Monday, September 29, 2008
Hacky-sack meets 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 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.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Shanghai Museum
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.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Soft Sleeper
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.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Hungry Man
Crackers
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
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.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Pounding Out Art
the video is about as far from polished as animation gets, but it makes me laugh, and we had fun creating it. I got to try using a home made blue screen for the first time. That was tough. I also got to try making wire figure that could be easily animated and stay standing on his own. That was tough. I also got to do it all with as much hand flailing communication as with words. Yu Zhouren was a great sport, and kept a positive attitude the whole time. He's generous, artistically talented and has a sense of humor. I wish we had picked a project that took more advantage of his talents. Part of me wants to speak chinese and have more academic conversations with him. Another part of me is happy that we clumsily and eagerly try to share ideas even though most of what we say doesn't make any sense to the other person.
Just before we left the new campus, Yu Zhouren gave me an awesome pair of woven straw slippers and a simple wooden model to build because he remembered that I like working with wood. Now, if I could just come up with something as thoughtfull to give him.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Partner Projects
The other big chalenge was working with computers when all the menus are in Chinese. It took me a while but I finally figured out how to change the menus from Chinese to English on the macintosh towers. The computer lab had an impressive selection of hardware - mostly Mac Pro towers with dual xeon processors. Final Cut Pro moved along at a healthy clip.
The animation studio and photography room were also impressive, offering some very nice equipment. The big hurdle was not being familiar with any of it, and overcoming the language barrier. Edwin and Ying helped out a lot, as well as several of the Chinese students who spoke English. Without them we would have worked it out, but gathering all the equipment we needed was much easier with their help.
At times I fealt foolish trying to form long winded sentences through an translator, when a few quick hand gestures would have sufficed. Oh well.
The online translator was interesting. More than half the time it screwed up grammar and verb conjugations, but at least it was entertaining.
At lunch I busted out my new fountain pen and asked for help filling it with ink. Being the ignorant american that I am, I had no idea how a fountain pen works. Evidently, every chinese student knows how to use one, so there was no shortage of assistance. Initially, I used the ink I had for brush painting to fuill my pen and apparently that was a bad idea. Now I've got the rigth ink, but the damage may be irreversible. Se la vie. For three bucks, I think I can afford another one. Tomorrow is another big work day. If everything goes perfectly, we might actually finish our project in time!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Getting to Know SUAD
Lunch with the chinese students fealt like our first opportunity to have a 'normal' meal. The cafeteria serves all variety of Chinese dishes, and since none of it is spelled out for us in english, it's pretty much up to our partners to pick for us. I found their choices to be well within the range of 'normal' food. Nothing they ordered was too weird to handle.
After lunch we toured the school gallery - a remarkable collection of ancient and contemporary chinese art and artifacts. My favorite was the wood working tools. for the most part, not much has changed in the last thousand years ( or more). Sure, we've got electrical power tools now, but everything on display is still used today. This is a picture of ink lines, the precursor of todays chalk lines.
After the gallery, we received a crash course in chinese calligraphy. They made us both write "I love you" in chinese and pose with our teachers. The three character sounds are "Wo ai ni", each one translating directly in sequence. The reason they look different, as you may have guessed, is that one is an ancient style, the other modern. Sadly, I don't remember which is which. I'll say that mine, being the more beautiful, was also probably more ancient.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Confuscious and 6666 Steps to Heaven
The tour guide had a tiny loudspeaker attached to her hip, which at first seemed silly, but later proved necessary to be heard over the other tour guides who also had tiny loudspeakers on their hips. As part of our ongoing artistic expression in China, Brooke and I did a short photo commentary on the foolilsh and awkward ways that westerners try to use everyday chinese objects. On many occasions throughout China and southeast Asia, locals have had to patiently (or not so patiently) explain to us how to eat food, catch a bus, use a bathroom, etc. For example, we went to a hotpot restaurant, with a menu partially in english, and proudly ordered a giant bowl of broth, and a small dessert plate.
Monday, September 8, 2008
A Warm and Hearty Welcome
We met several of the professors and department heads. A couple of students were shooting video and still photos, there were two translators, and many of them took time to toast to us and welcome us warmly to Jinan.
