Chinese habits – the heart thrills

THE ARTIST AND THE SELFIE

Beijing, 19 January 2014

There is a phenomenon which my wife and I both agree is on the upswing in China, which is the taking of selfies. We are proud to know this word, by the way, which is so new that it hasn’t made it yet into the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary – although the Urban dictionary, which is obviously hipper, does contain a definition: “pictures taken of oneself while holding the camera at arm’s length”. We might know what the word means, but it doesn’t mean that we approve. We actually find it sad to see young women (it seems to be preponderantly young women) taking photos of themselves. It is so narcissistic, we cry!

But actually the phenomenon is not new, its amplitude is. New technology – the mobile phone with built-in camera – and its fantastic, phenomenal, global dissemination have allowed this. But the picture-makers of old – artists – have been making selfies for centuries now, since at least the Renaissance (in Europe anyway). They made selfies – self-portraits – to advertise their skills, or to allow them to exercise themselves without having to pay a model, or to comment on their or other people’s private lives, or in a more serious vein to explore their inner emotions. Anyone interested in the topic can go to the Wikipedia article on it. At the beginning, they seemed to be a bit shy (or maybe just cautious; prisons were nasty then), and rather than executing free-standing portraits of themselves they preferred to include themselves (and their friends, and even sometimes their enemies) in the role of modest bystanders in their paintings. Here, for instance, is a painting by Botticelli, an Adoration of the Magi, where the person on the extreme right in the yellow cloak and looking out towards the viewer is said to be the painter himself.

And here is a fresco, by Filippino Lippi, The Disputation with Simon Magus and the Crucifixion of Peter, where Lippi is the person on the extreme right of the fresco looking out towards the viewer from behind the pillar.

But after a while some artists were having none of this modesty. For instance, Velázquez put himself very obviously in what is probably his most famous painting, Las Meninas, which hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

On the face of it, the painting is of the young Infanta Margaret Theresa, surrounded by her entourage of maids of honour, her chaperone, bodyguard, two dwarves and a dog. But actually, Velázquez is quite obtrusively in the painting too! You can’t fail to miss him standing behind the Infanta and working on a large canvas, looking out towards the viewer. Behind him, on the wall, is a mirror, which if you look carefully can be see to be reflecting a couple. These are the king, Philip IV, and his queen, Mariana of Austria. Aha! It is them that Velásquez’s is painting, while standing in a painting which he painted … All very clever – and quite cheeky on the part of Velázquez to put himself so central when there were all these kings, queens, and princesses around!

But in my opinion not as cheeky as Dürer, who in a self-portrait of 1500 portrayed himself as a wonderfully powerful Christ-like figure.

He was following a well-known type of painting, such as this one by the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck.

I’m always surprised by the sheer effrontery of Dürer comparing himself so obviously to Christ. And not to some meek and mild Christ either. The painting’s Latin inscription translates as “I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg, portrayed myself in everlasting colours aged twenty-eight years”. Wow! Talk about someone being sure of his fame in posterity. I’m amazed that he didn’t get hauled in front of some ecclesiastical court for committing the sin of overweening pride with this painting, but apparently he didn’t.

And then there are those artists who used selfies to do a bit of character assassination. Take Cristofano Allori, an Italian painter I’d never heard of until my wife and I came across a painting of his a few years ago in the Queen’s Gallery in London. Well worth the visit, by the way; it houses part of the extensive royal art collection. The painting in question was Judith with the head of Holofernes

It’s a story from the Bible: Holofernes was a general sent by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, to wreak vengeance on various nations along the Mediterranean sea board for not having supported him. This included Israel. Holofernes is besieging a Jewish city, which is about to surrender. But it is saved when Judith, a beautiful Jewish widow, visits Holfernes in his tent, seduces him, gets him drunk and then while he’s sleeping cuts off his head. Many painters liked this subject, no doubt because of all the blood and gore; they generally painted Judith in the act of cutting off Holofernes’s head. But Allori’s take is different. There’s no violence here. The head is already off and the blood has stopped running. Judith is holding it as she would a trophy, staring all the while at the viewer with a complacently triumphant look on her face. Anyone who saw the painting at the time and knew Allori must have tittered. Because Allori painted himself as poor Holofernes while his model for Judith was his ex-mistress Maria Mazzafirri and the servant in the background helping Judith was Maria’s mother. Poor Cristofano, they must have said, that harlot Mazzafirri and that hag of a mother of hers really screwed him over, got their claws into his loot (look at that beautiful dress she’s wearing!) and then dumped him. Or maybe they thought, what the hell did the beautiful Mazzafirri see in that dolt Allori? Good for her, good riddance to bad rubbish.

Michelangelo also included himself in a very personal way in a number of his works, the most famous of which must be in the fresco of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.

In that huge drama, he painted his face on the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew (I have written about the flaying of this saint in an earlier post).

Scholars have debated the meaning of this since it was noticed in 1925. One scholar has suggested that Michelangelo was commenting on his extremely shabby and painful treatment (from his point of view) by the Pope and his minions during the painting of the Last Judgement. Amusing, along the lines of Allori’s painting, but I think other scholars are more correct when they see this as an excrutiatingly personal comment by Michelangelo on the precarious balance of his soul between salvation and damnation: it seems that the flayed skin is at an exact midpoint between the salvation of the Triumphant Christ and the horrified man who is about to be pulled into Hell. The poetry Michelangelo wrote at this time – he was also a good poet – speaks a lot about his fear for the salvation of his soul.

And suddenly the selfie is an ussie. The artist is speaking for us all.

Personally, I like more the selfie in Michelangelo’s sculpture The Deposition from the Cross, which is in Florence.

I saw the sculpture during my first trip to Italy when I was a University student (I have also mentioned this trip in an earlier post). The old man, presumably Joseph of Arimathea, is said to be a self-portrait.

A look of such sadness, such desolation he is giving the dead Christ! I was so struck by it that I remained transfixed in front of the statue. I stood there so long that someone in a group of tourists flowing by muttered to her neighbour “What’s he looking at?”

