Hacky-sack meets Shuttle-Cock

This is a retrospective entry about the first project I undertook in China. All throughout my travels in SE Asia, I interacted with local children playing "kick-kick". Kick-shuttle-cock is the national sport of Vietnam, a favorite pass-time of Cambodia, and very popular in China as well. The local players were invariably surprised and quite pleased that I was able to play with them. My experience with hack-sack gave me the skills to keep up with most of the people I found playing "kick-kick". Very few activities got me smiling with the locals as quickly as kick-shuttle-cock.
I brought with me to Asia, five of my own hacky sacks to share with people I met along the way. I had no idea that they would have their own sport so similar to hacky sack. A kick shuttle-cock looks very different from a hacky-sack (or foot bag) but functions much the same. A feather, or group of feathers, attached to a washer shaped base is the basic form of a kick shuttle-cock. because of the feathers it flies a bit slower than a hacky sack, and has more directionality, but is otherwise almost identical in function.
In response to the mixing of cultures that I experienced I thought it would be very appropriate to make a new toy that is a hybrid of the hacky-sack and kick shuttle-cock. Using scrap material from a local tailor, small peas from the grocery store and feathers from a feather duster, I fashioned my own "hacky-cock" if you will.
Here is a photo of the two prototype designs, as displayed at the exhibition in Jinan.
P.S. They worked fabulously!

Red, white and black

Red is an important color in China. According to Wikipedia, in Chinese culture "it carries a largely positive connotation, being associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer." Even with all of these positive inferences, red is also a symbol of blood, death and danger. Red is found all over Shanghai - on the Chinese flag, on shop signs, automobiles and traffic signs, on banners and clothing... if green is the color of the Pacific Northwest, then red is the color of Shanghai (and maybe all of China).
Red is also strongly associated with communism. Russia was the beginning of this association with the red star of communism. Now, China and Vietnam also use the red star to symbolize their tie to communism. While Brooke and I were traveling in SE Asia before coming to China, Brooke had a strong reaction to the red star, particularly in Vietnam, where it is prominently visible all over the country. I also was aware of it, but on a less conscious level. As Brooke stopped to take pictures I became more and more aware of how frequently the red star, and the color red, are used in Vietnam and China.
It wasn't until Shanghai, when I tried to make a photographic composition using Christian's bright red pants, that I remembered about the chromatic filter on my digital camera. Canon has a clever function built into most of their cameras, called "color accent" that allows the user to pick any color in the frame and isolate it by turning all other colors to grayscale. I took a reading off of Christian's pants and snapped a photo one afternoon on the Bund. Reviewing the photo brought to my attention something else that was almost identical in hue to Christian's pants - the red flag of China. For the rest of our stay in Shanghai I left the red filter active on my camera and snapped hundreds of shots - finding bits of red in every nook and corner of Shanghai.
Many of the photos stand on their own, but I am still striving to find a way to use them all as an installation for our final exhibition in the Laverne Krause gallery. One idea suggested to me was to use a bag from from my travels and have the photos spilling out. If we end up using Ryan's idea of the "Chinese street theme", I could post my photos throughout the gallery, as most of them were taken while walking through the streets of Shanghai.

Shanghai Museum

People's Square, only about five blocks from our Hotel, was the hub of today's activities. The Shanghai Museum on the south end of People's Square, houses four floors of Chinese art and artifacts. I was particularly taken by the exhibit of cast bronze on the ground floor. The level of craft and detail present in pieces that are 3ooo years old is humbling. I think most of the pieces were from the Zhou, Qin and Hahn dynasties - roughly 1100 BC to 200 AD.
What artifacts will remain of our contemporary culture, 3000 years from now? It seems like today's artifacts for the future may not have a physical manifestation, and are not of any particular nation or culture. While there is still a richness of cultural individuality in this world, the great accomplishments of the information era have no durable artifact.
Will we leave behind a trail of computers? I can't fathom how our world will be remembered 3000 years from now. I look at the Bronze pieces of ancient China with a certain awe and respect. Will today's accomplishments be viewed the same way? The pessimist in me doubts that future generations will have much respect for the artifacts we leave behind.

