Monday, October 31, 2005

taiwan history 101

Yesterday, J and I walked in the drizzle to pay a visit to Dr Sun at his memorial hall. Well, Dr Sun is my hero. Ok, there's the bit about him having 2 wives which I don't quite agree with. He married Soong Ching Ling, while still married to Lu Muzhen - his wife from an arranged marriage. Plus all his rumoured lovers all over Asia. Sigh. That aside, he led the democratic movement in China, coordinating the resources of Chinese from all over Asia and even America. In Singapore, he supposedly stayed at a villa in the Bendemeer area called Wan Qing Yuan during his 8 visits to Singapore.

UncleSunNme KICX1073
Click for larger view of these Expressions of lurve!

Today 31st Oct is the birthday of the other key figure in Taiwan history - Chiang Kai Shek. He holds the other memorial hall in Taiwan, and I think it's actually the grander looking one. As for Sun Yet-sen, I am *proud* to say that we share the same birthday (different year of course)!

To celebrate General Chiang's birthday, J and I took the subway to 淡水 (Dan Shui, literally "fresh water"), a coastal town that used to be Taipei's largest fishing port. It was a 30min ride, so in my boredom I subjected J to this little quiz on Taiwanese history. Hehe, so how well do you know Taiwan's history? Try this little quiz :)

1. When did large groups of Chinese from Fujian Province start to settle in Taiwan?
(a) 1400s
(b) 1600s
(c) 1800s

2. Other than the Fujian immigrants, which is the next largest ethnic group from China to settle in Taiwan?
(a) Shanghainese
(b) Hakka
(c) Teochew

3. Which of the 3 is not an aborginal tribe, considered the "true" indigenous people og Taiwan?
(a) Ami
(b) Alishan
(c) Ashin

4. Which European colonial power was the first to "discover" Taiwan?
(a) Dutch
(b) Portuguese
(c) Spanish

5. During which dynasty did the Chinese officially place Taiwan under its jurisdiction?
(a) Qing
(b) Ming
(c) Tang

6. The Chinese ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Taiwanese intellectuals were against the Treaty and declared Taiwan a sovereign nation, calling it the...
(a) People's Republic of Taiwan
(b) Independent Republic of Taiwan
(c) Taiwan Democratic Republic

7. The Japanese successfully subdued Taiwan with its modern weaponry, leaving some 10,000 Taiwanese soldiers and civilians dead. For how long did Japan occupy Taiwan?
(a) 20 years
(b) 35 years
(c) 50 years

8. The Taiwanese recognise which of these men as their 国父 (Founding father)?
(a) Sun Yet Sen
(b) Chiang Kai Shek
(c) Lee Teng Hui

9. The Taiwanese still recognise the calendar marked to the day the Republic of China was established, with Sun Yet Sen as the first President. They refer to it as MinGuo YearXXX. When did this calendar start?
(a) Jan 1, 1911
(b) Jan 1, 1921
(c) Jan 1, 1931

10. In what year did Chiang Kai Shek flee to Taiwan, resulting in a mass exodus of Nationalist soldiers, Kuomingtang supporters, artists, intellectuals etc?
(a) 1950
(b) 1949
(c) 1948

11. Chiang Kai Shek had thought he could rebuild his army in Taiwan and return to China. But we all know that didn't happen. He instituted quite a lot of reforms, but still, his rule was known to be harsh towards dissenters. In the 50s especially, folks who spoke against the Government were treated severely. That period is commonly known as...
(a) The Red Terror
(b) The Green Terror
(c) The White Terror
I don't actually know WHY or how this name came about. Anyone?

12. Who is the first Taiwan born President of Taiwan?
(a) Chiang Kai Shek
(b) Lee Teng Hui
(c) Chen Shui Bian

13. Until 1971, Taiwan held a seat in the UN Security Council before the People's Repubic of China was admitted instead. In 1980, Taiwan was expelled from 2 other world bodies. Which of these was Taiwan not expelled from?
(a) NATO
(b) IMF
(c) WB

Well, even if you didn't get these answers right (like J!), you will probably have gotten the picture that Taiwan's history is pretty tumultous. Everyone's wanted this green isle, and the unruly-ness and independence of Taiwan today has been there for a long time.