That look of intense sadness brings me to Caravaggio, who must be my most favourite painter. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I brought few books to Beijing, but one of these was the massive Caravaggio: The Complete Works by Sebastian Schütze, which I later complemented by Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, the almost detective story of his life by Andrew Graham-Dixon. Caravaggio included himself in a number of his paintings. Take his Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, one of a cycle of three paintings in the Contarelli Chapel of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

The subject of the painting is the killing of Matthew, the author of one of the four Gospels. According to tradition, the saint was killed while celebrating Mass at the altar. And so we have the saint knocked to the ground, the assassin readying to deliver the fatal blow, an angel thoughtfully passing on to the saint the palm of martyrdom, and the crowd screaming and shouting and running about, the whole bathed in that chiaroscuro, that light and dark, for which Caravaggio is so famous. A great painting, although in my opinion not as good as the other two in the chapel. In any case, what interests us right now is the figure at the back, picked out by the light, seemingly making an escape but looking back at the scene. It is Caravaggio.

Why did he include himself like this? And why that look of intense sadness? Graham-Dixon suggests that Caravaggio is saying, “I am no different from these people, who stand there instead of helping Matthew, or even run away. I would have had no more courage than they. I, too, would have run away”.

So different, this look, from the expression we see on his face in an earlier painting, the Taking of Christ in the Garden of Gesthemane, which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

Caravaggio has painted the moment when Judas completes his betrayal of Jesus by kissing him in the Garden of Gesthemane, to indicate to the soldiers around him whom they should arrest. Caravaggio is the person holding the lamp at the back.

He is there to shed light on the scene, but he is also looking eagerly over the shoulders of the soldiers to get a better view. Such a wonderful metaphor for every painter, of all ages, trying hard to visualize the scene which they are planning to paint, and which they can see only darkly.

And so we get to the last of Caravaggio’s portrayals, painted late in his career. The subject is another decapitation which was very popular with painters, David’s killing of Goliath. Caravaggio himself did at least three versions of this story, more or less all of the same moment, when David grasps the head of Goliath. This last one, housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, is the darkest, the most tragic.

It is Caravaggio’s face we see in Goliath, as he was in the last years of his life, on the run from the law in at least two jurisdictions but also from enemies who had personal vendettas with him and were trying to kill him, desperately trying to have himself pardoned by the Pope so that he could return to Rome. It is said that Caravaggio intended the painting to be a gift to Cardinal Borghese who had the power to have him pardoned, a sort of “here is my head on a platter, please be merciful and forgive me”. And who modelled David, a David who strangely enough is not looking triumphantly at Goliath whom he has just overcome in battle, whose gaze rather is a mixture of sadness and compassion for his supposed enemy? One interpretation, which I like immensely, is that this is also Caravaggio, painted as he looked when he was a young boy! And so we have a scene where the young Caravaggio is looking on sadly at the old Caravaggio which he will become. Alas, this interpretation does not seem correct. More probably, the model is Caravaggio’s studio assistant, Cecco, looking on sadly as his master slowly falls to pieces before his eyes. And indeed Caravaggio died shortly thereafter.

Another artist whose powerful self-portraits have always fascinated me is the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. I must say, she was almost obsessed with herself, self-portraits making up a very large proportion of her oeuvre. Here is one of them

but there is one self-portrait of hers which stands out above all the rest and which I find truly gut-wrenching, Henry Ford Hospital.

She painted it shortly after her second miscarriage, when she realized she would never be able to have the children she so desperately wanted. You see her lying in the blood of her miscarriage on her bed in the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit (the city in the background; her husband, the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, had been given a commission there by Edsel Ford). Above her floats the baby she has just lost, a baby boy. Also floating around her are a female torso, showing the anatomical parts linked to having children, her fractured pelvis, fruit of an accident she suffered when young and which made it impossible for her to have children, medical-looking equipment used during the miscarriage, an orchid which Rivera had given her, and a snail, depicting the slow pace of her miscarriage. All are linked to her by umbilical-like bloodlines.

I finish with a self-portrait by Käthe Kollwitz, a German artist who was active before and after the First World War. It, too, is about the loss of a child, but this time of a child born. Her younger son Peter was badly wounded in the first days of the war and died in her arms a few months later. She created this woodcut just after his death. It is of her and her husband, distraught at their boy’s death

After the war, she distilled this image into a pair of statues, Grieving Parents, which stand in the German War cemetery at Vladslo in Belgium (I have written an earlier post about these cemeteries).

The two figures are based on Käthe and her husband Karl

They represent all the parents of the young men buried in the cemetery

although it is said that Karl is gazing directly at the tomb of his son Peter.

To parents like us with children still of age to be called up, incredibly moving.

POST SCRIPTUM

A few weeks ago (June 2014), I saw with great pleasure that my favouritest of favourite cartoonists in The New Yorker magazine, Roz Chast, had made the same connection as I had between the modern selfie movement and artists’ self-portraits

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I ADMIRE THEM, THE CHINESE EAT THEM

Beijing, 22 November 2013

There is a joke that northern Chinese crack about their cousins in the south, to the effect that southerners eat everything on four legs except the table they are sitting at. When they tell this joke to foreigners they will helpfully go on to explain that southerners eat absolutely everything. I think many foreigners are bemused by this distinction which northerners make between themselves and their southern cousins, since it seems to most of us that northerners will also eat everything. I mean, which tourist in Beijing has not visited the food night market in Wanfujing road and seen scorpions and other insects being offered as delicacies to nibble?

And what about the disgusting stinky tofu which all Chinese – northerners and southerners alike – delight to eat?

Looking beyond these extremes of eating behaviour, it is true to say that the Chinese have a very deep and intense relationship with food. I have been told that this is because hunger and starvation is still a recent experience for many. One of my staff, for instance, who is my age, once told me that her sister, who is five-six years younger than her, is smaller because she was born in a time of intense hunger. I don’t disagree with this; hunger can certainly make you focus obsessively on food. Nevertheless, I think the Chinese’s intense love of food goes beyond lingering memories of hungry times; they have an existential relationship with their food. Whenever I see a group of Chinese about to sit down to eat, they remind me of a group of Englishmen about to enter a pub. They suddenly all brighten up, start talking and laughing loudly, and generally behave as if this was the most wonderful moment of their lives.

I was reminded of all this recently when my wife and I were nosing around a Chinese chemist (drug store to my North American friends), looking at the weird and wonderful things which the Chinese are willing to eat or drink for their supposed medicinal value.

As I poked around in the various cases, I stumbled across this.

It was marked as “chuan bei”. After some research, I discovered that these odd things were the bulbs of a species of fritillary, fritillaria cirrhosa. The Chinese take it as a cough medicine, along with “zhe bei”, the bulbs of another species of fritillary, fritillaria verticillata.

