, but touching part of history."

Wei said that although there have been some adverse remarks made about the man who led communist China to victory in the civil war of 1949, about which he was not willing to go into detail, he believes that Mao Zedong was a great man who worked for the Chinese people.

"I did not experience that time myself. The things in Chairman Mao's former bedroom -- the shabby blanket and ashtray, the piles of books -- they cannot speak, but they tell us how the chairman used to live and work. He worked hard but lived plainly."

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