It is said that China is not a country where one arrives. To be there at all is sufficient, for once you are there, the rest of the world does not exist. So, it is deduced that China is a pattern; and there the pattern belongs to its country more intimately than most other lands. The manifest impressions forming the word “China.” So, what could it be then, this ingrained Chinese-ness at its core?
—Yan Hui (Chin.) “Jittoku and Kanzan” (~1300′s)
Images of these two are very common in both China and Japan (the above scrolls are Chinese, but in the National Museum in Tokyo). Famous Seattle-based Japanese ceramic artist Akio Takamori made a pair of them in ceramic.—http://www.josianekeller.com/category/blog/
Perhaps it is the way that the long civilization and the astronomical millions of people have profoundly modified their country. Three or four thousand years of intense detailed gardening is what they have done throughout China. Slowly, and inexorably, they have made the land their own and now it is special to them, like their faces, their language, their painting, and even their hobbies and toys.
Read More: Beijing Opera: Monkey King, by Xinlai Zhou
http://www.billtsaiphoto.com/CACC/DCAA-Chinese-New-Year-2010/11367910_QqT5Jd/798527863_F5CJx#!i=798527863&k=F5CJx
It is a China of the Chinese. This quality seems to have passed down through Chinese time without radical alteration, absorbing and redefining everything that comes from without. Even though their system might seem alien to us, it is the undivided Chinese-ness of the manner of thought that appears most striking. There is a beauty of China that is, and always will remain, uniquely its own, a force of the past where stylization of technique can be completely emancipated, even revolutionary in ways outside the ken of Western imagination.
—”It struck me that I had never seen such a great performance in any other culture or country — the performance was as good as god,” Pourazar said during the 6th Peking Opera Festival, which was held through November 2 to 18 in Wuhan, Hubei Province.
For Pourazar, the 200-year-old Chinese traditional art form that blends dancing, singing and martial arts is a time capsule of Chinese culture, history, mythology, poetry and fine arts.
After four years of rigorous training at a Beijing opera school with other students — some decades younger than him — Pourazar became the first Westerner to complete the program.
Starting with painful contortions of his legs and waist at dawn, Pourazar tested the limits of his body on a daily basis.
“It was difficult at first, both the singing and dancing, but I found an endless charm that had yet to be explored,” he said.—Read More:http://www.china.org.cn/learning_chinese/news/2011-11/08/content_23855949.htm
Below: Brian Brake photograph. He was accorded, surprisingly, a very deep access into Chinese society in the late 1950′s. Here is Burke’s take on literacy which is still pertinent. A man reading a notice posted of a visit from a basketball team affiliated with the National Locomotive Workers. In many respects, it appears the “new” China defers to the old, and appearances aside, is a reinvigorated, and better better packaged version of a long continuum of ancient tradition, that in sum is a wealth of culture more profound than America, as if ancient Egypt had not been disrupted and its leadership dispersed by Moses and the Exodus.
—Brian Brake (1927–1988) was one of New Zealand’s most internationally successful photographers.
Brian trained as a portrait photographer in 1945. Three years later he joined the Government filmmaking body the National Film Unit as an assistant cameraman. Brake worked on 17 films at the Unit, mostly as a cameraman, occasionally as a director.
He left New Zealand for London in 1954. In 1955 he met Ernst Haas and Henri Cartier-Bresson, members of the photo agency Magnum Photos. This led to his acceptance as a nominee member in the same year, and full membership in 1957. He remained a Magnum photographer until 1967. He worked as freelance photographer in Europe, Africa and Asia until the mid-1960s, when he began working more exclusively for Life magazine.
He is best known for his 1957 and 1959 coverage of China (where he was allowed an unusual level of access), his 1955 photographs of Pablo Picasso at a bullfight, and his series “Monsoon” of photographs taken in India during 1960.—Read More:http://dougnz.deviantart.com/journal/Brian-Brake-277933069
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—Dragon entwined columns supportin
modern copy of an armillary sphere, of which the original dates from the Sung Dynasty. It is known as an “all about the heavens instrument” and is used to calculate the Chinese calendar. Image:http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/imagepopup.aspx?width=640&height=640&irn=210791&mode=zoom&title=China+Series%3A+Copy-Sung+Armillary+Sphere%2C+Peking+Museum&ack=
ADDENDUM:
( see link at end) … I thought I’d take a look at the science and art behind Chinese astronomy. Calendars in China have always been of the utmost political, as well as practical, importance. As the Son of Heaven blessed with the Mandate of Heaven, the Emperor needed to be the first and last word on the heavens themselves. When the moon would be full, when an eclipse would occur, these were quite literally matters of life and death. Since China had a lunar calendar, errors were more common than on a solar calendar, and an error could lead to revolution. As Helmer Aslaksen puts it in his paper The Mathematics of the Chinese Calendar, “Every peasant would then on the first day of the month see either a waxing crescent or a waning crescent [instead of a new moon]. Why should they pay taxes and serve in the army if the emperor did not know the secrets of the heavens?” Even worse was if you were a scientist working for the Emperor, as Jesuit missionaries Adam Schall, Ferdinand Verbiest and their Chinese colleagues found out in the “Calendar Case” in the early Qing. Accused of screwing up their calculations (as well as casting a spell on the Emperors parents), they were thrown in jail. To try and defend themselves, they predicted an upcoming eclipse more accurately than the Chinese officials plotting to get them executed. But it wasn’t until an earthquake caused a fire in the Imperial Palace and a comet appeared that the Emperor thought maybe Heaven didn’t want them to die. Even then, the Jesuits Chinese colleagues were still put to death. Ed. – the laowai always get off easy, don’t they? Read More:http://www.mutantpalm.org/2007/02/27/art-of-chinese-astronomical-technology.html
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