Soft Sleeper

From Jinan to Shanghai we traveled in style. Jackie, the director of International Affairs at SUAD, managed to get a us a free upgrade on the train to the soft sleeper class. I'm not a seasoned rail traveler (thanks to the US for having the worst passenger rail system of any developed nation), but I thought our four person private sleeper compartment was awesome. It beats every plane and bus I've been on hands down. The steady quiet rhythm put me right to sleep. No honking, no swerving, no ear popping, no turbulence, no pooping babies, no barfing ladies... the only casualty was a lost paperback book. I left my book on my bunk, stepped off the train and turned right around to get it. In the 60 seconds it took me to get back to my bunk, someone had already snagged the book. Who would want an English book? It's a small loss, but I was really enjoying Kingsolver's commentary on American food culture.
We arrived in Shanghai to the find ourselves booked in a super modern, western style high rise hotel suite. I have no idea how we can afford to stay here, but I'm not complaining. We must be getting an amazing group discount.
The cityscape is remarkable, and we have an excellent view of it from our 14th floor suite. I wouldn't call it beautiful, but that's just my aesthetic. It is a strange patchwork of old two story, tile roofed houses and giant glass and steel sky scrapers. Some of the architecture is very bizarre. You can expect to see some photos and hopefully a few sketches posted soon.

Hungry Man

Here it is. My partner art project with Jared (Yu Zhaorun). This was the first time doing stop motion animation for both of us. Considering the challenges, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Looking back, my only regret is not finding a way to make it a bit less gloomy. I hope you enjoy it.

Crackers

The morning started with a two hour musical performance, showing an eclectic mix of contemporary and traditional styles. We roasted a bit sitting in the sun, but our host was kind enough to buy us all white baseball caps to wear. A lot of the performers were lip-syncing, and most of the music was pre-recorded. The live drummers, however, rocked the audience without any help from a PA system. There was dancing, martial arts, comedy, pop-rock, and more. For a "cultural festival" there was a more modern pop culture than I expected. Something about "cultural festival" made me think traditional folk culture.
After the concert we got a quick tour of some of the older streets. Tucked down these back alleys are mostly tourist shops, but many of the original structures and architectural styles are still present.
The cracker factory was awesome! This is a video of a lady making sesame crackers. We ate some of them fresh off the griddle, and they were delicious - hao chi! (Good eats!) When we got back to the old campus later that night we discovered that the local government had bought us each an entire bag of crackers, something like 3 kilos of crackers for each of us! I'm going to have to buy another duffle just to get my crackers home.

How to Find Your Mate

As we stroll through a park with the SUAD students, one of them says "Who wants a new girlfriend, or new boyfriend?" Li Li, Brooke's partner, beckons to Brooke and laughs. She says, "Come on, let's find a new boyfriend." Brooke asks why, and says she's happy with one she's got (Awwww). It turns out, there's an entire section of the park set up for personal ads. I don't know if this is a once a year thing, or every day. Either way, it was full of people browsing the ads. Li Li said that it's mostly parents looking for a match for their kids.
Jared (Yu Zhaorun, whose name I keep mis-spelling) and I ended up lost for a little while. So we just sat on the side of the small mountain, looked out over Jinan, drank iced tea and smoked a cigarette. I pulled out my Chinese phrase book and we perused it, finding ways to make small talk.
On the way down we stopped to shoot a bow and arrow - sort of like at an amusement park. I won a rabbit tail keychain.
After the park we went to KTV, which stands for Karaoke Television. It's the classiest karaoke place I've ever seen. We rented an entire private room, and spent most of the afternoon singing karaoke with the reverb turned all the way up. The chinese students, on the whole, were definitely better at karaoke than us americans were, but we put on a pretty good show too.