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Born from a wealthy family in Beijing into a family belonging to the very ancient Song dynasty. Zao grew up in Shanghai; he imperceptibly influenced by what he constantly sees and hears. Entered Hangzhou National College of Art at age 14, both Chinese Paintings and Western Paintings are required courses that built him a profound foundation. When he first came to Paris, he was repelled to be labeled "chinoiserie" and refused to imitate the traditional Chinese landscape paintings. However, his childhood memories and the passion to the Chinese culture remain in his heart all the time, and have unfolded in his recent works. He sometimes goes back to 1950, the age of inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells, sometimes travels in the vague memory of the mountains and waters in his homeland, let his feelings flow. Critic Jonathan Jay interprets the relation between Zao and Chinese landscape paintings with "12.12.2000?as the instance. "Abstraction is somewhat misleading as a description of Zao's paintings; it would be more accurate to say that their image field hovers between nature and abstraction, once in a while slipping over the edge into the reminiscence of a Chinese landscape schema (12.12.2000, for example, or 19.10.2001). Faithful to a fundamental Chinese aesthetic assumption, he paints an experience of the world in which he himself is implicated; the world he summons up is never entirely separate from him. For this reason his paintings can always be read in two directions, either as evocations of the macrocosmic environments of experience or as articulations of a deeply private emotional topography." (Jonathan Jay, 'Zao Wou-ki, Lately', Zao Wou-ki Recent Works, Marlborough Gallery, New York, 2003, p. 7)

The work "12.12.2000"is similar to West Lake Willows' beautiful scenery of River South, the artist doesn't consider himself as a good storyteller, and the artistic conceptions of his paintings are more closed to those of poems. But maybe, by accident, those memories of youth and the nostalgia deep inside the heart have already quietly cast into the painting.