在世界的这一角落，在我长大的地方附近的风光——其季节的变化，树上的光影，田野，云朵，流水和天空，都通过詹姆士·休伊特的画一一展现出来了。在我第一次看到这些画时，那种强烈的亲切感难以名状，同时，它们更描绘了我此前所未刻意观察的形状，颜色和光影效果。
上个月，我到埃塞克斯探望了我父母。此次回英国是为了参加英国外交部的年度领袖会议，我特地请了几天假期去看他们。我的父母依然住在他们1966年买的房子里，由于他们都已是八十岁的高龄，现在住在那里越来越不方便了。今年年初，我母亲去了趟医院，当时状态虚弱且不太清醒，所以在那里摔倒了并伤到大腿骨，这次事故几乎让他们要搬家。我父亲行动不便且不能开车，所以无法独自居住在那里。我母亲住院期间，我妹妹负责看房子。现在她已经回自己家了。我母亲回来了，状态好转，又能走路，开车了。于是他们暂时不需要搬离这里。
这座房子的外墙是白色的，石膏墙面，橡木外廓；位于小山坡上，可以俯视树林和田野。像许多埃塞克斯早期的农场房子一样，经年累月，这座房子也曾不断地被扩建。最老的部分约建于300年前，是一个低矮的农舍。在随后的一个世纪里，又增建了宽敞挑高的房间。而我父母则又盖了卫生间，书房和卧室。每个部分都保持风格统一，色调一致，连屋顶的瓦片都一样。
在我父母买下这里之前，我曾与他们在德国，北爱尔兰和英国的军队眷区居住过。八岁那年，我从寄宿学校放假回家，第一次来到了这座房子里。当时感觉很萧瑟。虽然我们在楼下客厅里点了炉火，但由于楼上没有暖气，所以冬天还是很冷。房子和谷仓之间的花园里，树木过于繁盛。然而，于我而言，世上再没有比这儿更美妙的地方了。我喜欢我们共有的空间——厨房，饭厅和客厅。我也喜欢我自己的卧室，位于最老的部分，它有着外露的横梁和斜面的屋顶，就像一个帐篷。天气暖的时候，从日出到日落，我都喜欢呆在外面，躺在花园的草地上。我还喜欢沿着小径和村路散步到数英里之外，有时候带着当时家里的狗，有一次在雪天里，我在大衣的帽子里带了一只小猫。
有些小径特别可爱。有一条从家门口自西向东蜿蜒约四分之一英里，那是一条连接朝北的高树篱和朝南的矮树篱之间的草径。1986年，我和母亲曾经在这条路上散步，当时我刚刚从伦敦北部的医院出院回家，好像是感染了流感。好几个晚上我发热盗汗，于是两次去看医生，第二次被转入传染病院。流感恶化成肺炎，后来我还患上了脑炎，非常虚弱。有一天我甚至神志不清了，安然度过后，病情开始好转。我回到父母家，在母亲的照料下休养，在我被允许出门的第一天，我们便一起沿着这条路散步。当时是晚秋。艳阳普照，天高气爽。树上还有零星的叶子，而灌木篱墙的神色枝条上则结满了玫瑰果，红山楂果，黑刺李果，还有一处结了粉色的卫矛果。
五月份回去的时候，我又走了走这条路。今年的春天来得晚，橡树和灌木篱墙上还有嫩绿的叶子。苹果树和樱桃树正开着花。沿路有干枯的起毛草，剪秋罗，刺草，樱草，立金花，圆叶风铃草和硫璃苣。在灌木篱墙之外，有一片红褐色的耕过的农田，其间点缀着奶白色的打火石。处处都能听见鸟鸣声。与童年时期不同的是，鸟鸣声之外，还有传来一公里外路上的汽车鸣笛声。
这次回家，我妹妹帮我打包了一大幅画寄回广州，现在挂在官邸。十年前，我第一次买画，是为了装饰我当时在英国驻日本大使馆里的家。那些画是一位住在埃塞克斯的画家詹姆士·休伊特（James Hewitt）所画的，他家离我父母家更靠近海边。当时我特地买了英国风光画带去日本，供自己和来访的客人欣赏。在世界的这一角落，在我长大的地方附近的风光——其季节的变化，树上的光影，田野，云朵，流水和天空，都通过詹姆士·休伊特的画一一展现出来了。在我第一次看到这些画时，那种强烈的亲切感难以名状，同时，它们更描绘了我此前所未刻意观察的形状，颜色和光影效果。我喜欢画家所用的技巧，以明晰的笔触带出略微抽象的效果。这些画作或多或少延续了约翰·康斯特勃（John Constable）所开创的户外油画风格，他也曾在他的画里展现过附近的风景。
那批画尺寸很小——约为A5大小——当我遇到詹姆士·休伊特时，他曾说我或许早晚会对它们厌倦。我暂时还没觉得，不过黯淡的暮光景色已开始变得乏味。不过在广州，我需要更大气的画幅来装饰宽阔的墙面。2011年，我和另外一位妹妹去了皇家学院夏日展览，那里我看到画家凯斯·利特尔(Kathy Little)的画，非常喜欢。我妹妹鼓励我给这位住在英格兰西北部柴郡的画家写信。我不仅写了信，还从她那儿买了一幅迪河秋色图，画面的中轴部分视觉效果强烈，横向的白色，暗蓝色，红色和褐色的笔触也毫不示弱。这幅画很大（面积约一平方米，重量约11公斤），所以花了两年时间我才终于带回来，现在挂在我最初为它在官邸预留的位置，与这幅气派的画相对而望的是一幅英女王与叶选平省长的合照，那是1986年她访问广州时拍的。目前，已故画家特纳的作品正在广东美术馆的英国艺术展中展出，比起他的画作，凯斯·利特尔的作品或没有那么优秀生动，然而当艺术展移步长沙之后，这幅画还会留在广州陪伴我。
Last month I visited my parents at their home in the Essex countryside. I returned to the UK for the FCO's annual leadership conference, but took a couple of days leave beforehand in order to see them. My parents still live in the house they bought in 1966, though this becomes more and more challenging for them now they are in their eighties. It seemed at the start of the year that they would have to give it up, when my mother went into hospital in a weak and confused state and, while there, fell and fractured her thigh bone just below the hip. My father, who is very lame, could not live in the house alone without some assistance as he is no longer able to drive. While my mother was in hospital, my younger sister moved in to keep house. She has now returned to her own home. My mother is back, better, walking and driving again. My parents will not have to move just yet.