Some of you may be asking yourselves what a fritillary is. It’s a flower, a beautiful bell-shaped flower. The commonest European variety is the snake’s head, fritillaria meleagris

The common name probably derives from the flower’s somewhat snakelike appearance when it nods in the wind on its long stem.

As for the name fritillary, it derives from the Latin term for a dice-box (fritillus), probably because of the checkered pattern on the petals of many of the fritillary species.

I must confess that I’ve never seen the snake’s head in the flesh. I first came across it in a book with absolutely lovely photos; the book is now slumbering along with all of my other books in a storage depot in Vienna. There was a photo of snake’s head fritillaries in the meadow of Magdalen College, Oxford. The following picture is not as beautiful but it does give a sense of how wonderful that meadow must be when the snake’s heads are in bloom.

A visit to Magdalen meadow is one of the things on my bucket list, along with visits to other ancient hay meadows in England which have retained their annual crop of snake’s heads: Fox Fritillary Meadow:

North Meadow in Crickdale:

and no doubt others. I also have to travel to Sweden to see it there:

as well as to the high Alpine meadows to see a cousin, the meleagride alpino, or fritillaria tubiformis:

I have to hurry up. There was a time when snake’s heads were plentiful in the UK. They grow best in heavy, marshy soils, the same soils which make the best hay meadows. When we rode horses, hay was a valuable commodity and hay meadows – and the snake’s heads – were to be found everywhere. But cars came, horses disappeared, and then – the final blow – during World War II many of the meadows were ploughed under for food production. Now the flower is endangered.

So as I sit here and look at these beautiful flowers and mourn their passing glory, I see a fundamental difference between me and the Chinese. I say “how beautiful!”, they say “what’s it taste like?”

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scorpions on Wanfujing Road: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/72103761.jpg [in http://www.panoramio.com/photo/72103761%5D
Eating stinky tofu: http://aningredientaday.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/stinky.jpg
Chinese medicine: http://www.funcage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Snake-Wine.jpg [in http://www.funcage.com/blog/8-strange-foods-that-will-make-you-cringe/%5D
Chuan Bei Mu bulbs: http://www.ioffer.com/img/item/198/952/678/2lb-bulbus-fritillariae-cirrhosae-chuan-bei-mu-ceba5.jpg [in http://www.ioffer.com/i/2lb-bulbus-fritillariae-cirrhosae-chuan-bei-mu-198952678%5D
Snakes head fritillary: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Fritillaria_meleagris_MichaD.jpg/512px-Fritillaria_meleagris_MichaD.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._meleagris%5D
Fritullus: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/imgs/7944 [in https://www.uni-erfurt.de/max-weber-kolleg/personen/wolfgangspickermann/roemische-inschriften-in-germanien/kleininschriften/%5D
Magdalen meadow: http://www.gardenista.com/files/styles/733_0s/public/fields/magdalen%20meadow%20by%20Andrew%20Johnson.jpg [in http://www.gardenista.com/posts/how-to-make-a-fritillary-meadow%5D
Fox fritillary meadow: http://squeezyboy.blogs.com/photos/fox_fritillary_meadow/framsden_fritilliary_meadow_009.jpg [in http://squeezyboy.blogs.com/photos/fox_fritillary_meadow/framsden_fritilliary_meadow_009.html%5D
North Meadow Crickdale: http://www7.clikpic.com/RobertHarvey/images/UK11-176_Snakes_head_fritillaries_Fritillaria_meleagris_North_Meadow_Cricklade_Wiltshire.jpg [in http://www.robert-harvey.co.uk/articles_177296.html%5D
Kungsängslilja: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Sandemar_f%C3%A5gelseservat_2012a.jpg/600px-Sandemar_f%C3%A5gelseservat_2012a.jpg [in http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kungs%C3%A4ngslilja%5D
Fritillaries in the Alps: http://www.actaplantarum.org/floraitaliae/download/file.php?id=67858 [in http://www.actaplantarum.org/floraitaliae/viewtopic.php?t=2255%5D

CHINESE EARS

Beijing, 17 November 2013

When I was young, sticking-out ears were considered ugly and the sign of probable dumbness. This is no doubt why, for instance, Mad Magazine’s mascot, Alfred E. Neumann, has ears which stick out

and why two of the the Pieds Nickelés, the grubby lumpenproletariat heroes of a French cartoon series which was still quite popular when I was young, also had had ears which stuck out.

Add to this the general connection between boxers (“thick between the ears”) and prominent cauliflower ears, for instance this boxer from 1914

or this one from Ancient Greece some time in the first centuries BC

and the reader can appreciate that prominent ears were not associated with the finer things of life.

This bad press for protruding ears was bad news for me. As a youngster, my ears had an unfortunate tendency to jut out, which led my mother from time to time to take my chin in her hand, pass an eye over my ears, and talk meditatively about having them pinned back. As you can appreciate, this early threat of ending up under the surgical knife has made me remember these episodes quite keenly and to be generally sensitive to the positioning of people’s ears on their heads. Prominent ears were bad enough for boys. They were even more problematic for girls. There was in my youth a certain tolerance for clumsy, oafish boys – that was par for the course – but girls were meant to be dainty and refined. So sticking-out ears on a girl was a disaster. Luckily my wife’s ears were perfectly aligned to her head, but she remembers there being general talk in her youth about using plasters to “train” protruding ears back against the head (rather as one trains flowers in the garden to grow in a certain direction by tying them to sticks).

All this being said, I never actually met a girl – or boy, for that matter – who had their ears pinned back (or who admitted to it). Nevertheless, it is a fact that as I grew up (and mercifully my ears repositioned themselves correctly against my head) I remember no-one of my generation with protruding ears. Somehow, sticking-out ears disappeared, or at least diminished.

So readers will understand that it was with some astonishment that I and my wife discovered that protruding – sometimes very protruding – ears are quite common in China, especially, so it seems to me, among women. Here is a typical example of what I mean: a young woman photographed at an automobile show, where women are meant to sell cars by being pretty, with obviously protruding ears.

I cannot imagine any automobile house in Europe hiring a woman with such prominent ears to sell its cars.

And here is a picture of an air hostess, a job which in China still connotes prettiness and femininity. I surreptitiously took this photo on a recent flight while the young lady wasn’t looking.

I cannot imagine an air hostess 10-15 years ago in Europe (when good looks were still considered a must for air hostesses) ever having ears sticking out like that.

