Category Archives: Asia

Indian Princes and Japanese Peasants

April 30, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waxing Flower Moon

Another computer problem averted by cyber wizard William Schmidt. If you had tried to access the files from February 2005 to October 2007 in ancientrails, you would have been met with a not found error message. An e-mail to Bill and he not only had the problem managed, but helped me relocate the files on my own computer. I knew they were here somewhere. Thanks again, techno-mage.

Morning workout, a bit of legislative blogging for the Sierra Club and lunch. My movie of the moment for my workouts is the continuing saga, the Maharbarata. I’m on disc 7 of a lot more. Each disc has six episodes. This is one long story. It interweaves gods and humans, demi-gods and demons with the history of India, providing along the way morals and folkways. Just today, for example, Dhorydan, a contested crown prince, got this wisdom from Bhisma, “No. Just because you are elder does not mean you will become king. In India merit is most important.”

Yesterday I finished an early Kurosawa film, The Hidden Fortress. It featured a running gag with two peasants who act almost as clowns. It was crisp, the copy, a Criterion Collection dvd, pops. The story involves a period when Japan consisted of warring kingdoms. A princess of a defeated people escapes with a loyal general. Their adventures as they try to leave their home territory for shelter elsewhere constitute the movie.

Asia, Politics

The Chinese People Need To Be Controlled

April 19, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Seed Moon

Back from Wishes for the Sky where I helped visitors read scrolls written in a callipgraphic English that looks, at first glance, like Chinese. There were some ahas, some head scratching. One guy, when told that organizers said Chinese had the most trouble with reading the scripts laughed and said, “I must be part Chinese.”

The Mississippi river was high, but the Harriet Park Pavilion, in which the inside part of the event took place, had several disconcerting marks on the wall, labled with high flood marks for various years, most of them well above my head.

I had a chance to have nice chat several folks Scott Simpson, a guy he knows who plays Native American flute and Ming Jen, one of the organizers of the event. When asked about Jackie Chan’s statement reported in the press yesterday, “The Chinese people need to be controlled,” Ming Jen surprised me by agreeing with him.

Her rationale surprised me and made me humble once again about my ability to sense things from within a particular cultural perspective other than my own. She voiced a concern Jackie Chan had, too, saying that Chinese people were individualistic enough. With as many people as their are in China and the economic unrest created by economic freedom she feared more freedom would create potentially chaotic situations. Besides, she pointed out, during the Han and T’ang dynasties, the controlling government was feudal in nature and highly centralized, but poetry and the art flourished.

China’s culture has a patriarchal and dynastic tradition stretching back literally thousands of years. Democracy does not necessarily fit well within that tradition and, she implied, is not necessary for the Chinese people to flourish.

Another aspect of this, I realized while we were talking, was the experience of Chinese culture between dynasties, usually following, as Ming Jen pointed out, weak emperors. Those time periods were chaotic, violent and the people suffered.

Always pays to ask someone from within the culture for their point of view.

Art and Culture, Asia, Bees

Is There Such A Thing As An Individual Bee?

April 19, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Seed Moon

The bee hive essentials are in the red car and they come out today. The bees themselves arrive next Saturday by semi. Mark Nordeen told me last year’s delivery came during an April blizzard, hit a patch of ice, rolled over and killed all the bees.

This will be my first year with the bees and I’m looking forward to learning a lot about them. The notion a hive mind has, I know, fascinated my step-son Jon for a long time. It gets its intellectual legs from the performance of bees and ants and other social insects who as individuals can only accomplishments small increments of a larger task, the survival of the hive, but together they ensure the hive’s endurance through time. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Here’s a question: Is there is such a thing as an individual bee, or, rather do we have multiple flying macro-cellular organs of a single entity?

It’s a chilly start for the Wishes for Sky day, but I got an e-mail that said dress warm and come. So Minnesotan.

That reminds me. I read the inscription on an early Zhou dynasty kuei (a ritual food vessel) and one of the kids on the tour, a young Chinese girl said, “That’s so Chinese.” This kuei was made in the 10th century B.C.

Gotta get ready. Unload the hives and plant some peas before I take off for St. Paul.

Art and Culture, Asia

A Long Learning Curve

April 17, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Seed Moon

This morning Chinese language students from the St. Paul Central class of 2009 came to the museum. They were bright kids, interested. Mostly in their third year of study, they have learned little about China’s history and culture. My tour introduced them to the bronze tradition, the history of the five major calligraphic styles and ended with an examination of literati culture in the Ming dynasty.

Working with bright, engaged kids makes touring a pleasure as it was this morning. Many of the kids were Chinese and some spoke Chinese well.

