Next time your parents tell you to be a doctor or lawyer because there’s no money in the arts, tell them about Zhang Xiaogang. His painting, shown above, sold for a cool $6 million. Yea, beats being a doctor doesn’t it? Well, slow down tiger. All that money went to the collector and not the artist. Still, maybe there’s a market for your doodles after all.

The New York Times recently reported on Sotheby’s auction of Chinese art, including over a hundred pieces from the famous Estella collection. According to the NY Times, the pic, entitled “Bloodline: Big Family No. 3”,

depicts a family of three during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China, when children were sometimes led to denounce their parents. Three collectors bid feverishly for the piece, which sold for far above its high estimate, about $3.4 million.

The price was a bit above the record set at Sotheby’s auction house last October, when a Yue Minjun painting called “Execution,” inspired by the 1989 crackdown on student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, sold for about $5.9 million.

Too bad you didn’t grow up during the Cultural Revolution or demonstrate in Tiananmen Square. You might have had really good subject matter to paint. I guess it’s back to drawing bowls of fruit and nudes for you.

Pictured below, “Execution” by Yue Minjun, former record holder