But perhaps I’m showing a cultural arrogance here, thinking it’s our way or no way. Perhaps the Chinese don’t attribute the same negative connotations to protruding ears that we do in Europe. In a completely unscientific survey, I studied photos of some of the more glamorous Chinese women – actresses, singers and suchlike – to test the following theory: if the Chinese do not think protruding ears are a big deal, then at least some of these women will have ears that stick out. I believe that the following photos prove my theory correct:

The actress Zhang Ziyi

The actress Yang Mi

The actress Lin Chiling

Their ears don’t stick out as much as some women’s ears we’ve seen here, but in my non-professional opinion they stick out more than they would on equivalent European (and American) glamorous women.

PS: After I published this post, a reader kindly sent me a series of links to videos and a photo, which show Asian girls with very prominent ears. The links are in the comment below. From these, I feel that protruding ears are an issue not just with Chinese girls but with East/South-East Asian girls in general. Is there a genetic component to all this, I wonder?

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Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neumann: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Alfred_E._Neumann.jpg/460px-Alfred_E._Neumann.jpg [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Neuman%5D
Pieds Nickelés: http://www.bdoubliees.com/trio/sfig1/pn3.jpg [in http://www.bdoubliees.com/trio/series5/piedsnickeles.htm%5D
Boxer Fred Welsh 1914: http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/17114u.preview.jpg [in http://www.shorpy.com/node/2585%5D
Ancient Greek boxer: http://cultureweekend.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/DSC_0331-540×358.jpg [in http://cultureweekend.com/ciao-bella-italy-nyc/%5D 350 BC-50 BC
Chinese ears: http://images.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/04/2012-Beijing-Auto-Show-Ears.jpg [in http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/04/girls-of-the-2012-beijing-auto-show-im-all-ears/%5D
Air hostess: my photo
Actress Zhang Ziyi: http://images6.alphacoders.com/315/315260.jpg [in http://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=315260%5D
Actress Yang Mi: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o0WNzbJ9JWA/T7W-6rzqm5I/AAAAAAAAHkE/9MmBmWdgZck/s1600/1%2BYang%2BMi%2BRust%2Band%2BBone%2BCannes%2B001.jpg [in http://hong-kong-actresses.blogspot.com/2012/05/yang-mi-and-hao-lei-cannes-red-carpet.html%5D
Actress Lin Chiling: http://chinesemov.com/images/actors2/Lin-Chi-Ling-2.jpg [in http://chinesemov.com/actors/Lin%20Chi-Ling.html%5D

LEFTIE, AND PROUD OF IT

Beijing, 15 November 2013

It often happens to me in China that when I’m writing something I feel a sudden hush around me, perhaps with a whispered comment or two. They have just noticed that I am writing with my left hand.

This habit of mine fascinates Chinese. As far as I can understand, left-handed writing is firmly and vigorously stamped out at school. The Chinese universally write with their right hand.

I guess it has to do with the fact that ink is still extensively used to write, and as all left-handers know writing with ink is a horror because of the constant risk of smudging as your hand travels across the paper.

But actually, I suspect any left-handedness is proscribed. For instance, all Chinese use their right hand to hold their chopsticks.

Well, nearly all. I once sat next to a Chinese person who was eating with his left hand; I was very excited when I saw it.

And all Chinese golfers or tennis players seem to play with their right hand.

I wonder if there is some sort of feng shui thing at work here – using your left hand brings bad luck or something. Typical anti-leftism …

As far as writing is concerned, it used to be the same in Europe. My paternal grandmother was born left-handed but was made to write with her right hand. So was my father. So was my brother, who is six years older than me. I went to the same school as him, but I suppose in the intervening six years there was a change in educational philosophies in the UK. I don’t know why, although my theory is that it was the spread of the ball-point pen that did it. This wonderful product eliminated the problem of smudging with fountain pens, so now it was possible for teachers to show more compassion for us left-handers. I take this opportunity to salute the Argentinian-Hungarian László Bíró, who invented the ballpoint in the 1930s.

I hope he was given a special place in Heaven for letting me and millions of other left-handers write with serenity – at least until word processing came along and eliminated the need for either left handers or right handers to write by hand any more.

Often, when Chinese see me writing with my left hand, they tell me that left-handers are more intelligent. They’re just flattering me, but I accept the flattery gracefully. Anyway, it’s true. We left-handers know that we are more intelligent.

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Left-hander: http://practicallycreative.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/left-handed.jpg [in http://marc3ll.squidoo.com/lefthandedperson%5D
Chinese child writing: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/child-writing-chinese-calligraphy-9088290.jpg [in http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/child-writing-chinese-calligraphy-9088290.jpg%5D
Left hand with smudged ink: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9s458Vjrl1roqiq1o1_500.png [in http://southpawscopic.tumblr.com/post/31716402201/image-persons-left-hand-smudged-all-over-with%5D
Chinese eating: http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20080225-wedding%20beifan%2016tbegin-ea222.jpg [in http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat11/sub73/item149.html%5D
Chinese golfer: http://blogs.r.ftdata.co.uk/beyond-brics/files/2013/04/mas_guan-tianlang.jpg [in http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/04/17/driving-golf-in-china-citics-sponsorship-of-guan-just-the-start/?Authorised=false%5D
Chinese tennis player: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/13/xinsrc_30208051309386711607013.jpg [in http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/13/content_9243455_1.htm%5D
László Bíró http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Ladislao_Biro_Argentina_Circa_1978.JPG [in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_B%C3%ADr%C3%B3%5D

VARY THE THEME!

Beijing, 19 October 2013

Anyone who visits China for more than a few days cannot fail to notice the many, many pairs of stone animals standing guard in front of any building which has pretensions to be something (although “something” can be no more than a second-rate noodle restaurant). Here is a typical pair of these animals, which my wife and I recently came across in front of the China National Philatelic Corporation.

The Chinese call these animals “lions”, which is really a bit of a joke. In today’s globalized world, where images of this iconic animal must surely have been beamed into every corner of every house on the planet, we all know that lions actually look like this:

One theory has it that the original model for these “lions” was the Asiatic lion, of which a few miserable specimens still linger on in the Indian state of Gujarat. According to this theory, some live samples were brought to China along the Silk Road from Central Asia or the Middle East some 2,000 years ago, as gifts, tribute or whatever. Artists copied them, and then the originals stopped coming. So the artists copied the copies, and then copied the copies of the copies, and … Anyone who has seen the film Multiplicity, where Michael Keaton makes copies of himself and then the copies make copies of themselves

knows what happens: there is a high loss of quality in the picture the further you get from the original.