-----------
Answers
1a, 2b, 3c, 4a, 5a, 6c, 7C, 8a, 9b, 10b, 11c, 12b,13a

Saturday, October 29, 2005

ghosts and witches

Boys and girls, yesterday's lesson was in ghosts and witches. Pretty apt in a day-before-Halloween kind of way.

J and I made our way to the Taipei Arts Park (we love parks!) - which is essentially the locale around the Fine Arts Museum. We didn't enter the museum, but wandered around in the drizzle to look at these groups of kids practising their dances. That's something we noticed in almost every park or large public square/space we've been to. Kids rehearsing their dances in groups of 5 to 30. Then we did the touristy thing and went house-visting by the Museum to the Taipei Story House and the Lin Tai Ann Mansion. The latter is a real beautifully conserved Chinese house from the 18th century (see pic below), and the former is the pseudo-French home of a tea-merchant.

LinAnTai
Very 家春秋 yah? image by J - click for larger view

Sitting at the French cafe at the Taipei Story House, we quizzed the waitress in Mandarin (a tall willowy girl with bunned-up hair)
J: Why is this place called Taipei Story House?
Girl: Oh, [rehashing an oft-repeated answer] it's an old building from 1914 based on a French style of architecture. It's beautiful so it's preserved.
J: So, I see...but why is it called Taipei Story?
Girl: [a little puzzled] Why? Well, it was built in 1914, about the time of modern Taipei...and when the Japanese occupied Taipei, this house was also requisitioned by the Japanese. Then later it became the home of a politician, when we were free from the Japanese secession.
J: [either real dense or wanting to extend the conversation with this girl] Yes, but why Taipei Story?
Y: It's Taipei Story because the history of this house also tells the story of Taipei's development.

Thus saved from her questioning, she quickly went away from these 2 inquisitive tourists

J: [staring wistfully at the pumpkin soup] The Taiwanese value history hor.
Y: Yup. I guess because they are conscious of who they are.
J: That's a good thing. We don't. Taipei's got... soul, somehow.
Y: We do too. But maybe we are not so good at telling stories.
J: And we don't like old things. We think it's dirty, scary.
Y: Hmm, well, we have ghost stories. That's a kind of history.
J: [dipping into the soup] No soul, got ghosts.

My "theory" is always that our ghost stories (almost every building or beach in Singapore is haunted!) act as our unofficial history. A testimony to the fact that people have walked, lived and died on this island. Some have died for our island. And with that in mind, we fearlessly explored the dusty corridors and dark rooms of the Lin AnTai Mansion - where no doubt, folks have walked, lived and died.

And moving on to witches!

After dinner, we went in search of the legendary Witches cafe. Legendary only because it's launched the careers (well, kind of) of Taiwanese indie singers and Sandee Chen would occasionally still perform there. The chairs are decorated with bras, and upstairs on the second floor is a LBG bookshop called Fem Books. Yup, we're in a University dig.

J was a little apprehensive about staying for the performance. Given the place, we could end up having to listen to angsty university students. But it was a good thing we did, because we were treated to "The Mirror" band (or literally "Magic Mirror"). Lots of stories told as they sang in Min Nan Yu (the Taiwanese indigenous tongue, kind of like Hokkien) these jazzy tunes. 3 of the musicians are visually impaired, including the leader Jun Jie - a keyboardist who plays for all these popstars. It's pretty hard to describe the music or their performance, so I shall leave you here with an unfinished illustration:

TheMirror
Will colour this drawing another time

Well folks, that's almost all for yesterday! Oh yes, we did make it to Xi Men Ding in the end. But no, we got there late so the free concerts by the boybands were all over. Instead, we saw him instead. Probably a little mentally unsound, wearing a walkman, holding a marker as a mic, and lip-syncing and gyrating to the music in his earphones. He would sometimes pose, smile and gaze at his curious onlookers. Some of the kids would get up the stage and pose for photographs with him, as if he was a real celebrity. So we'll leave you with this photo:

NoMoney2Eat
image by J

Friday, October 28, 2005

Believe what they tell you on TV

...when it tells you Taiwan has some of the yummiest food in the world.

All those Taiwanese variety shows on street food, theme cafes, and those well-designed restaurants - they are not lying.