After two hours of food and drink we wrapped up with some Chinese Karaoke performed for us by our hosts, and we sent a couple of our own up for a little a-capela.
We retired to our new home - the SUAD "Mansion" for visiting students and professors. It's not what I would call a "Mansion" but rather a hotel, directly adjacent to the student dorms.
In the morning we were fed another feast, with meats and vegetables I havge never seem before, let alone considered eating for breakfast. There were some western standards such as sliced bread and jam, scrambled eggs with zuchini, fried bread, boiled eggs and ham... then there were some stranger things, warm milk, salty sausage, unidentifiable vegetables, corn meal broth, tang, a few more REALLy salty things... It's going to take some getting used to.
To meet our partner students we traveled 45 minutes by bus to the edge of town where the new SUAD campus is located. They welcomed us with a standing ovation and were eager to get to know us. We each were intorduced to our partners, and spent a short time getting to know a little about eachother. Yu Zhouren is my partner, he is 21 years old, and specializes in flash animation. His english is better than my Chinese, but we can barely hold a conversation - so we use an online translator sitting side by side on computers. He said I am like his big brother because I'm seven years older than him. Then he asked me for an American name. I though for a bit and with some encouragement from Brooke decided to name him Jared, in honor of my own little brother, and because "Zhouren" sounds almost like "Jared". For those of you who don't normally read pinyin chinese, "Zh" sounds like a cross between "Ch" and "J". "N" doesn't sound anything like "d", so you have to use a little imagination. Oh, and of course "Yu" isn't a given name, it's his family name.
For four hours we shared samples of all of our individual art. I was dually impressed by both the SUAD students and our own class.
After another feast of a lunch, we got a tour of campus. The "bookstore" is small, but usefull. I browsed for a minute and decided to buy some pencils and a brush and ink. Before I realized what happened, Jared had paid for my stuff anf bought me an iced tea. I walked out feeling gracious and a little dazed. Then Brooke's partner, LiLi, handed me an ice cream bar she had bought when I wasn't watching. We're totally spoiled.
Dinner was on our host students as well. It was everything we could do just to pay for a one way cab ride back from the restaurant. I feel bad letting them pay for everything, but I think it would be worse for me to refuse their hospitality. Someday I hope I can return the favor.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Beijing to Jinan
245 kilometers per hour! That's about 150 mph. That's how fast I was moving on my way from Beijing to Jinan. Amtrak, you suck! The high speed rail system here is cheap, easy, comfortable and on time. All of western Europe does it, China does it, Japan and Korea too! WTF!? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I really wish the US would "get on the train".
Edwin and I were discussing the differences between China and the US, and he pointed out the huge disparity in infrstructure funding. I don't know how much money China spends on pension plans, health care, and education. But according to Edwin, China is more capitalist than the United States in those regards. China seems to be setting aside a lot of public services in order to push forward with infrastructure. Is it more important to develop roads and rails, or pay for education and healthcare? I'm going to wait to see what happens in the next twenty years before I decide for c ertain. Nevertheless, I have a good guess which way will prove best in the long run.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Great Wall at Simitai
We made quick work of the hike, barreling through in about three hours. We got a bit fuddled up in the beginning, Ying stayed back to help with a badly swollen ankle, and Edwin had to play catch up with us for the rest of the day, only to finally catch us at the very end. Brooke and I had a small adventure trying to talk our way past a guard when we turned back to find Edwin. Because we had a group ticket, which was with Edwin, there was nothing we could show to the guard to prove that we hadn't sneaked onto the wall. And speaking a grand total of about twenty words in Chinese, we were hard pressed to explain our situation. Eventually, and miraculously, we flailed our arms in just the right way, and the guard seemed to understand. We didn't find Edwin, but we found Ying's cousin, who also spoke only Chinese. More hand waving ensued and we deduced that Edwin, Megan and Steven had taken a shortcut - avoiding a significant part of the wall. So we kept on truckin'.
The hike was amazing, I only wish I had budgeted my time better to spend some time relaxing on the wall and taking in the scenery.
Getting into Simatai proper from the wall involved a zip line that I couldn't turn down. I think that all but three of us ended up on the zip line. Yeah, it's sort of cheezy, but worth it!
