Sedaris vs. China

Thank you, Annie, for sending along this article on Chinese food by David Sedaris. Check it out for a good laugh.

I won't deny the truth in what he says, HOWEVER I promise that it's not always this bad. Also, I think Sedaris makes some excellent points about American's culinary biases and overzealous dietary restrictions.

Also, sometimes intestines or hacked-up meat is actually quite tasty.

Soundtrack

Perhaps this is ridiculous, but do you ever wish that your life had a soundtrack? Or maybe even that you could hire someone to follow you around with a boom box, playing music to complement your moods: an I'm-feeling-contemplative song, a Go-and-get-it anthem, or even a simple, classy, yet upbeat Stroll-about-town ditty.

Perhaps it's vanity, or maybe just too much television that lets us pretend our lives have any true cinematic value. No, the world isn't feeling blue just because I am, nor should it mirror those sentiments acoustically.

However, just now as I sat in a coffee shop, reading a book and facing the window, it started to rain. Well, that's no shocker--it's rainy season and the sky has been rumbling for the past twenty minutes. And yet, the big, fat drops that steadily pitter-pattered on the pavement coincided with the instrumental piece playing on the speakers; the clinking piano keys underscored the temporal drama that unfolded outdoors.

And just like that, the moment passed--the track changed, the rain stopped. But how lovely, for just a moment, to have witnessed the coalescence of life and art.

Is it vanity, or just the nature of good music? After all, isn't music powerful for the way that it can tap into our emotional psyche, seamlessly cross languages and cultures, and speak to us on a deeply personal level, where language oftentimes fails?

May we all find a little music in our lives. Perhaps even a theme song.

Yeah, that'd be pretty neat.

Perspective(s)

In the past six weeks, I’ve ventured to Western China, relocated to Hangzhou, visited the States and come back again. Well, almost. I’m writing from the skies, 5881 miles from Shanghai.

I suppose you could say things are a bit unsettled. I have 14 remaining weeks, and am trying to figure out what to do with them. What is feasible? Will things actually come together, like I've been hoping? I feel suspended between panic and apathy. How can I make the most my remaining time here?

Aside from just my research, people have been asking me for months about my post-Fulbright plans. The answer is that I don’t know. My visa expires October 30th, and I haven’t the slightest clue what city, what country, or even what continent I’ll be on by Halloween. As a rather type-A individual, this is all very troubling.

At right about this point, I start hyperventilating and begin to anxiously scour various museum employment databases. However, times like these require some much-needed perspective. At the very least, I try to stop and appreciate just how lucky I am to have had such unique experiences, to have seen such incredible things, and to have met such wonderful people.

Before arriving back in Hangzhou and starting a new chapter there, I’d like to take a moment to pause and appreciate my time spent in Xi’an. Even with all of my travels, it still remains my favorite Chinese city.

Below, I’m going to include a series of photographs taken during my stay there. Perhaps it will encourage you to visit the city for yourself. If you do, I’ve got a booklet of recommendations waiting.

I. Art and Architecture

South City Gate (2/3/11)

Bell Tower (2/3/11)

Bell Tower by Night (3/27/11)

Drum Tower by Night (3/27/11)

Small Goose Pagoda (2/12/11)

Vendor at Small Goose Pagoda (2/12/11)

Small Goose Pagoda (2/12/11)

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Big Goose Pagoda (3/26/11)

Close-up of Stele at Xi'an Stele Museum (1/17/11)

II. Terracotta Warriors

Warriors site: Pit 1 (3/13/11)

Rear-view of an archer-figure; note the textured sole of his boot

Warrior-figure at Shaanxi History Museum (6/27/11）

III. Muslim Quarter

View from Drum Tower of food stall by beginning of Muslim Quarter (1/17/11)

Vendors in Muslim Quarter (3/26/11)

Contemplating wooden frogs (3/26/11)

串儿 (skewered meet) Vendor (3/26/11)

Dried fruit (3/26/11)

Muslim chef preparing paomo (3/26/11)

IV. Friends

With Cai Wenjin (Kathy) at the Big Goose Pagoda (3/26/11)

Monica's Wedding (4/30/11)

With Cherry, co-worker and friend, at Monica's wedding reception (4/30/11)

Xi'an Fulbrighters at their finest:
Good food and good times with Annie and Alina (5/13/11)

Post-biking the city wall with friends Danny and Rachel (6/26/11)

With my contact Cai Laoshi--Shaanxi History Museum employee/artist--in his office
(6/27/11)

Reunion with high school Chinese teacher Cheng-Mei
at Shaanxi History Museum (6/16/11)

皮影戏 píyǐngxì (Shadow Puppetry)

I'm blessed to have some extremely smart, creative, and passionate friends. Because of their different fields and interests, interacting with them helps me view and understand my surroundings in new ways. For example, my sister can parse words like nobody’s business. My friend who does theater lighting design taught me how to really appreciate light. Another friend, who is an aspiring film director, views her world through a camera lens; whereas I tend to think of things in terms of static images, spending time with her helps me consider other factors like movement and sound.

