After returning from his studies in Germany, Zhou Chunya began to create works with traditional Chinese cultural connotation in the early 1990s. "Lilies" created in 2000, is one of his mature series of work after his achievement of the famous rock, vase and green dog series. The way of his expression has totally changed the graphic perspective approach by the traditional scholars. The simplicity of the composition of the lilies has fully executed in the oil-painting medium; the rich detail of oil has replaced the softness of the ink strokes.

Zhou Chunya has been seeking a more intimate and spontaneous relationship with the nature, so as to capture the essence of the most essential forms and expressions. His proficient painting technique, gaining strength from surrounding space can be compared the to famous artist, Ba Da (i.e. Zhu Da), who painted a fish, a rock, a bird – with exact number of strokes, no more or less. Shuangxi Yin, a well-known critic, appraised Zhou Chunya with the comments, "(His paintings) have peculiarly combined classical landscape imagery in Song and Yuan dynasties with frame structure in western paintings, which produced an overriding atmosphere spanning human geography and historical culture, and making people seemed like to enter the universe of prehistoric heaven and the realm of fantasy."