A second theory is that actually the original model wasn’t a lion at all. It was a chow chow, which is a dog from this part of the world. It seems to have originated somewhere in northern China or Mongolia, or possibly in Siberia. I don’t know what readers think, but I’m not convinced that this

is the model of the above. Nor am I convinced that another ancient Chinese dog breed, the noble Pekingese (only members of the imperial family were allowed to have them), is the model

Such an irritating little dog, I’ve always felt, as it raspily yaps around your feet at some apartment door – a good, swift kick is what it deserves, but one has to be polite to the apartment owners. In any event, while it’s true that the Pekingese’s face has certain resemblances to my stone “lions” (and in fact it’s often called a lion-dog because of this resemblance), I rather think this is an example of convergent evolution: the sculptors went their way with their designs, the dog breeders with theirs, and one day someone said, “Ooh look, the Peke looks just like the stone lions!”.

A third theory, which I find quite convincing, is that actually the models for the Chinese stone “lions” are the stone lions which are often found outside Indian temples. See the following link for a further development of this theory, while here is a picture of one such Indian lion from Mahabalipuram:

It really does look quite similar, doesn’t it? I presume that proponents of this theory would argue that it is Buddhism which brought to China the idea of placing stylized “lions” at the entrances of temples and then with time they migrated to the entrances of any important building.

However the design came about, the fact is that this being China, where everything eventually became (and still becomes) formalized, codified and rigidified, these pairs of stone “lions” have been made in exactly the same way ever since the Ming dynasty. The key is that they look nearly exactly the same. Both have the same ritualized snarl on their faces. Both have the same mane of tight curls. Both have the same strong legs. Both are sitting on their haunches. There is only one important difference, fruit of a typical male chauvinism: the male is always – always – made with his paw resting on a ball (representing the male’s mastery over the world)

while the female is always – always – made with her paw resting on a cub which is playfully lying on its back (representing the female’s nurturing nature).

And sited as they are on either side of the entrance, their heads are always slightly inclined towards the enterer.

There must be literally millions of these stone “lions” scattered across the length and breadth of China, large, small, and every imaginable size in between. I swear, somewhere in China there must be a factory like this

that churns these damned things out by the thousands every day.

So tedious! So boring! Change, for God’s sake!

So you can imagine that it is with some small relief that I occasionally run across variations on this monotonous theme. Take this pair of “lions” which I recently came across in Beiing, in front of a restaurant.

How exciting! They are looking at each other and not the enterer.

Or take this “lion”, which I came across during my recent trip to Fujian.

Why, rather than glaring at you he really looks glad to see you! And he seems to be offering you the ball to play with. It could almost be a playful Pekingese (assuming those damned dogs play). What a refreshing site for sore eyes.

Or how about this pair of “lions”, which we bumped into in Hong Kong? They were outside some bank as I recall, and not even guarding an entrance. A wonderful postmodern take on the old, very tired stone lion design.

And now, I even see real lions! This picture was taken five minutes after the picture with which I started the post

It was sitting in front of a furniture shop as I recall.

So when will I see two giraffes guarding the entrance to some place?

Change, for God’s sake!

____________________________

pair of Chinese lions: my picture
Real male and female lions: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3400/3189788124_26e25201fd_o.jpg [in http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenkeener1621/3189788124/%5D
Multiplicity movie: http://www.thefancarpet.com/uploaded_assets/images/gallery/4480/Multiplicity_41523_Medium.jpg [in http://www.thefancarpet.com/ActorGalleryPicture.aspx?mga_id=46948&a_id=714%5D
Chow chow dog: http://comps.canstockphoto.com/can-stock-photo_csp7744774.jpg [in http://www.canstockphoto.com/search.php?term=chow%20dog%20sitting&type=1%5D
Pekingese dog: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images19/PekingeseSissiePrincess11YearsOld1.JPG [in http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/pekingese.htm%5D
Indian carved lion: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2036/2312684736_1f31c1a673_b.jpg [in http://bighugelabs.com/onblack.php?id=2312684736&size=large%5D
male Chinese stone lion: my picture
female Chinese stone lion: my picture
Huge industrial factory: http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/huge-industrial-factory-9265211.jpg [in http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-huge-factory-image6897978%5D
Chinese stone lions looking at each other: my picture
Chinese stone lion in Fujian: my picture
Chinese stone lions in Hong Kong: my picture
Realistic stone lion: my picture
sitting giraffes: http://media.offexploring.co.uk/photos/pamandralph/photos/070212-11-DSC_0112.JPG [in http://blogs.statravel.co.uk/pamandralph/albums/uganda/10149717%5D

SILENT AND DEADLY

Beijing, 30 August 2013

I’ve mourned in a past posting the passing of the bicycle culture which so dominated China until a few decades ago. In that same posting I wrote about a sub-family of bicycles which seems to be surviving the onslaught of the automobile. In this posting, I want to write about another sub-family of bicycles which is surviving; indeed, seems to be thriving: the electric bicycle.

When we first arrived in Beijing, my wife and I were intrigued to see these machines cruising up and down the roads in large numbers. Here are a couple of examples of what greeted us:

(this one being ridden by a lady avoiding the sun, about which I’ve also written in another posting)

I have to say, they immediately reminded me of another motorized bicycle which had played an important role in my teens: the French VéloSolex. For those of my readers who are less than 40, I probably have to quickly explain what this is. Originally (i.e., just after World War II), it was a bike (vélo in French) on whose front wheel had been placed a motor (made by the company Solex).

This motor powered a small ceramic roller which in turn turned the front wheel through simple friction. And when you wanted to use it as a bike, there was a lever which allowed you to pull the motor and roller off the front wheel. Very simple. Pretty cool. And cheap.

By the time I came along, the VéloSolex had become a bulky bicycle. Or maybe a thin motorbike.

My parents had bought two of them, for my elder brother and sister. They stayed at my grandmother’s house, ready for use during the summer holidays. As my siblings grew up and moved on, the VéloSolexes passed on to the next sibling. I reckon that by the time I inherited my VéloSolex it was third-or fourth-hand, as it were. No matter, I loved that bike. It was my set of wheels which gave me my freedom, which allowed me to escape from the house when things were really too boring, which they often were in my teenage years.

For me, the VéloSolex was France,

along with De Gaulle

the Deux Chevaux

The baguette

And Gauloises unfiltered cigarettes, which – I will confess – I smoked for a certain period of my life.

Who knows where my VéloSolex is now? In some knacker’s yard no doubt.