Most recently, I've had the opportunity to become friends with a puppeteer named Annie. A fellow Fulbrighter, she's spending her grant exploring Chinese shadow puppetry, or "following the puppets" as she likes to put it. More than just researching the art form and its artisans, she's actually cutting them; she calls it "researching with her hands."

Before meeting Annie, I had no idea that China even had shadow puppets, or that they date back so far as the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE; click here for some background info). However, by spending these past few months chatting with her, reading her incredible blog, and visiting where she works in Xi'an, she's helped me dig into into this vibrant, complex ancient Chinese art form.

As a would-be art historian, spending time with artists is always an eye-opening experience. Sure, I can analyze the effects of line, color, shading, and composition, yet I shamefully cannot produce anything of my own. Observing the artistic process first hand—not only the creative, but also the technical side—is always very humbling.

Watching the masters cut, deftly maneuvering their knives through treated sheets of leather, you'd think it's like slicing butter. Annie can assure you first-hand that it’s not. 

Annie cutting leather

Puppet-cutter at work
(maybe it's not immediately obvious, but this is an extremely thick
hide. She had to stand up in order to cut it, yet it still appeared to be effortless)

Again, you’ll have to excuse my fixation on line, but oh, it's magnificent! The precision and detail of the curves, swirls, and jaggedy-bits are truly exquisite. Once you’ve seen a masterfully hand-cut puppet, it’s hard to appreciate anything less--certainly nothing of the machine variety.

Unpainted puppet-head

Painted female head in front of book with puppet prototypes

As if their artistry wasn't enough, never-mind the fact that they move! The puppeteers control them with such finesse, all the while singing in affected dialect. In traditional performances, they’re accompanied by an ensemble of erhu, pipa, and percussion. It’s loud, strident, and janky in the best of all possible ways.

Screen with leather-cut backdrop and puppet to the left

Puppeteer/accompaniment from behind the screen

Before leaving Xi'an, I decided to pick up a few puppets for myself. I walked into a touristy shop along the Muslim Quarter, glanced at the wall, and asked "do you have any hand-cut puppets?" "Wow, you have a good eye," he told me. "Yeah" I responded, "my friend is an expert." 

Thanks, Annie, for bringing puppets into my life.

Friends Annie and Alina playing with a new-style shadow puppet
(It was around this time that they experimented with the moon walk)

Painting studio

An example of furniture/setting accouterments

Small exhibition of puppets by the lead cutting master

Equestrian puppet

Detail of Equestrian puppet

Will you look at her hair?

Buddhist Art Pilgrimage II: The Mogao Grottoes

This past week, I had the unique opportunity not only to visit the Mogao Caves, but also to view those currently being photographed by the Dunhuang Research Institute. Wearing a Dunhuang Staff badge (oh, if only it were mine!), my friend Sizhuang and I followed our host around, popping into caves and meeting various staff members.

An oasis on the edge of the Gobi Desert, Dunhuang was an important stopping point along the Silk Road. It became both a major commercial and Buddhist center, and epitomizes the cultural exchange between ancient China and many other countries. Whereas the Longmen Grottoes strictly feature Buddhist relief sculpture, the Mogao Caves contain some of China’s foremost mural painting. There are a total of 492 caves with roughly 45,000 sq. meters of painting. They were executed over a span of 1,000 years; the earliest dates to 366 BC in the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the latest was completed during the Yuan (1279-1368). Dunhuang was largely abandoned with the decline of the Silk Road after the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and the caves were not rediscovered until the early 20th century.

Walking past all of the gated entrances to the caves is like a treasure hunt: you can only imagine what marvels lie beyond each metal door. Upon entering, the initial impression is primarily color. As your eyes adjust from the blinding desert sun to the darkened cave, the lines and designs begin to emerge and piece together. Equipped with a small flashlight, I wound my way across each room, slowly unraveling the composition and getting lost in its dense iconography.

Although each cave is remarkable in its own respect, I was perhaps most impressed by Cave 254 from the Northern Wei Dynasty. Although it is usually closed to the public, we were able to visit it while the research team was working. The head photographer directed his six-person team as they rigged their Canon EOS-1Ds Make III camera to some makeshift sliding scaffolding, and gradually photographed the length of a given wall. The camera was directly linked to a computer, and the technician directed where to move it while manually focusing each image. The amount of detail they were able to capture, including the cracks and texture of the paint, was truly astonishing.

