It is thanks to the unique sense of anachronism embedded in his practice that Zhou Yunxia’s works produced during the past thirty years could present a relatively complete picture of the evolution of art history along the way. But if we go one step further, apart from the sense of anachronism, it should also be ascribed to the surrealistic spirit exuded from his works. He is passionately obsessed with keeping a considerable distance from his times and the mainstreams. For years he has been either ahead of or behind his times, which is demonstrated in different forms during different periods: the conflicts between soul and body in the 80s and early 90s, the somewhat epiphanic expression of daily experience in late 90s and the organic integration of identity, visual language and surrealism since the new millennium. Zhou Yunxia’s sense of surrealism is related with biology, which in turn imbues his work with a sense of organicism. In his work, there is an intriguing distance between the code of reality, the sequence of time and people’s daily experience, and the sense of contrast ignited from within is an intentional choice he makes in order to construct life awareness and stick to the ultimate concern. As an artist who has been influenced by and in the meantime influencing upon his times, the intimacy as well as estrangement between him and the social trends lay the foundation for the textures of our times and is delineated in a visual way.