Friday, September 5, 2008
Heavenly Temple
As we sat huddled in the shade of a short rock wall, thinking about our wishes for humanity, I plucked at the grass growing stubornly up through cracks in the stone pavers. Ihad four stems in my hand, each branching out into three seed heads. With four seasons and twelve signs of the zodiak, I decided that the grass seed was a very suitable offering. I asked Brooke and Steven to help me make the offering - so we linked our hands together, holding the grass seed. My wish for humanity is world-wide cooperation in nurturing the diversity of plant life that we need to sustain ourselves and our children.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The Forbidden City
Before leaving the city, Brooke and I tucked through a side gate and around a corner where we found a little quiet respite. We were in dire need of a snack but took a few minutes to sketch our surroundings.
The afternoon was comprised of first finding a restauraunt for some lunch. What we found had no english menu, but at least there were pictures...
Note the chinese characters below each of these two dishes, and imagine that you are at a restaurant starving for lunch, speak little to no Chinese, and your waiter speaks zero english. Now imagine that you order the one on the right but get served the one on the left. The "meat" is more skin and fat on cartilage and tendon than it is meat. So you send it back and demand the one that you ordered. It takes five minutes to explain this with hand gestures but finally you succeed. The new dish is much more palatable but still completely unidentifiable.It turns out, when you show these pictures to a translator that you first ate duck tongue and followed it up, convincingly, with duck heart! Welcome to Beijing.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Art districts tour
We toured several of Beijing's art districts, as well as CAFA (Central Acadamy of Fine Arts). The empty architecture studios of CAFA looked just like our studios at the UO after the end of a quarter. From the outside CAFA is just another gray brick building amongst a sea of new construction on the outskirts of Beijing. Exploring the campus further unveils a remarkable museum which is now exhibiting a variety of designs proposed for the 2008 Olympics. The building is clad in heavy slate tiles which look like scales on the back of a dragon. It looks so heavy, how did they fasten those tiles!? Inside the gallery no photos are allowed, the entry displays bizarre clothing designs for the opening ceremony. It looks like something from a recent Star Trek set. They have a sea of promotional posters and an impressive collection of art made for or about the Olympics. The curvacious interior remains true to it's domed shell of massive slate tile. Very impressive!
Also at CAFA we met the much less conspicuous but equally impressive man behind the team of students who designed the Olympic medals!
Earlier in the day Brooke gave Mao a high five. Strange for so many reasons...
Pekin Art Studios was a bizarre and disorienting collection of cubic gray brick buildings housing much more intriguing artwork. The bottom floor of each studio exhibits the artist's work while the top floor is a work area. I was struck by the decision to use the same gray tile on the roads between buildings as on the walls themselves. The neutral background and monotonous pattern brought the natural wood grain of fences and doors out into the spotlight. This is a characteristic that I also noticed at the Commune. We use so much wood in the northwest, the beauty of it is often lost.
Our final stop before returning to the hostel is the private studio of a couple of young men who work for the CAFA professor mentioned earlier. I'm sorry we waited unti ldark to see this studio. It was easily the most intersting work space we toured. Two grids offset by about 30 degrees distinguish the two floors. A gargantuan smoke stack towers immediately adjacent and visible through a wall of glass - in fact a partial ceiling of glass affords a full view of the tower from within the studio. Out back there is a fish pond underfoot - yes, you actually walk over it thinking it's a strange place to use plexiglass tiles before it becomes aparent that there are fish in the shallow trough. The only part that really didn't appeal to me was the bathroom which is separated from the main work area by a hanging sheet. Not a lot of sound privacy there.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Commune at the Great Wall
At Ying's suggestion, Brooke, Ariel and I booked a tour of the "Commune by the Great Wall". This is not quite what it sounds like. There is no one actually living at the commune, it is jsut a collection of modern style residences which are rented out to rich diplomats and business men for conferences and such. They also double as a "museum" of modern architecture - exhibiting award winning work by some of Asia's finest architects.