To come back to our electric bicycles in Beijing, they have one big difference with the VéloSolex: they are silent. Silent and deadly. One of the things which newcomers to Beijing learn quickly – or die – is to look VERY carefully, in ALL directions, when they are crossing a road, even if the little man is green. Right-turn at red lights is allowed, so cars turning right do so, regardless of whether you, the pedestrian, are crossing. Cars which have the green light and are turning left are anxious to do so before the cars coming in the other direction reach the middle of the intersection, so they whizz across it scattering to the winds any pedestrians that might be in the way. All two-wheelers, motorized or not, ignore lights and keep going, weaving around any pedestrians who may be in the way; to make their case worse, they drive on both sides of the road. In this last category of menace, electric bikes are the worst. They move fast, and they are completely silent. At night, they are even deadlier. None of their riders ever bother to put on their lights – so as not to run down the battery, no doubt – and the street lights are not particularly bright. So fast, silent, and invisible. They make me think of torpedoes.

But electric is the future! Even the VeloSolex, whose production ceased in 1988, has now been resurrected in an electric form

And product designers have got into the act, designing excessively cool electric bicycles. And once they are there, you know the product is IN!

So I guess my wife and I had better buy electric bicycles. Not only will we be riding the wave of coolness, but we’ll be running people down rather than being run down. When you can’t beat them, join them.

_________________________________________

Electric bicycle-1: http://thecityfix.com/files/2009/06/cycling.jpg
Electric bicycle-2: http://www.chinasignpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/electricbike_China-Digital-Times.jpg
VeloSolex-old: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/Spridget/solex/prototyp1.gif
VeloSolex-new: http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/8817/solex1.jpg
VeloSolex poster: http://cybermotorcycle.com/gallery/velosolex/images/Velosolex_postcard.jpg
De Gaulle: http://05.wir.skyrock.net/wir/v1/profilcrop/?c=isi&im=%2F5508%2F87355508%2Fpics%2F3147952278_1_2_Nvepv9eQ.jpg&w=758&h=1024
Deux chevaux: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Deux_chevaux_mg_1748.jpg/640px-Deux_chevaux_mg_1748.jpg
Citroen DS: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/02/citroen-ds.jpg
Baguettes: http://www.tranquilla.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/baguette-640×442.jpg
Gauloises : http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_siskXeTIdkY/S-6ACEDO1MI/AAAAAAAAADs/-Ny-fMbye2A/s1600/Gauloises+Caporal+-+ann%C3%A9es+40.jpg
Velosolex-electric: http://www.veloecologique.com/produits/128.jpg
Cool electric bicycle-1: http://evworld.com/press/smart_e-bike_profilecityscape.jpg
Cool electric bicycle-2: http://www.evrdr.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/leopard-electric-bike.jpg
Cool electric bicycle-3: http://www.designbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/vw-folding-electric-bike_xfBve_58.jpg

ROLLED-UP T-SHIRTS

Beijing, 20 August 2013

As we go around gasping for air in the currently hot and humid weather, like fish flopping around on a river bank, my wife and I cannot but notice the common Chinese fashion statement at this time of year of men (never women) rolling up their T-shirts

and – if they are wearing them – their trousers.

In the past, when I’ve seen Chinese men stroll past me so attired, I’ve always wondered if I couldn’t make a T-shirt which is specifically designed to be rolled up – in a somewhat more elegant way than the way Chinese men currently do it. Alas, some searching on the internet has shown me that a Japanese designer, Kaoru Inoue, has already come up with a Venetian blind design for a T-shirt!

Story of my life, someone always beats me to the good ideas … But I do think that I could perhaps improve on this design – a circle of some stiff material around the bottom perhaps, to ensure that the whole T-shirt gets pulled up?

But actually, rather than think about how to roll up T-shirts in a more elegant way, we should think about why we are wearing T-shirts, or shirts, or even worse shirts, ties and jackets, in this kind of weather in the first damned place. The modern way of dealing with hot weather is to turn every building into a refrigerator – already standard fare in North America for at least 50 years (one of my enduring memories of my first visit to Canada, 40+ years ago, was my going into a supermarket on my second day there and being astonished at the frigid temperature); and fast becoming standard fare in China.

So we scurry from refrigerated building to refrigerated building, and then we sit in our offices and freeze

while outside the world is turning to toast.

What stupidity. What folly.

Why don’t we do it the way of the few remaining Amazonian Indians do, just wear few clothes?

although I think we could avoid the rather small loin cloths these gentlemen are sporting …

A great advantage of this approach is that it would allow those of us who like painting (not tattooing) the skin to do so, with the certainty that our neighbours would see our designs and admire them.

______________________________________

Rolled-up T-shirt-1: http://www.royalmood.com/img/funny/bell/bell01.jpg
Rolled-up T-shirt-2: http://liuzhou.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/P1050163.jpg
venetian-blind T-shirt: http://tab-files.s3.amazonaws.com/images/crop_LL/f6877b6b752d79d4bbdb3e56533f95e433343c73.jpg?1339079993
Air conditioning: http://media.nowpublic.net/images//d6/5/d659eca89a214dd28daac0bc0ca6d4ba.jpg
Burning world: http://ninja.typepad.com/.a/6a00e554fa70848834014e5fbb3ea4970c-800wi
Amazonian Indians-1: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=65733&stc=1
Amazonian Indians-2: http://www.wehaitians.com/amazon_2_b.jpg
Amazonian Indians-3: http://madamepickwickartblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/amazon34.jpg
Amazonian Indians-4: http://birdonthemoon.com/Indian_game1104-thumb.jpg

KARAOKE ON THE GRASSLANDS

Beijing, 31 July 2013

Well not really the grasslands. We were more where the grasslands of Inner Mongolia meet one of the province’s deserts, whose dunes are gradually invading the grasslands.

The government has been struggling for decades to stop the dunes in their tracks. It has had some success, but only some. We were visiting a man who was trying something new. He wanted to make a sustainable business of desert-control (something which the government is incapable of). He was contracting local farmers to plant sand willow bushes on the dunes, paying them to coppice the willows every three-four years, burning the resulting biomass in a small power plant, and selling the electricity to the local grid. Finally, with a small portion of the carbon dioxide emissions he was growing Spirulina in ponds around the power plant to sell as a food supplement.