The outside of the house is painted white, with walls of plaster on an oak frame. It is on the top of a small hill with a view over trees and fields. Like many former farmhouses in Essex, it has grown by accretion. The oldest surviving part is a low farm-cottage built about three hundred years ago. There are larger and higher rooms added about a century later, and bathrooms, a study and another bedroom added by my parents. Each part is in keeping with the others, with the same colour paintwork and roof tiles.
Before my parents bought the house, I had lived with them in army quarters in Germany, Northern Ireland and England. I first saw the house when I came home, aged eight, on holiday from boarding school. It was at that time rather bleak. It was very cold in winter as there was no heating upstairs, though we had a log fire in the downstairs sitting room. The garden in front of the house and behind the barns was overgrown. For me, however, there was nowhere in the world that was more wonderful. I liked the kitchen, dining room and sitting room where we lived together. I liked my own bedroom in the oldest part, with exposed beams and sloping ceilings like a tent. I liked being able to stay outside from the moment the sun rose to the time it set, lying on the grass in the garden when the weather was warm. I liked walking for miles over the footpaths and country roads, often on my own or with a dog when we had one, and once - one snowy day - with a kitten in the hood of my anorak.
Some of the footpaths are lovely. There is one, in particular, that runs from East to West just quarter of a mile from the house. It is a wide grassy track between a high hedge to the North and a low hedge to the South. I walked this path with my mother once in 1986 when I had myself been in hospital in North London. I had caught an infection, perhaps flu. After severe night sweats, I twice went to see a doctor and the second time was admitted to an infectious diseases hospital. Flu had become pneumonia. I developed encephalitis and was very weak. For one critical day I was delirious, but then started to recover. I had to recuperate at my parents house under my mother's care and the first day I was allowed out, we walked together along this footpath. It was late Autumn. The sun shone and the air was crisp. There were few leaves on the trees but the dark branches in the hedgerows were jewelled with rosehips, ruby hawthorn berries, black sloes and, in one place, pink euonymus berries.
I walked the same path when I was back this May. Spring has come late this year and the young leaves on the oak trees and hedgerows were still light green. Apple and cherry trees were in flower. There were dried teazels, campions and stitchwort, primroses and cowslips, bluebells and borage. The clay of the ploughed fields beyond the hedgerows was a ruddy brown, flecked with the creamy white casing of flintstones. There was birdsong all around. The only thing that had obviously changed from my childhood was that behind the birdsong there was now the constant whine of traffic from a by-pass a mile away.
When I was back with my parents in May, my younger sister helped me to pack a large painting to bring to Guangzhou, where it now hangs in the Residence. The first paintings I bought, about ten years ago, I chose for the house I had then in the Embassy compound in Japan. They are by an artist called James Hewitt who lives in Essex, though nearer to the coast than my parents do. I wanted English landscape paintings to take to Japan, for myself and for display to my official guests. In his painting, James Hewitt responds to the changing seasons and light on trees, fields, clouds, water and the sky in a part of the world very close to where I grew up. When I first saw them, I found the impressions were thrillingly familiar, but the paintings also gave me an appreciation of shapes, colours and effects of light that I had seen but not consciously observed. I liked the technique, partially abstract with visible brush stokes. These paintings are small works in a traditon of outdoor oil sketches that more or less began - brilliantly - with John Constable, who painted in similar countryside just a few miles to the North.
The works are small - about A5 size - and James Hewitt suggested to me when we met that I might get tired of them. I have not found this, except for some subdued twilight scenes that have palled. But with big walls to fill here I have also found myself wanting something larger and bolder. I was with my other sister at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2011, when I saw painitngs I liked by an artist called Kathy Little. My sister encouraged me to write to the artist, who lives in Cheshire, in the North West of England. I did so and from her bought a scene of the river Dee in Autumn light, with strong perspective on the vertical axis, but also with powerful horizontal sweeps of white paint, and submerged blues, red and browns. Because it is large (almost a meter square and weighing eleven kilos when packed) it has taken me two years to bring it back with me, but it now hangs where I wanted it from the first, in the hall of the Residence, opposite an enormous, magnificently composed photograph of Governor Ye with Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Guangzhou in 1986. Kathy Little's painting is not as great or as vibrant as the late Turner currently on display in the excellent exhibition of British Art now in its final days at the Guangdong Art Museum, but it will still be here with me in Guangzhou after that exhibition has moved on to Changsha.