FoodFood
Our 30min dinner in 3 eateries (L to R):
Wan Kuek or literally "bowl-cake" - rice flour paste with yam, tender pork chunk and salted egg yolk, to eat with the gravy, chilli sauce, garlic and vingear;
You Yu Gen or Cuttlefish Starchy paste noodle;
Ba Bao Bing or literally "eight treasures ice", shaved ice covered with groundnuts, red beans, kidney beans, gingko nuts etc that's been stewed with sugar.


However, don't believe what you are led to believe about Taiwan from watching those scenes of fighting Parliamentarians in the news. The fights may actually happen, but what you should conclude from watching this, er, demonstrative commitment to political participation is not that everyone's a gangster in Taiwan. On the contrary, I think this is just one extreme end of a culture that values civic participation and social responsibility. So when compared to Singapore, where the parliamentarians are spotless in their public conduct, the average Taipei resident demonstrates his civic mindedness in the simplest of ways:

1. Standing on the right side of the escalator going up and down the train stations. Grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles - everyone observes the general rule that you should stand aside so that those in a rush can have a clear passage. It's this simple, but it doesn't happen in Singapore.

2. Queuing and waiting for train commuters to get out of the trains before they get on.

3. Don't use plastic bags unnecessarily. Most stores don't give out plastic bags. You have to pay NT$1 for a bag. I think this is part of a campaign to reduce waste. In the cinema (haha, yes, it's our second day and we couldn't resist catching a film!) and the public spaces, the ads are by civic groups or government departments on protecting the environment, learning MinNanYu (or what we think of as Hokkien. I guess this is just a policy of Chen Shuibian's government, to assert Taiwan's "nativeness" apart from China), reporting child abuse etc.

Taipei is a city of books And Singapore, despite the official desire to be a "renaissance city", is not. They may have gangsters, loud Grandmas, media-loving politicians and gossipy media (well, aren't those 2 the same everywhere?), but they have a healthy culture of critical thought, discussion and learning. We haven't made our way to the giant Eslite bookstore, but most of the public buildings we've been to have specialty bookstores, and there're smaller bookstores along most streets.

SpotShop
The bookstore at SPOT cinema, where we caught Hou Hsiao Hsien's Three Times

And to top off a pretty good day, we visited a lively designers' art exhibition at the National Contemporary Art Museum. Outside the museum were these giant illustrations we participated in:
applebunny1

That's all for now friends. It's 10.30am and we're off to explore more bits of Taipei...including going down to Ximending where we hear the Taiwanese pop stars hold their weekend free concerts to crowds of screaming teenagers. We'll go and act like one of them.
amazingpraise
You know the story for this drawing by now : )

Thursday, October 27, 2005

The Amazing Race

Both our alarm clocks failed to go off.

When I opened my eyes and saw the light coming in through the window, immediately I knew… WE ARE LATE FOR OUR FLIGHT TO TAIPEI!

In 10mins I got dressed, called the cab and was off to pick James up. What time is our flight to Taipei? 8:35am. What time was it when I left my house in the cab? 7.35am How long does it take to get to the airport from where I live? 30mins. At least.

In the cab we said many a prayer, J and I. Getting to Taipei seemed a real challenge so far! But army-trained J, like all good Singaporean men, had the mind to make these plans: once we got off at Changi airport, I was to take the passports and proceed to the check-in, while J would handle the luggage and the cab fare. So once the cab pulled up by the kerb at Changi, it was Go! Go! Go!

Sounds familiar?

Yes, friends, meet J and Y, the latest participants on the Amazing Race!

The check-in Manager at the Singapore Airline counter told us that check-in for our flight had closed 10 minutes ago. But she radio-ed her colleagues and ran off to help us stop the luggage truck.

Yes! We’re on! But not without a mini-lecture from the manager. Yes Ma’am, I swear this was not done deliberately. What are the chances of 2 alarm clocks failing to go off??

But wait. Our seats were already given up, and they weren’t sure if there were actually any left.

The Manager and her counter assistant muttered, glancing at each other as their fingers fired off our request into the system.

“ 可以吗? (trans: Is this really ok?)” The assistant asked. We could not hear the Manager’s answer, but it prompted the assistant to repeat her question, “这样可以吗?”