Very impressive. But actually what I want to write about today is the cultural highlight of the trip, the evening’s karaoke session. After the usual banquet, with its toasts and pledges of eternal friendship, we were all ushered downstairs into the hotel’s rec room. It actually wasn’t clear to either me or my colleague what was going on until an English-speaking member of the company staff brightly informed us that we were going to have a karaoke session. My colleague looked at me. This is not what we had signed on for. But what to do, you have to follow local practice. So putting a brave face on it, we followed everyone into the room and took our seats facing the screen. What would we be invited to sing, we timidly asked? “Edelweiss”, we were informed. Well at least I roughly knew that song. The first couple of songs were Chinese – popular ones, by the smiles and nods around the room – and were belted out, first by the General Manager and then by the Deputy General Manager (I felt that the GM looked somewhat peeved with the DGM’s performance; was it somewhat better than his?). Then came our turn. My hands gripping the mike were slightly sweaty. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, dressed to the nines in their Austrian costumes from “The Sound of Music”, danced onto the screen, the music swelled, the words appeared helpfully on the screen, and it was all systems go.

In all modesty, I think our performance was quite creditable. My colleague and I managed to follow the verses more or less in tune and in time, and I was able to give a satisfying Frank Sinatra-like croon to the chorus. We certainly got enthusiastic applause at the end – perhaps in the manner that parents energetically clap at performances in kindergartens, to encourage the little ones. This gave us the courage to accept to do another song later in the evening. Here, my colleague took the lead. He knew the song, while I had no idea of either tune or words and just hummed along helpfully. Shortly afterwards, the session wound down and we all stumbled off to our rooms.

It’s a rum thing, this karaoke. I remember back in the 70s when it first appeared on our radar screens in the West as another Japanese export, along with Sony walkmans. I remember how we tittered at these pictures of staid, middle-aged Japanese businessmen singing what we were told were pop love songs, somewhat out of tune. I mean really, did these people feel no embarrassment?

We might have tittered, but karaoke swept through the rest of Asia, becoming all the rage. My first (and until Inner Mongolia, my only) encounter with karaoke had been in the 90s, in Malaysia. There too our hosts had declared what fun it would be to spend an evening karaoking and dragged me and two very reluctant English colleagues off to a karaoke bar. We got away with singing Beatles songs – “Michelle, Ma Belle” went down particularly well with our hosts, as I recall. And as far as I can make out, karaoke is now making serious inroads everywhere else in the world. The film “Duets”, with that wonderful, wonderful actor Paul Giamatti who plays a stressed-out businessman going AWOL from job and family and becoming a karaoke devotee, is surely showing us that the desire for singing our hearts out in front of others is spreading.

What is it that makes people willing to bare their souls through singing? Well, music – like sex, delicious food and (alas!) certain drugs – increases the levels of dopamine in our brains, which we feel as pleasure. So when we sing we increase our pleasure levels, and hopefully those of others around us (if we don’t sing too awfully …). And why would music have this effect? Because probably it thereby helped our ancestors to share emotions, to work together, in a word to bond. And that helped us to survive. Those readers who are interested in all this should read “The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body” by Steven Mithen. Great book.

So I suppose this explains why I liked singing around the campfire in the Scouts, the closest I have ever got to living like a Cro-Magnon man …

.. why the massed choir which I heard singing Carmina Burana decades ago at York University brought out goosebumps all over my body …

… and why my heart is torn from its place every time Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” sings to the loss of her love, whom she is giving back to his father and to bourgeois respectability.

__________________________

Sand dunes of Inner Mongolia: my picture
Sound of music: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdtx7kdI111qc1i8lo1_500.gif
Japanese businessmen karaoking: http://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-42-15959733.jpg?size=67&uid=b4af3e21-08c3-4b08-be43-4e83d45b134a
Paul Giamatti-1: http://images.dailyfill.com/7f3ed4d25d034a68_9ea55287e2c98de4_o.jpg
Singing Neanderthals: http://www.hachette.com.au/cover/large/9780753820513.jpg
Boy scouts campfire: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aMXEdTSATSU/UAbGYL5LNgI/AAAAAAAAFAE/7TPQ72FLd5k/s400/campfire.jpg
Carmina burana choir: http://sz-n.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/0192-e1370696994658.jpg
La Traviata: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/La_Traviata_-_Giorgio_Germont,_Violetta_Valerie_und_Annina.jpg

DOG DAYS IN BEIJING

Beijing, 27 July 2013

It’s already dog days in Beijing, with the mercury climbing into the high 30s Centigrade. This weather brings out these strange extraterrestrial beings onto the roads

which on closer inspection turn out to be women riding cycles while wearing special UV-protective sun visors and covering every bit of exposed skin.

As for the pavements, they host the somewhat odd spectacle of women sheltering below umbrellas under cloudless skies.

The reason is the same in all cases: the desire to protect delicately pale skins from suntan. Chinese women have a fetish for pale skins, not only shunning the sun but also spending large sums on products which claim to whiten their complexion.

The purpose, of course, even if these women don’t realize it, is to distinguish themselves from their sisters toiling in the fields under the broiling sun and getting a tough, leathery skin for their pains – the peasants, in a word. Despite communist-era claims to the contrary

every Chinese knows that life as a peasant is not particularly pleasant

which is why China’s rural people escape to the cities the moment they have half a chance, and why city folk look down on their rural cousins.

We who come from cultures which have been worshipping the sun for at least sixty years and have proclaimed far and wide the beauty of a tanned skin

can titter at this Chinese phobia of a darkened skin, which sometimes really goes to extraordinary lengths

But we should remember that before this sun-loving period of ours our genteel women also avoided the sun, for much the same reason. I am indebted to the blog “It’s About Time”, in a section devoted to parasols in Western art (from which I also got some of the photos below), for the following quote from Randle Cotgrave’s 1614 Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, where the French word ombrelle is translated “An umbrello; a (fashion of) round and broad fanne, wherewith the Indians (and from them our great ones) preserve themselves from the heat of a scorching sunne; and hence any little shadow, fanne, or thing, wherewith women hide their faces from the sunne.” Like the Chinese women I see on the Beijing streets today, for centuries our great ladies liked to walk outside screened from the sun, as these paintings from different periods attest:

Fragonard:

Copley:

Goya:

Manet:

Monet:

Renoir (I had the luck to see this particular painting at the Met in New York a few months ago):

Seurat:

Valloton:

the American painter Mars:

Are we so right to love a tan? Of course, the snobbish element of having a pale complexion is to be abhorred, but I’m not sure tanning is such a wonderful idea either. I must admit to being biased on this topic; I have a fair skin which burns rather than tans and I’ve always disliked being in the sun. But the rise in skin cancer incidences and deaths is vertiginous in many of those countries where people routinely cook themselves on a beach all summer. It is made that much worse by the thinning of the ozone layer, which is allowing in far more harmful UV than used to be the case. Which explains this public health ad from Australia, one of the hardest-hit countries: many people with fair skin, a strong outdoors culture, and located far south where the ozone layer is thinnest.

