Another Modelling Gig

Last week I wrote about how I had once served as a model for an art class. I had another modelling experience when Dave and I took a cruise down the Yangtze River on the ship The Eastern King. There were about two hundred people on board. There were ten American and Canadian school teachers in our group but the other travellers were all Asian. Our party was in great demand as photography models.

With a woman who asked me to pose with her on our boat on the Yangtze River

Our cruise mates all seemed anxious to return home with a picture of themselves in the company of one of us North Americans. Except for our party none of the passengers on board spoke English and so when our tour group arrived at a scenic site we were repeatedly asked via lots of gestures to pose with our fellow travellers. It seemed the ‘thing to do’ was to be photographed with your arm around a North American against the backdrop of China’s stunningly beautiful river gorges.

This woman found it very amusing when I asked her to pose with me

Once with the help of an English speaking member of the crew I asked a woman to stand beside me while my husband Dave took our photo. She laughed for a long time but finally obliged. It was interesting how it seemed perfectly natural for our cruise companions to ask me to pose, so their husbands or friends could snap our picture but when I requested the same thing they were surprised.

Other posts………

Wrestling Farmers

How Do You Like Living in Japan?

Bamboo Boat Trackers

Wrestling Farmers

At the Three Gorges Dam. I am furthest to the left.

When I visited the Three Gorges Dam site in China I discovered this sculpture showing farmers wrestling. It was meant to depict how for thousands of years farmers have had to fight the flooding waters of the Yangtze. I immediately thought of that art piece in China when I saw….. this artwork at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It is called Farmer is A Wrestler. It was created by Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra. It is part of the current Vision Exchange exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The artists wanted to show the struggle it is to farm in India today. In an interview, they talk about the crippling debt of many farmers in the Punjab region in northern India and how their financial crisis has sometimes led to the farmers’ committing suicide. 

The sculpture I saw in China was related to the Yangtze River.  In their installation, Thukral and Tagra have included light fixtures that echo the shape of the River Beas which flows through the state of Punjab. 

I’ve written before about how new texts become meaningful when we can connect them to previous texts we have experienced. The installation Farmer is a Wrestler took on new meaning for me when I thought about the similar artwork I had seen in another Asian country. 

Other posts……..

Now We’ve Been to Sister Cities

Three Gorges Yangtze River Project

Hyphenated Lives

She Started To Cry

Hustle & Bustle /Downriver House by Bruno Canadien is one of the pieces currently on display in the Insurgence Resurgence exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.  Bruno Canadien lives in Alberta and is a member of a northern Dene First Nation in the Deh Gah Got’ı́é Kǫ́ę́, Deh Cho Region. His artwork contains images of his northern home.  There are flowers, forests, caribou, fishermen, oil wells and smoke stacks. 

One of the activities we do with gallery visitors after we look at Bruno’s artwork is have them make a similar collage about their home.  They choose objects from trays we provide and place them on a colored paper in ways that represent home to them. 

Last week I did the activity with group of international students that included a young woman from China. One item she chose for her collage was a picture of a phone.  She told us in China she had wanted to be independent from her parents and resented having to still live in the same house with them.  But now that she is far away in Canada she starts to cry whenever she talks to her parents on the phone because she misses them so much. As she told us this she started to cry and I had to reach out and give her a comforting hug. 

I loved the way a young woman from Beijing was inspired to share her personal feelings, thanks to a painting by a Canadian indigenous artist. Art is truly a universal language.

Other posts……….. 

Mennonite Floor Art

A Very Personal Story

Are You Confused Yet?

Nostalgic Tour

They were from Shanghai and Beijing and Shenzhen and Kunming and many other places I have visited.  I had the pleasure of taking a Chinese community group of Winnipeg residents on a tour of the Picasso exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery last week.  I lived in Hong Kong for six years and so it was interesting to find out where people in the group came from and to compare notes about their home cities.  I had visited most of them. 

It was my first tour with a translator and so I had to give information in small bits and then wait while it was translated into Mandarin. Hearing Mandarin spoken again, and talking with the tour participants about places that I had come to know, made me nostalgic.  It was a nice feeling though. I’m not sorry I live in Canada now but chatting with my tour participants from China brought back fond memories of the time I spent in Asia. 