Then our boarding passes crept out from the printer, and we were ready to Go! Go! Go!

“We can clear you here, but you look at the immigration queues hor?” She gestured at the long lines that had already formed at the immigration counters. “I can’t help you there!”

But thank you and sorry, ma’am, we can’t hang around to chat with you! It was 8.15am and we got the immigration queues to beat. Go! Go! Go!

And we did. Checked. On to Gate E11…which seemed felt like a 500m dash with a backpack for J and a pregnant Tote bag for me. Then in between all that running, J suddenly turned to me with a worried look and asked if he would still be getting an aisle seat.

Those of you who know J, an aisle seat is a must. He’s kind of claustrophobic and will start to have strange visions of either floating up into space or descending into some narrow box once he feels physically trapped. Plus his sinuses are not fans of the flying. I thought to myself - Oh please, not this now!?! If this was the Amazing Race for real, this would be a moment the “dating couple” is shown bickering or saying hurtful things. But you know, there was no time for such hysterics, please. It was just Go! Go! Go!

Well, folks, to cut the race short, we did get on the flight to Taipei. And I am now posting this from the hotel’s lobby.

the sight from Raffles class seats - image by J
Oh, I haven’t told you the best part yet. In the end, J not only got what he wanted, i.e. an aisle seat, our lucky bums were resting on Raffles Class seats instead! Yup – fully adjustable seats with leg/bag/dancing room, and an upgrade from plastic trays and cutlery to Raffles class porcelain and a full 3-course brunch separately served.

So praise God for his goodness! I know I know, God’s not some butler-cum-genie here to answer our most mundane requests, but I also know that nothing that happens – good, bad, suffering, joy or just plain dull - happens without him being in control. And this trip, even before it started this morning, has been a lesson for me about not being in control.

-----
p/s Will put up some sketches and more photos tomorrow. Taipei's great so far - the sketchbook's fast filling up :)

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

steppin' out

PICT0049
My sandalled foot and my red tote.
I'm bringing all 3 - foot, birkies and red bag - with me to taipei


I stepped out of the office at 9pm today. Not too bad. But at some point, I decided - staying in that cubicle and typing away is not going to change anything.

And friends, immediately, I began to live this old wisdom that travel is not really about getting yourself up on a plane to some foreign land (well, most of the time it is!). It can't get more familiar and homely than sitting at our usual Bishan coffeeshop for a late dinner tonight (there, we are friends with another set of hawkers...this time it is Baseball Man who is part of "Chick n Grill", but more about him or the chicks that grill in another post.) Maybe it's just knowing that for the next 10 days I won't have to be maneuvering the intricate passageways of my work - the bureaucracies, the 4million bosses I am ultimately answerable to. Such that even before we even get to Taipei, just over dinner tonight, J and I had a whole lot of ideas about new paintings and new illustrations for 2 stories that have been festering in my head for more than 2 years now...( including that pathetic "series" of rabbit paintings).

There's this song by Michelle Shocked called "Steppin' Out". (no no, I don't think it's a coming out song) Michelle who?

I remember when I was 17, and someone at school (I think it was you, robotJ422) handed me a casette tape - hehe, that's how old I am - by Michelle Shocked called The Texas Campfile Tapes. And I've never heard anything like it before then - the live recording of a little-known singer, strumming her guitar and singing her own songs by, I guess, a campfire. You can hear crickets and the occasional car driving by. This album was recorded in 1987. And she's gone on to have a really varied career...folk, swing, jazz, blues, roots rock, bluegrass, gospel, something indefinable or other.

You can listen to the songs from the album here.

But what's my point again? Yes, "Steppin Out". Tonight made me remember the lyrics to that happy whimsy of a song in Shocked's drawling voice and that hoppety hop guitar:
I'm steppin out - ladeedadee ain't no doubt
I'm steppin out, I wanna sing I wanna shout
I wanna be where the fuss is all about
I'm steppin out
I'm steppin high steppin low
steppin anywhere my footsteps gonna go
First a heel and then a toe
I'm steppin out


Next step. Taipei.

