Visitors explore Chinese artist Shu Yong's Tribute to Heroes exhibition at the Shanghai Baopu Art Museum on Friday. Photo: Courtesy of Ma Jun

It has been 187 days since Chinese artist Shu Yong started to record Chinese people's efforts to fight the COVID-19 epidemic. 

All of his paintings inspired by these efforts went on display on Friday at the Shanghai Baopu Art Museum, the second stop on the artist's Tribute to Heroes exhibition tour following Changsha in Central China's Hunan Province. 

Starting from his first landscape painting series to his recent To See Or Not, Shu has created four groups of artworks that he says are his attempts to record the latest development of the epidemic and the preventive measures used to combat it. 

The lockdown of Wuhan, which reported first cases in China, inspired him to make full use of mountains and give them souls and feelings. Among them is a painting called A Mountain Called Zhong Nanshan, named after the famous Chinese doctor Zhong Nanshan, who has risen as a prominent figure representing the country's fight against coronavirus.  

His latest To See or Not series is based on color test screen, which the artist sees as a test paper for people's different views on the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"With millions testing positive for the virus, some people chose not to see it while a few did," he said. 

"It is dangerous to think that way."