Zheng Shenglong, calligrapher and art professor at Xiamen University in China, paints bamboo during a demonstration at the Art Center Sarasota on Sunday. Shenglong and watercolor artist Luo Ping are spending a week in Sarasota.

Valeria Boxley, 5, left the orphanage in her native Jiangxi, China, four years ago, for a home in Sarasota with Valeria Sloan and her husband, Robert Boxley.Still her parents want her to know as much as she can about her native land, so when they heard a pair of artists and professors from China were coming to Sarasota, Boxley and Sloan made sure their daughter would meet them.

On Sunday, when Chinese artists Zheng Shenglong and Luo Ping offered calligraphy and watercolor demonstrations at Art Center Sarasota, Valeria was milling around in the back when she bumped into Shenglong, who had just finished his demonstration. He greeted the little girl in Chinese: “Ni hao.”

Valeria did not say anything, shyly retreating to her adoptive parents.

Besides a few phrases, Valeria does not speak the language of her native country, but she is signed up to begin weekly Chinese language lessons soon.

The couple adopted Valeria in 2005, after making the adoption arrangements and spending five weeks in China.

“We didn’t look very long because something about China resonated with us,” Boxley said.

The visit by the two Xiamen University professors is part of a growing relationship between Sarasota and Xiamen, its sister city in China.

The municipalities, though thousands of miles apart, are at almost the same geographic latitude.

“We joke in Sarasota if you dig a hole in your back yard all the way through the earth, you’ll come out in Xiamen,” said Carolyn Bloomer, a director at Sarasota Sister Cities.

That group that arranged the visit, and coordinated with the Gulfcoast Chinese American Association in Nokomis to find host families for the artists.

The association has about 350 families, primarily Chinese-Americans and families who have adopted children from China.

“There is an old saying in China, to use the art to make friends,” said Ping on Sunday, through an interpreter.

The pair are staying with Chinese-speaking families, and will spend the week doing presentations and taking classes.

About 65 people came to see Sunday’s demonstration, as Shenglong compared the art of Chinese calligraphy to martial arts, both disciplines requiring concentration and control of energy.

He paints on rice paper, with special brushes made from the hair of wolves and goats. His paintings, often featuring plants, trees and flowers also include messages in calligraphy summing up the moment of the painting.

“Chinese painting cannot be completed without the artist’s personal expression in the poem,” he said.

Ping is a self-described contemporary watercolor artist who specializes in landscapes and still life scenes. She likes to inject her personal vision into her works, making them more impressionistic than illustrative.

Local painters probed Ping for secrets as to how she gets the detail into her watercolors.

“China has so much to teach Art Center Sarasota, and we are like sponges soaking up the beauty of these strokes,” said Daniel Petrov, program coordinator at the center.

The Art Center Sarasota wrote letters on behalf of Ping and Shenglong as part of their visa applications. Travel restrictions between the United States and China have eased in recent years, and 50 million Chinese visitors are expected to travel to foreign countries this year, including the United States.

“We were so very fortunate to be chosen not only as artists ... but also as ambassadors,” said Shenglong, 47, through an interpreter.