Other posts………

Dancing in Shangri-La

Ai Wei Wei

Stick Stick Men

Snake Wine Travel Memory

We are drinking wine infused with snake.  In 2005 we made a boat trip down the Li River in China’s Guangxi Province with my sister-in-law Shirley and brother-in-law Paul.  One of the perks offered on the trip was a glass of snake wine. 

In this photo you can see the snake in the wine bottle. The Chinese have been drinking snake wine since around 1000 BC.  The snake which is thrown live into the wine bottle dies from the alcohol in the wine. The snake may  steep in the bottle for years.  Snake wine is said to keep you vital and healthy. So far in both my case and Shirley’s this is proving to be true.  So glad we tried that snake wine!

Other posts……….

Family Fun

Now We Have Been in Sister Cities

Don’t Be A Wine Snob

 

Disappointed

I was looking forward to reading Barbarian Lost: Travels in New China by Alexandre Trudeau but now that I’ve finished it I have to admit it was disappointing.

Disappointment #1

 I lived in Hong Kong for six years and visited many different places in mainland China. I was sure however someone writing a book about China would have traveled much more extensively in the country than I had.  Not so.  Trudeau visited well-known cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing and Chongqing but really saw just a small part of China. He didn’t  even go to places like Xian or Kunming or Zhongdian or Yangshuo. If you are going to write a meaningful book about modern China you  need to see more of the nation than Alexandre Trudeau did. 

Dancing with Naxi women in Zhongidan

Disappointment #2

I lived in China till 2011. Since the book had the word “new” in the title I was expecting to be enlightened about the changes in the country since I left but Alexandre is basically writing about a trip he took there in 2006 almost a decade ago.  My friends who still live in China say it is changing at lightening speed but you won’t find out about those recent changes from reading Barbarian Lost. 

Disappointment #3

Alexandre struck me as a bit moody.  He changed the carefully arranged plans of his hired guide if he didn’t feel like doing something.   I couldn’t believe it when he declined to take a boat trip through the Bamboo Gorges because he was feeling blue.  I’ve done that trip! What an experience it was!  

I interviewed one of our Bamboo Gorge trackers and learned so much from him about life in China.

Disappointment #4

The historical synopsis of things like the dynasties and the Cultural Revolution were pretty pedestrian and didn’t offer much I didn’t teach in my middle school Chinese history classes and I have to say my lessons were a little livelier. 

My students heading down into a war cemetery in Hong Kong to do history research

Disappointment #5

The experiences Trudeau describes- eating snake, spending time in a rural Chinese home, cruising the Yangtze with a Chinese crowd, watching mahjong games, eating restaurant meals with locals, picking your food live before you eat it…. are all things many people who have been to China have experienced.  They aren’t really all that unique.  

Cruising the Yangtze. We were the only Caucasian passengers.

After reading books like  Peter Hessler’s River Town or Rob Gifford’s China Road or Jan Wong’s Red China Blues by authors who spent an extended time in China and really make China come alive in their writing, I am afraid Barbarian Lost just didn’t measure up.  Kind of makes me wonder if it would have been published if the author wasn’t the brother of one prime minister and the son of another. 

Other posts…….

Just Like Justin- Seeing The Great Wall With My Family

Tetraphobia

Bamboo Gorge Boat Tracker

Your Own Critic

I’m in the midst of reading Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.  Sections of the book take place during the Cultural Revolution in China when citizens were forced to participate in self-criticism sessions.  During these session they publicly declared all the things that were wrong with them and all the things they had done wrong or had neglected to do.  In the section of the book I’m reading now a fifteen year old girl has just participated in such a session at her school. I found those pages very difficult to read.  I kept thinking about what kind of effect such repeated and harsh self-criticism could have on a young person. If you repeatedly denigrate yourself it must lead to depression and self-loathing and a feeling of hopelessness about your ability to change yourself or improve your life. 

We aren’t forced by the powers that be to criticize ourselves but so many of us do it anyway. We focus on the way our appearance doesn’t measure up to society standards, instead of appreciating our own individual marks of beauty. We think our talents and skills aren’t nearly as developed as another person’s instead of recognizing the areas where we are uniquely gifted. We compare our life choices to what we wished we’d chosen and feel dissatisfied with ourselves. This kind of self-criticism although voluntary can be almost as damaging as the imposed self-criticism that happened during the Cultural Revolution. 

