A view of the world seen through artists' eyes

[Photo provided to China Daily]

The Chinese artists' ink and water works mostly feature exotic architecture and portraits of people.

A lake in Macedonia, dancers in Pakistan, soldiers in Russia, the old town square in Warsaw and a mosque in Iraq have all been captured on rice paper by Chinese artists.

"Architecture is a symbol of a country's culture and the people are the souls of a nation. That's why artists always put a lot of effort into drawing it," says Wang Yong, a researcher with the Chinese National Academy of Arts.

As for the foreign artists' works on China, traditional elements such as dragons, lanterns, red walls and the Great Wall are seen in their oil paintings.

French painter Barthelemy Andrea's work features a beautiful woman against a Chinese landscape painting with rising lanterns to express the "eternal beauty" of China.

Estonian painter Aleksei Shatunov visited Yangzhou in Jiangsu province last year, a city that has lots of traditional Chinese gardens and houses.