-----
p/s Someone told me there was some documentary about Michelle Shocked becoming a tupperware saleslady at last year's Film Festival. I'm not surprised.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

a long journey

A Long Journey
Click for a larger viewThis is the other painting of a "series" about a rabbit who took off on a long journey in search of adventure, accompanied by an apple. There were supposed to be more paintings - set in the city, in the mountains, some surreal ones... but i lost interest after this second painting. Maybe Taipei will revive the series.

Thirtypounces wrote some time ago in this post about how corporatespeak has an enduring fondness for the "journey" metaphor. Hence, terms like "milestones"...millstones, they mean.

Well, I don't know where all this leaves me...but today, just 2 days before I leave for my holiday, my "journey" (that is, my work) threw up not just 1 but several major boulders (read: obstacles, pain-in-the-a** problems way beyond me at this stage) that has not only completely crushed the next milestone, but knocked me back several steps. And being the only person venturing on this journey at this stage, it sure looks daunting having to clear the mess within 2 days. I wish I have a bulldozer to clear the way to the decision-makers instead of my S-series Fujitsu shovel.

And because my organisation has just sent a stern alert not to ever blog about work, this "journey" metaphor is now official, for practical reasons.

But the tickets and hotels to taipei are already booked. And I shall have to leave this sorry mess behind for my boss - whose journey has taken her to another country to scale a more beautiful mountain this week - to deal with.

This must be my gripiest post ever...aargh. Think I'll have to work all night tomorrow before the flight out Thursday morning.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

weekend blues?!?

ThoughtsofEarlyAutumn

There are times when we all feel a little defeated and lost about the future. This heavy cloud hung over J and I the entire weekend, which was marked by stretches of talking and thinking -

- and, of course, (for comfort and mental sustenance) book-shopping!

One of the books we picked up from Kinokuniya is this illustrated story, Safe from harm by Rollo Armstrong (of Faithless) and Jason White.

In the book, 10 year-old Jack decides he will stop eating altogether. But his decision gets him smacked, angry, bitter, confused, and determined to leave home. So he wonders out at night into the streets, which turn into woods, and there, together with a group of monsters, he journeys to the top of a mountain and comes face to face with himself. It's like an updated version of Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, but also more. Chiefly because the narrative and illustrations run alongside a parallel narrative made up entirely of quotations from a motley of writers, philosphers, thinkers...Joyce, Twain, Rilke, Woolf, Whitman, Maxim Gorky, Aristotle, Carlyle, Hobbes etc.

For instance, when Jack contemplates a difficult decision and daunting task for the future, Mark Twain comes in to advise:
tender handed, stroke a nettle
and it stings for its pains
Grip it like a man of mettle
And soft as silk it remains
- "The Calm Confidence of a Christian" from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
And when Jack returns home, having come full circle and knowing full well that nothing has really changed (except himself), there are these lines by Matthew Arnold signaling a contentment with just being alive:
It is no small thing
To have enjoyed the sun
To have lived light in the spring
To have loved, to have thought, to have done
- from "Empodecles on Etna"
And so, in turn, I quote here these passages from Jack's story for anyone who is feeling just that bit more battered and lost than usual. Let Monday begin!

Thursday, October 20, 2005

all in the name

chickenwu2.jpg
our friend, wings - image remixed by J

Last night, the Jacky Wu lookalike who makes the world's best BBQ chicken wings sat down beside us at the hawker centre and suggested that we exchange phone numbers.

*exchange in mandarin
BBQ: Give me your number.
J: Why?
BBQ: When I run out of chicken wings or what, I can call you, warn you not to come down. Like today.
J: Oh yah, good idea!
BBQ: [looking at what J has wrote] Eh, I don't know English leh.
J: No lah, it's very easy, Jam.
BBQ: Ohr, JAM. Aiyah, your name, like the thing you spread on bread.

(He grins, showing a missing tooth and three more badly chipped teeth. Tearing off another little slip of paper, he writes his phone number and scribbles an English word under it.)

BBQ: Wings.
J: Huh? Really meh? Your name, wings?
BBQ: Yah, my name. [Smiles] Wings - so everytime I also win.

