FACES OF THE SILK ROAD

Artist Wang Lei has spent the last three years documenting the Asian route of the ancient Silk Road by painting portraits of its people. Deng Zhangyu reports

Since 2015, oil painter Wang Lei has traveled along the Silk Road - an ancient network of trade routes that extended across Europe and Asia - to paint portraits of people from various cultures, a journey that the artist sees as a search for his own identity.

Over the past three years, monks, women in hijab, young men of Persepolis, the descendants of soldiers of the Roman legion, craftsmen, vendors and tourists have all been depicted by Wang during his trips to cities in China, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkey.