A native Beijinger, Mr. Dawu Yu was born in 1948 and grew up in the city. All of his childhood activities revolved around the Forbidden City in the historic center of Beijing. When the Earth Tranquility Gate, the north gate of the inner city, was torn down in 1954, his grandfather put him in a cart and brought him there to look at it one last time. He says in the afterword of the book,
"Decades later, I feel fortunate now about painting the central axis of old Beijing. I am overwhelmed with emotions and memories, perhaps because I have deep feelings for the historic city. "
With a career dedicated to comics and book illustrations, Mr. Yu has won numerous illustration awards, including the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations by the Asia Pacific Cultural Center for UNESCO in 1988. He was also selected to take part in the Illustrators' Exhibition of the Bologna Children's Book Fair in 2000.
Today, he lives with his family in his beloved city.