And Friends, this is why he makes the world's best BBQ wings. It's all in the name.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

the invisible man

zaitoichi

My brother E runs a do-it-all marketing business at my dad's printing factory. For 2 years now, he has hired Mr Kam, a contractor/carpenter, to help him construct the sets for the roadshows and other promotions E organises for his clients.

For some reason unknown to E, Mr Kam has been avoiding his calls. With a project due next week, E decided he had to drop by Mr Kam's office to see if anything was wrong.

"Hello, your boss Mr Kam in?" E asked Mr Kam's employee, who is busy sanding some wood at the ground floor of the shophouse.

"Er...upstairs..." he freed a hand and pointed to the office at the second floor.

Entreprenuer E trooped up the shophouse stairs to the second floor, wondering why the lights were all off if the boss was around.

At the first door, he knocked and hearing no response, opened and peered into the dim and empty room. No Mr Kam.

He knocked at the second door - Mr Kam's office itself. Again, it was dark behind the glass and there was no response. Nonetheless, E opened the door and looked. On the side table by the door, he saw both of Mr Kam's mobile phones. A sign that he was around somewhere. And beside the side table was a bed...this man obviously sleeps on the job! But there was still no Mr Kam in sight.

Just as E was about to leave, he caught a glimpse of a man on the floor.

The man had his back to the door and was on all fours. Slowly, quietly, he was "sliding" away on his knees towards the office desk!

"Mr Kam...?" E said tentatively, not quite sure if he was seeing what he was seeing. "Mr Kam..." But the man-dog-snake was not responding, "Mr Kam, don't be like this leh..." E appealed in Mandarin, "Eh Mr Kam, I already see you liao, don't be like this...Mr Kam!"

Having reached his destination behind the desk, he stayed there, ignoring E's bewildered calls. Even then, once or twice, E could see a hand or an arm as the man-dog-snake shifted around behind the desk to make sure he had perfected his act of invisibility.

J and I had a real good laugh when E told us this encounter last night. At first, E and I, of the more timid stock, had thought his behaviour was rather creepy. I mean, maybe that chap's been practising weird magic and has possessed by some dog spirit! Or he's on some drugs that's made him not only loony but potentially violent?! I was wondering perhaps he's having some afternoon loving with a mistress when E knocked, seeing that there's a bed in the office...but the more sreetwise J, having grown up with more petty crooks around him, offered the most logical answer - "I think he owes money to some loanshark." Strange what desperation can drive a man to do.

Ah so, invisibility is a power we wish we could command at will, but cannot have - not unless someone else chooses to be blind.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

a slow boat to china

ChinaSushi
This fizzy oldenlandia drink from China is the "Chinese Perrier" - click for larger view

I remember the one time I've been to China. It was in 1996 and 2 friends and I decided that it would be fun to spend our summer vacation being a volunteer on the Doulos.

The Doulos is basically a giant floating, non-profit bookstore that sails around the Asia-Pacific. Once on board, one of my friends got assigned to the book warehouse, another as a deckhand (er, it's more like "housekeeping" since toilet cleaning usually took up her whole morning), and I had the pretty cushy job in the pantry section. That meant I helped with serving the 5 meals daily and cleaned up the canteen, together with a group of women mostly from Korea, Philippines, Denmark and the UK.

The ship docked at Shanghai after 3 days or so of bad-weather sailing from the Philippines.

And I remember watching the scene from the pantry windows as the ship entered the Shanghai harbour and thinking to myself, wow, what a way to arrive in Shanghai! Right by the Shanghai Tang! (cue music from the 80s Hongkong TV drama series)

Since then, I've not felt the urge to visit China and I don't think J and I will anytime soon. J's folks brought him to see their relatives in some village...and if you know J, you can imagine how torturous that trip must have been for Mr. No-dirty-toilets-please!

But I admit, having just started to read Zhang Yi He's (章诒和) book of memories 往事并不如烟, there's just a bit more curiosity now about that complex hulk of a nation.

Zhang Yi He is a researcher at the Chinese Institute of the Arts, and daughter of intellectual Zhang Bo Jun who was disgraced in a 1957 communist witchhunt for rightist elements. Dedicated to her father, her book recollects 6 figures from that tumultous period for intellectuals in modern Chinese history.