The houses are indeed "modern" and the architecture is intriguing. If I were to guess at their age I would say maybe 30 or 40 years. Not right. In fact the oldest was build only seven years ago. They are in reasonable condition but not well maintained. The style is mostly of an era past. While it was well worth visiting, and several of the houses were truly inspiring in their design, I was less than blown away by the innovation or care exhibited in the details of these buildings.
Our favorite room was the living room of one of the more post-modern looking houses. Buried below a living roof that blended almost seamlessly with it's environment was a cool, stone-clad haven that looked out over the valley through a continuos wall of northwest facing glass. The acoustics were delightfull with BB King playing in the background, and the simple layout flowed from kitchen to dining area to living space with just enough enclosure between to create a hint of separation.
To finish our tour we relaxed at the hotel with a mediocre $6 iced coffee (note that a typical iced coffee in Beijing costs less than a dollar).
We arrived back at our Hostel in time to greet the rest of our Art in China class and go out for a dumpling feast.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Bangkok to Beijing
Beijing seems to me stuck between a real, functioning city, and a Disneyland theme park. The theme being Olympic city.
Streets are full but not overly congested as I had expected. Sidewalks and gutters were relatively clean. And most impressive of all was the blue sky for our first two days!
The flight from Bangkok was a mere six hours delayed. Thankfully the Bangkok airport is not a bad place to spend your morning. Sri Lanka air gave us a free meal in the airport thanks to Brooke's friendly and persuasive manner.
During our free meal I was "blessed" by a mouthfull of cappucino after cracking a joke at an untimely moment.
The flight itself was mostly pleasant. I got free whiskey, watched Iron Man, and was just far enough away from the woman hurling her breakfast that I could ignore her and enjoy my movie. Brooke was quick to discover that a cup of coffee hovering just below the nose could mostly drowned out the smell of stomach bile.
As bad as it sounds, the flight was actually fine. We arrived in Beijing only about 4 hours late (they hauled ass), got some help from a chinese woman who spoke perfect english, and caught a bus into town.
Once in the right neighborhood we figured it would be easy to ask anyone for directions to the hotel. We had the address written down. How hard could it be?
Three hours later, Brooke and I were about ready to bite eachothers heads off. The map we had was useless, the oh so eager to help locals had no idea where our hotel was, and almost no one we met spoke English!
After being confidetly placed on a local bus by some friendly twenty somethings, we found ourselves no where near our destination only to ultimately discover that we had literaly walked right past the alley to our Hotel about an hour earlier.
Argh!
We recovered, and spent the next day poking around the perimeter of the Olympic village. We couldn't get very close. They were preparing for the paralympic games and kept us a good half mile away from the birds nest and aquatic center. We took a couple of token photos and left.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Thai farm cooking school
I was amazed at the clean, calm atmosphere of the food market we stopped at. In every respect it resembled all the other market's i've seen in SE Asia, except
it was tidy, clean and relaxed. The instructor, a small Thai woman, not more than 30 years old, gave us a brief tour o the market, explaining a little about curry ingredients, the many types of rices, and a bit about how to find our way around the market. Then she asked us which dishes (from a selection of about 18) we would each like to prepare. It took her only a short time - maybe ten minutes - to collect ingredients for all seven of us. Meanwhile, I paced off the dimensions of the market and sketched some details for later use this fall in my design studio. Brooke quickly found the closest Cha Yin cart and we both partook of some delicious Thai iced tea. It's going to be hard when I have to pay more than 50 cents for a big bag of Cha Yin.
When we arrived at the "farm" we got a short tour of the various plants that we would be using to spice our dishes, as well as some of the major ingredients. The farm was more like a big garden, which appeared to function solely as a learning environment, not as a food producing business.
The food was fabulous - while it may not compare to Thailand's finest, I'm pretty sure I was on par with the best Eugene has to offer. If only I could repeat that performance at home.
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The following day we joined another couple for a day long Batik class. The four of us were taught by a very friendly thai woman (Anne) who has a studio in her home. She lives with her husband, daughter and mother. While we spent the morning drinking tea and learning the basics of Batik, Anne's mother prepared lunch for us. By the end of the day we had two complete projects to take home. If I learned a bit more about preparing the wax, getting the temperature right and so forth - I just might try to incorporate Batik into my Architectural work... where there's a will there's a way