Living in China and not drinking great tea everyday is like living in France and buying bagged bread – then eating it with cheese wrapped by the slice. A world of mildly caffeinated taste and pleasure awaits, at unbeatable prices. Please do run out and buy some right now.
Back? Good. Oops, forgot to mention the teapot. Making tea in anything less than a genuine yixing [say it with me now: yee – shing] teapot is like drinking pinot out of a McDonald’s soda cup. Tea is the distillation of Mother Nature’s love for us. Hot water is the medium, and yixing clay teapots are the ultimate vessels in which to mingle dried plant and hot water.
With a name like “12 Girls Band,” it is hardly surprisingly that their creator planned to capitalize on more than just the musical talents of the group. In fact, Wang Xiaojing, the so-called ‘father of Chinese rock music’ makes few qualms about his inspiration to construct a sensation that is easy on the eyes. In that spirit he “chose some pretty girls, dressed them up in fashionable outfits” and sent them on the road to dazzle audiences.
Despite the early PRC’s official commitment to the Guo Hua movement, a return to simplistic peasant art, many contemporary Chinese artists stuck to oil and ink rendered with Western perspective. Paradoxically, their works featured revolutionary themes, but were imbued with traditional Chinese spirit too ingrained to suppress. So pervasive and potent is classical Chinese culture that the not only old poems, but also revolutionary art, and even Chairman Mao’s verses, resonate with its timeless beauty.
No matter how many words a picture is worth, people have and will continue to enjoy their pictures with stories. Thus, while propaganda posters were being churned out by the million on the People’s tab, and rustic Guo Hua was the avowed ideal of the politically correct, the individual paid for lianhuanhua, comic books. These three by five inch pocket books became popular in the late 19th century, after the introduction of Western printing technology. The term lianhuanhua [linked pictures] came with their mass consumption in the Shanghai of the 1920s.
They’re framed in Manhattan lofts and hip college dorm rooms. Nary a Western visitor to Souvenir Street who doesn’t stop to wonder at them. The Chinese propaganda poster, like pyramid paintings and Greek urns, has lost most of its symbolic power. Nonetheless, it retains cultural force, tempered from lava fire to an amber glow.
The propaganda poster most often draws laughter from the foreign beholder. The laughter commingles condescension and awe at the bold simplicity with which a poster sends its message. But few admit it. It’s camp – a stylish reminder of how sophisticated we’ve become – that’s what we tell ourselves.
Yin and Yang, light and dark, love and hate. Conflict is the child of duality, which rules our world. A healthy animal relies on instinct to deal with it, while the unsound soul denies conflict and creates a maddened beast.
Then there is the artist. Tuned into the Greater Soul, the spirit of his age, he devotes himself to expression of the ineffable. In moments of clarity, he transcends cause and effect, and renders the sublime. When this inner quest clashes with external realities, the conflict can shatter him.
It's nice to have big parks in Beijing, but they get boring fast. If you don't have a kite, and staring at strangers while dribbling seed shells isn't your thing, a park needs some substance to capture the imagination.
Now, that's more like it - modern sculpture. In a city devoted to waving it's ancient culture in your face at every opportunity, it's good to have the International Sculpture Garden, a massive park just steps from Yuquanlu Subway Station [third stop west of Gongzhufen].
Si seulement toutes les icônes historiques étaient également poètes, on pouvait voir dans les âmes des plus grands noms de l'histoire. Parmi les géants de la politique du XXe siècle, seul président Mao était un poète, ou du moins assez confiant dans sa poésie de l'incorporer dans sa plus grande ordre du jour. Pour être sûr, il n'était asiatique Walt Whitman, bien que le thème de la glorieuse travailleurs apparaît dans les canons des deux hommes.
If only all historical icons were also poets, we could see into the souls of history’s biggest names. Among the giants of Twentieth Century politics, only Chairman Mao was a poet, or at least confident enough in his poetry to incorporate it into his greater agenda. To be sure, he was no Asian Walt Whitman, although the theme of glorious workers appears in the canons of both men.
I’ll save you the suspense – the China Expert, a dime a dozen due to their ubiquity and self-conferred status, is both a myth and a misnomer. I only tell you this because now that it’s time to fill Josh’s shoes, literally elevens or twelves but literarily Shaq-size, the prospect of coming off a self-styled China Expert gnaws at my vitals.
China’s foreigners are rarely long-rooted. So once tired of the mandatory get-to-know-you query, “How long’ve ya been in China?”, I stopped asking and started listening. Without fail, a foreigner’s broad pronouncements on all things Chinese, and actual time in the country, comprised an inverse ratio of Euclidian precision. But despite the China Expert’s vast store of advice and opinion, gleaned from a tour or two or a year or two in hearts of darkness such as Shanghai and Beijing, math is seldom his province.