During the Cultural Revolution self-criticism was meant to improve the quality of life for the collective.  I know sometimes it is good for me to think critically about myself.  How are my decisions negatively impacting my relationships with others?  How do my ways of thinking hurt society?  How are my life style choices creating hardships for others now and in the future? Some self-criticism can be helpful. 

I’m glad I live in a time and place where I get to decide whether self-criticism is good or bad thing and where I have the freedom to try to exercise self-criticism as wisely as possible. 

Other posts……..

Learning About the Chinese Cultural Revolution from Fifth Graders

A Strange Family Photo

Visiting Tiananmen Square

Just Like Justin- Seeing The Great Wall With My Family

Seeing Justin Trudeau on the Great Wall of China with his family this week reminded me of my own visit to the Great Wall with my family.  I was privileged to share the experience with my husband and my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew.  My visit was a long time ago. My niece is now an elementary school teacher and my nephew just finishing a university degree, but they weren’t much older than Justin and Sophie’s daughter Ella Grace when we visited the wall. 

Maybe someday I’ll get to visit the Great Wall with my grandchildren and show them  other important sites in the country that was our home for six years. Wouldn’t that be something!

Other posts……

Tiannamen Square

Now We’ve Been To Sister Cities

Making Chinese Dumplings

 

 

 

Donald Trump on Tiananmen Square

Yesterday I did a blog post about Tiananmen Square and this morning I read that in last night’s Republican presidential debate Donald Trump was asked about comments he once made regarding the 1989 event.  Trump called the massacre at the square a ‘riot’ and said it had been stopped by ‘a strong and powerful government.’  

This morning friends from Hong Kong were posting links to an article in the Hong Kong Free Press describing the exchange of words about Tiananmen Square between candidate John Kasich and Trump during the debate. 

On Wednesday I saw the play Chimerica at the Manitoba Theater Center. It explores the complex and troubling relationship between China and the United States.  It’s a relationship that may become even more complex and troubling should Donald Trump be elected the next American president.

Other posts……..

A Strange Family Photo- The Chinese Revolution and One Child Policy

Skin Color

Three Gorges Project

 

Chimerica- Personal Memories and Connections With Tiananmen Square

I was reminded of my visit to Tiananmen Square in Beijing as I watched the play Chimerica at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.  The story revolves around an American news photographer in 2012 who believes the defiant young man who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square during the student uprisings of 1989 is still alive and living in New York.  The photographer is determined to find him.  

As the play transported us back to China and Tiananmen Square in 1989 I thought of Canadian journalist Jan Wong.  She was in a hotel looking out over the square as the students were massacred and she gives a vivid and disturbing account of it in her book Red China Blues. The production of Chimerica at MTC uses video, a clever stage set, sound effects and lighting to also give us an inside look at what might have happened in Tiananmen Square. The Chimerica program provides a historical timeline for the 1989 student demonstrations for democracy but it personalizes the events by telling us the story of a young couple who were in the square the day of the massacre. 

 I once listened to a university professor who was in Beijing during the student protests give a first hand account of her experience in Tiananmen Square. I’ve blogged about it .  I wondered where playwright Lucy Kirkwood had found the information she used to recreate the Tiananmen Square events for her play Chimerica. Did she travel to China? Conduct interviews?  During our visit to Tiananmen Square our guide was very reluctant to discuss the events that happened there in 1989. Apparently the iconic photo of the young man standing in front of the tanks still can not be accessed online in China.

In 2004 I attended a huge exhibit in Hong Kong honoring the life of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. People were happily posing with likenesses of him and having their children do so too.  Absolutely no mention was made in the entire exhibit that Xiaoping was the leader who had ordered the massacre of the students in Tiananmen Square. He was being remembered only as a great leader who had modernized China. 

According to the play Chimerica which is set in 2012 it is still dangerous to talk about Tiananmen Square in a public way in China or in fact to express negative opinions about any government policy.  

Posing with a statue of dissident artist Ai Wei Wei at the Art Gallery of Ontario

As I was watching Chimerica I thought of dissident Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei who has  paid the price for his criticism of the Chinese government.  The play Chimerica does a good job of reminding us that while China has certainly changed in many ways some things, like the government’s attitude towards freedom of expression still seem to be firmly rooted in an oppressive past. 

Other posts…….

Ai Wei Wei- Giving The Finger to his Home and Native Land Through His Art

Remembering the Children of Sichuan

Visiting The Great Wall