Born in Shenyang, Cui Guotai was concentrated in the beginning of his career on his inner emotional world and the esthetics of the nature of his homeland, the northeast of China. After an abstract period and four years later he approached the topics of his present-day works. His focus turned to the huge and wastelands of the regions of heavy industry, also in the northeast of China. The murky and weird industrial ruins, such as factories, chimneys, blast furnaces, locomotives, railways, ferroconcrete constructions, stand tall and upright in Guotai's paintings. Here he uses the realistic images to bear witness to the passing of the heavy industrial era in China.