How to resist a book with such a poetic, defiant title? The phrase/idiom 往事如烟 literally means "the past is like smoke". But the title insists that this is not true (并不 = "in fact, it is not"). And on what basis does Zhang Yi He lay her charge against the accepted wisdom of that phrase? Nothing. Nothing, but the singular insistence that a person's memories, re-told, is enough to bear the weight of an accepted wisdom. And in many ways,the characters and drama in this book live out this poetry - their individual lives, drawn against the thick curtains of history.

Shi Liang in the 50s

The most moving chapter has as its central figure Shi Liang (1900-1985), the first minister of justice of the people's republic, and a leading figure in the Chinese women's movement. Shi Liang is a family friend, and Zhang Yi He recounts her childhood memories of Shi Liang with great admiration.

But we soon learnt that Shi Liang was also the one who had "betrayed" her father Zhang Bo Jun in the 1957 purging of rightist intellectuals. Strangely, Zhang appears to place little of blame on her. Perhaps it is because Zhang understands too well that no one, not even the admirable Shi Liang, was exempt from the pressures and forces of history and ideology in those years leading to the cultural revolution. In fact, years after the 1957 incident, Shi Liang was herself hauled up and humuliated by the Red Guards.

Zhang Bo Jun was in the crowd that day, specifically instructed by the red guards to attend. I guess because who watches you as you are being "corrected" by the red guards is part of the correction (aka punishment) itself. Shi Liang was called because her old love letters to a condemned rightist #1 Luo Sheng Ji was found among Luo's possessions. Old and ill with high blood pressure, the red guards made Shi Liang bend low as she was questioned. When finally asked on her relationship with Luo, she merely replied "I love him". Considering the times, she was one brave radical woman!

That one's love letters should outlive the object of one's love, and be dragged into the public realm of politics and ideology attests only to 1 thing - that the personal (relationships, memories) outlives and persists the twists and turns of history. Years after, on a visit to the elderly stateswoman Shi Liang, Zhang Yi He witnessed her break down in tears at the casual mention of her husband's passing and concludes:
是的,脆 弱的生命随时可以消失,一切都可能转瞬间即空,归于破灭,惟有死者的灵魂和生者的情感是永远的存在。
bad, literal trans: yes, our weak lives may disappear any moment, everything can in a blink of an eye become nothing, given over to destruction, but the spirit of the dead and the feelings/emotions/sentiment of the living alone persist.

I am sure the China today where our more enterprising fellow-islanders are flocking to get a spoonful of that lucrative market is no more the China in Zhang Yi He's book. Times have changed. In most countries, the time for intellectuals has passed now that all the ideological battles have been fought, won, discounted and dis-armed. And maybe with the fiercely capitalist (or should I just call it avaricious) reality, 情感 may not even matter any more.

This is why we also, like Zhang Yi He, must remember and tell stories of what needs to be remembered. Then the past will not, in fact, be like smoke.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

无印良品 No labels please!

"Art for art sake? art for business sake?....I say why not just art for goodness sake!"

This was the answer of a senior civil servant everytime he was asked for his views on the role of the arts given Singapore's commercial values and economically-driven development. Both J and I are rather fond of him - I like to think he is a daydreamer too.


4x4Episodes of Singapore art. Channelnews Asia will probably do re-runs of this series about 4 Singapore artists. (I found it a tad pretentious and trying...OK, Director, I know it's a show about ART already, you don't have to keep reminding me how I should find this difficult or strange.)

Somewhere, sometime in history, art became known as art. It must have started with those steam engines.... They gave birth to industrialisation. And industrialisation created, other than mass-produced consumables, labels such as the artist, the engineer, the designer (I think the craftsman got beaten back to the diseased dark ages). Now that the industrial age has kind of given way to the information and ideas age, we don't just have the artist, we have the creative class!

But the best work gets done, sometimes quietly, often together with or for people who will be happy to pay for what they see, read and, yes, use. Because it pleases them, soothes them, charms them, moves them, informs them, amuses them, disturbs them, challenges them, flatters them, serves them. As Tym obviously experienced today, viewing the artworks that students have prepared for their A-level examinations.

J has been asking me why not I quit my job (now that I am finally bondfree!) and be "an artist". Well, I don't qualify - no art degree or diploma lah, not even an "A-level" exam grade! - I like my monthly paycheck, and really, I don't want to bear that label. Making this is just an excuse, but I think it is more fun being free to do what you like without the burden of a label.