As I stood before a baiyifo (白衣佛), or white-clothed Buddha along the back wall, I was transfixed by his exaggerated, abstracted drapery. Each of its many folds was executed in confident, sweeping lines. Viewing it was truly an active, meditative process--in order to understand it, you must gradually, visually unravel each individual stroke.

It was at this point that I discovered three things:

Number 1: I'm a disegno

To explain, the Renaissance divided into two schools of thought: the colorati (color) and disegni (drawing). The Venetian school, such as Titian and Tintoretto, stressed light and color over line, whereas those from Florence and Milan, such as Botticelli and Leonardo Da Vinci, believed that line and drawing were not only more fundamental to painting, but also of the highest intellectual value.

Since taking a seminar on master prints my senior year of college, I started to truly appreciate the use of line. In this class, my professor taught a most invaluable skill: how to look. I don’t just mean to “look,” but to really look—to actively and intently scrutinize, to take one’s time, and to approach from different perspectives. Of course, as an art major this is an obvious and crucial skill that is applicable to any of the visual arts, but it wasn’t until that class that I began to truly understand. Over a year later, when I stood mesmerized by this one painting, I realized that I'd unconsciously sided-up with the Florentines. Sorry, Rubens, it's nothing personal.

Number 2: "The Noodle Theory"

When we took a lunch break during our third day there, I kept thinking back to the Buddha's sheer drapery that I had seen in Cave 159. As I slurped my delicious hand-pulled noodles, I had an epiphany: the drapery looked just like them. The looping, intertwining noodles appeared strikingly like the intricate, dizzying Tang Dynasty drapery on the miscellaneous Buddhas and flying asparas. So now, I have a potential dissertation topic: "Oodles of Noodles: The interdependent relationship between the development of noodles and painted drapery in the Mogao Caves."

(Just kidding. But still, it could be fun.)

Number 3: The creative impulse

As I stood before each painting, examining its carefully executed brushwork, I wanted nothing more than to sketch. If only my hand could transfer these lines onto the page! If only I could imitate those curves that swirl before my eyes, and stay with me even now. It’s no wonder that modern Chinese artist Zhang Daqian was so moved by these frescoes—who wouldn’t feel the need to absorb and express their beauty? I felt such longing—all I could do was stand there and ache for something that I never even realized I was missing. 

Over the course of our four day long stay, we met a lot of people and learned some of their stories. "People come here with the intention of staying a little while," explained one of our effervescent, photographer hosts. "Then they think 'oh, there's so much, I can just stay a bit longer.' And then they stay for ten, twenty, thirty years--maybe even a lifetime. Dunhuang sucks people in like that. I've been here ten years already. Many of my classmates from the Film Academy are off making big movies, but you know what, I don't think that's for me. I've found happiness here, and I think that's ultimately what I want in life. I think it's enough."

I was truly, deeply touched. These caves have been inspiring people from different cultures and countries for over a thousand years. To find people that have truly found love, joy, and meaning in their work is inspiring. May we all be so lucky.

Although there's no photography allowed in the caves (and thank goodness, otherwise tourists' inconsiderate flashes would only accelerate the degeneration process), I'll include a few from outside the site and of our camel-ride (yes, camel ride!) across the Mingsha sand dunes. 

View of Stupa and Sanwei Mountain Range by the Mogao Caves

View of Northern Mogao Caves

Construction workers at the caves

Mingsha Sand Dunes

Camel ride across the dunes

Tiger Leaping Gorge: Poetic Interlude

Midway along the journey of our hike, 

We found ourselves at a waterfall, 

Which was placed e'er along our path.

And lo! Almost where the bend receded, 

A goat light and swift exceedingly, 

Which bleated e'er aggressively!

He seemed as if against me he were coming

With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, 

So that it seemed the air was afraid of him.

And never moved he from before my face, 

Nay, rather did impede so much my way, 

That I for fear turned back to my companion.

"Behold the beast, for which I have turned back; 

Do thou protect me from him, companion-mine, 

For he doth make my veins and pulses tremble."

"Thee it behoves to face this challenge directly"

Responded she, when she beheld me quivering, 

"If from this savage beast thou wouldst escape;

Because this sheep, at which thou criest out,

Must surely bleet far louder than it bites, 

Thy must fearlessly bound across these rocks, and confront him as Mamma Naxi would."

And I to she: "Cary, I thee entreat 

By that love for food which we both adore, 

So that we may escape this woe and worse, 

Thou wouldst encourage me as I chase our foe away, 

That I may see a clean shower a few hours hence.

And dine to ever our hearts' content."

Thus I leaped on, and she behind me followed.

*Disclaimer: Both the inspiration for this "poem" and many of its lines are directly derived from Canto I of Dante's Inferno. 

Thank you, Dante. You are the Virgil to my... well... Dante.