This was the beginning of a much longer learning curve for me on calligraphy. I want to appreciate Chinese painting from within the Chinese aesthetic framework as well as learn some Chinese characters along the way.

As a docent, I appreciate the flexibility it offers to devise self-directed areas of study, then try them out on a live audience. Go back and revise. Learn more. Try again. Those of us with omnivorous intellectual appetites are well-suited.

Sleepy. Time for a nap.

Art and Culture, Asia

Chinese Calligraphy

April 16, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Waning Seed Moon

Kate’s home for a four day weekend. She needs the rest. I hope she will take it easy, though she wants to do garage sale related things. I’m not sure what that means and I worry about her taking care of herself.

I have a tour of China for Chinese language students from Central High tomorrow. I decided to go with the history of Chinese calligraphy and its five main styles. Part of why I’m doing this is that calligraphy is China’s highest art form and its appreciation influences all other forms of aesthetic judgment. That means I don’t have an inside view of what makes Chinese art tick unless I can better comprehend calligraphy. This is a start.

Art and Culture, Asia, Weather +Climate

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

February 27, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Waxing Moon of Winds

Even now the winds continue as winter and spring continue their tug of war. Seasons do not just give up here, seasonal ground has to be earned.

Two China tours today. I left dissatisfied with my work on them. My work was not as crisp or as engaging. I may need to go back to themes and questions, which I have largely abandoned. These were senior high kids and there was a certain amount of boy/girl silliness with the girls in front and the boys in back, moving away. Still, at my best I keep the kids engaged and today I didn’t. Room for improvement.

My first asmat tour is next Friday and I have work to get ready for it.

Otherwise, tired. Headed upstairs for a nap.

Asia, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

Hey There Southeast Asia! Winter Solstice in Pictures

December 21, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

-7 bar rises 30.10 0mph SW windchill -9 Winter Solstice

Last Quarter Moon of Long Nights Day 8hr 44mn

Asia, Woolly Mammoths

Scot Escapes With The Gold

December 1, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

Ex-Pat Life in Troubled Times

November 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

37 bar falls 29.69 0mph NW windchill 36 Samhain

New Moon (Moon of Long Nights)

As many of you know, my brother Mark lives in Bangkok. Thailand is almost invisible in the American press, so you may not have noticed the protests that have been going on there since early in the year. The politics, even to Mark, a long term resident of Thailand, do not make much sense. One school of thought believes it is the Bangkok royalist elite facing off against the more rural and populist base of recent prime minister and now exile, Thaksin.

Difficult to say, but this Buddhist country has a lot of unregistered guns and the protests have taken a nasty turn. Apparently the goal of the yellow-shirted PAD protesters is a coup by the military which they hope would turn the government back to more traditional royalist influenced politics.

Mark and Mary, both ex-pats, live out their lives as foreign nationals in cultures far removed from the West. Even English speaking, British spawned Singapore has a Chinese government and a citizenry made of up of Malays, Chinese, Indians and a few Caucasians. As non-citizens, even though well established, their daily lives can get upset when the politics turn nationalist as ex-pats are often visible reminders of the other.

In Mark’s case, as an American and a white man, he is culturally and physically obviously other almost every where he goes in Thailand. When jingoism gets cranked up, no matter what the cause, the tendency is to notice strangers/farangi when at other times they may well be invisible. He feels understandably a bit nervous, but he also says, “It’s a rush to be here.” The politics are an alive moment, a culture trying to sort out its future and its present, searching for the mix of groups that can govern. We just had such a moment in the last year here in America.

I respect and sometimes envy my brother and sister. They have access every day to the unique and the different, to the daily lives of persons who respond to different customs and values than those we learned in Alexandria, Indiana. Like them, I value those kinds of interactions and find their willingness to stay admirable.

Art and Culture, Asia

Scarlett, the Young Korean

September 7, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

62 bar rises 29.99 0mph E dew-point 42 sunrise 6:42 set 7:38 Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Harvest Moon rise 3:16 set 11:22

Back from the Korea tour. We stayed mostly in Korea. I took the folks through the history of Korea, using objects in the MIA collection. Scarlett, the young Korean, made excited noises during much of the tour though I don’t think she picked up much. A cutie, though.

Korea does not get a lot of love academically or art historically, at least in English. That’s partly because Korean is a difficult language and not many read it outside of Korea. Many folks also think Korean art derivative, a version of Chinese or, perhaps Japanese. There is substantial Chinese influence in Korean culture and art, but the Koreans maintain a distinctive aesthetic. In relation to Japan, in fact, they influence Japan far more than Japan influences them.