The Slip Slop Slap campaign is another attempt by the Australian government to combat skin cancer:

Looking at that, it seems to me that maybe our Chinese sisters aren’t so wrong in their sun shunning antics after all.

_____________________

woman with sun visor-1: http://s1.djyimg.com/i6/5100409191528.jpg
woman with sun visor-2: http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/123/cache/fashion-shanghai-motorcycle_12361_600x450.jpg
Chinese women under umbrellas: http://blog.chinatraveldepot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/103-1024×768.jpg
Skin whitener ad: http://gaia.adage.com/images/bin/image/large/Nivea91008b.jpg?1221045176
Propaganda poster: http://chineseposters.net/images/e11-992.jpg
Rural woman: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/13china01-6501.jpg
Sun tan lotion ad: http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/l-2sxa9y5hxoogx7.jpg
Facekini: http://www.ecouterre.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/qingdao-china-sun-protection-mask-facekini-2-537×402.jpg
Fragonard: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2475/4438032996_d685b495fb.jpg
Copley: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7FFaKUq3lgs/Th6koRKMutI/AAAAAAAArNs/2WRM4y4ZwUs/s640/p%2B1763%2Bc%2BJohn%2BSingleton%2BCopley%2B1738-1815%2BMary%2BTappan%2BMrs%2BBenjamin%2BPickman%2BYale%2B%25282%2529.jpg
Goya: http://www.aparences.net/wp-content/uploads/goya-parasol-vert.jpg
Manet: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CvDCiEFbNy8/TGlqCaT0tMI/AAAAAAAAWls/cEdFU0kuto4/s1600/p+%C3%89douard+Manet+%281832-1883%29+Woman+with+a+Parasol+1881..jpg
Monet: http://www.chinaoilpaintinggallery.com/oilpainting/Claude-Monet/The-Walk-Woman-with-a-Parasol.jpg
Renoir: http://www.renoirgallery.com/paintings/large/renoir-lise-with-parasol.jpg
Seurat: http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4037/4367819565_d255f31c2d_z.jpg?zz=1
Vallotton: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_CvDCiEFbNy8/TH8YPdMzVyI/AAAAAAAAXno/iOmadhyVbOI/s1600/F%C3%A9lix+Vallotton.+%281865+-+1925%29.+On+the+Beach+Sur+la+plage.+1899..jpg
Mars: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CvDCiEFbNy8/TJezx5Y-UgI/AAAAAAAAY1g/HY7j9dPmqIg/s1600/Ethel+Mars+%281876+%E2%80%93+1956%29+Nice.jpg
Australian ad-1: http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200812/r320709_1428893.jpg
Australian ad-2: http://lavaleandherworld.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/slip-slop-slap-legenda.jpg?w=600

GONE FISHING

Beijing, 8 June 2013

Readers of my posts will no doubt have noticed that I often refer to a piece of canal which runs close by our apartment and along which I walk every day as I go to and from the office. I like my piece of canal, especially during the summer when along the banks the weeping willows have leaved and the water irises stand tall, while the lotuses on the artificial island in the middle of the stream are unfurling.

Closing my eyes a little and squinting a bit, I could almost imagine that I am on a placid river running through a quiet wooded landscape rather than in the middle of a highly urbanized setting. This view of the canal today, where to a great degree the fog blots out the buildings, gives an idea of what I mean.

Fishermen also like it. The moment the ice melts and the trees start flowering, they filter out of the surrounding urban jungle and start settling down along the banks.

They sport what look to my eyes like state-of-the-art fishing rods (no stick, string, and safety pin for them), nets to hold their haul, and various pieces of fishing tackle.

And there they sit all summer and well into the autumn, staring out into the middle distance, waiting for a nibble on the end of their lines.

What are they thinking about, I always wonder, as I walk briskly by aiming to arrive in the office on time. Really, what do fishermen think about all day? This has always been a mystery to me. And what are these particular fishermen catching, for Lord’s sake? The few times I’ve seen a fish on the end of their lines, they were small and malingering. I fervently hope they don’t take them home to the wife to cook. I should clarify that as my pictures show the overwhelming majority of my fisherpersons are men. I got quite excited one morning when I spotted a woman, and I guess this other woman I saw a week or so ago thought it was better to be with her man than alone at home.

I am no fisherman; I suppose that much is clear. In fact, I have only ever fished once in my life. I was 14 going 15, and I was on a canoe trip on Lake of the Woods in Canada.

I remember the date very well; it was when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Me and my travel companion, Steve, must have been the only people in the whole of North America not sitting in front of a TV that day. After a hard morning’s paddling and looking over some Native American rock paintings,

Steve decided to give me a taste of the sport. He hauled out his fishing rod, set me up, and gave me a short lesson in its use. We then sat there for a while – not long, thank goodness – until I got a bite. My fish fought a bit, but after a while I hauled it in. It was a large pike, or so I have thought all these years. It certainly looked like one. But my internet surfing for this posting has convinced me that I caught a muskellunge (or muskie to the experienced fisherman – you see how quickly I catch on to the jargon …), which actually does belong to the pike family. I suppose my catch was no more than a metre long but in my mind’s eye it has grown over the years to an enormous length. Steve took a photo, with me holding the muskie a trifle nervously but still sporting a smug smile on my face. Where is that photo? Sitting in a shoe box under a bed somewhere, perhaps, or now that both my parents are dead it is probably buried in a landfill in some foreign land. For all intents and purposes, gone. But here is a photo, which seems very similar to mine in my mind’s eye, except that we were sitting in a canoe while this gentleman is standing in a rather swank boat

Well, I suppose that will be the only time I ever sit behind a rod staring into the middle distance thinking about … what?

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Lake of the woods: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5tjkqKB7h1r1ghhbo1_1280.jpg
rock painting: http://www.canoenorthwestontario.ca/sscimages/history/IMG_4260_1.jpg
Muskie: http://harrishillresort.com/files/images/49%20inch%20Muskie%20on%20Lake%20of%20the%20Woods.JPG
the rest: mine