But here are folks happy to try on the artist tag for 30 days! For those of you who had followed the adventures of Chin Yew, the 30-day artist, he has made his personal 30-day challenge into an open one. Basically, anyone who might want to do the same thing can ride on the website and blog he has already started. For this month of October, Ming picks up where Chin Yew stopped.

Friend, perhaps you will be "the November artist"? It may be label you wear for 30 days, but I know your best work goes on beyond that.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

off to the bat cave

AgedCapitol.jpg
My fav cinema is all abandoned and Gotham-like now - Image by J

These batman comics are absolutely addictive.

My lunch break was spent sitting in the office meeting room eating cold brown rice and wondering just why is it that Nightwing (he's the first Robin who grew up and - you know, anyone past 16 can't be wearing bright green undies with a red vest and still be answering to a name like Robin!) had left Batman and what was his relationship with Tarantula, who has absolutely no fashion sense.

Maybe it's just a perfect escapist fiction. Stories of physically perfect beings, who nonetheless are still nursing childhood traumas and living out teenager angst. Thankfully, my superhero is less elusive.

But for those of you who cannot stand superheroes of any sort, here are some comics (graphic novels - call them what you will) lying around my room at the moment that are excellent reads in their own way. So if I had a batcave, I'll just load it up with books like these and a good couch. Hmmm, of course I won't mind if Nightwing hangs out there too.

The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar - The wit survived the translation from French into English, which guarantees that this is one enjoyable read even if you are not a cat lover. As the title also suggests, this is essentially a story about faith and family. With Judaism, I guess the 2 are even more inextricably bound.

Cages by Dave McKean - This one probably needs no introduction. Long-time cover artist for the Sandman series, this tome (yah, it's 496 pages!) bears resemblance to the dreamy, surreal scapes of Sandman, where every little movement or thought or character gestures at some grand universal or deep psychological state...rrright. I'm still halfway through this. Got distracted by Murakami and Batman.

Kinderbook by Kan Takahama - This book may be a little hard to find. The artist and writer is Japanese, but the book I have is translated in the UK, published and bound in Spain. 10 stories, vignettes really - stolen conversations, childhood memories, a memorable last date. The artist and writer is young, but all the makings of good manga is in those stories. Which is to say that it adopts a totally opposite approach and style as Cages and the whole Sandman routine. Here, there is no grand gesture. Instead, we are occupied with the mundane, the incidental, the everyday girl/boy/old lady who, in that one instance, allows you a glimpse into a drama that has been hidden, postponed, forgotten.

To Tame a Tiger by Joe Yeoh - A Singapore comic! This book in fact gives itself the subtitle "The Singapore Story" which, of course, tells you that it is a conservative telling of the super-narrative about Singapore's PAP-led road to independence. If you are looking for dirt, look elsewhere. Still, Joe Yeoh does some great storytelling and illustrations. This definitely beats reading a history textbook. But if you want to know more about cartoons and comics in Singapore, there's an overview in here, a review of Morgan Chua's collection of political cartoons My Singapore by a friend (the undisputed cartoon expert in Singapore).

Monday, October 10, 2005

an unremarkable life II

Always like this
larger than life

Here's the drawing i promised for the post below. It's also a companion to this drawing - I like this couple.

Sunday, October 9, 2005

an unremarkable life

(check back here for the drawing tomorrow...off to bed now)

I was sitting in an extremely long meeting on Friday and, naturally, my mind wandered.

I don't know what triggered the thought (maybe the sense of what a waste of time the meeting was!), but I was suddenly thinking about how the past 10 years of my life had gone by real quick. It was not uneventful and there is much to be thankful for. But how quick the time had passed and... well, the point is I realised that the next 10 years would gone in an equally brief blink of the eye. Oooh, by then I would be 41...

Ah, so I guess this is the start of a mid-life panic. And after this weekend, I could perhaps call this a "Tony Takitani-phobia".

J and I watched Jun Ichikawa's Tony Takitani at the Singapore History Museum yesterday. This is another Murakami-related post, since the film is an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story of the same title (there's an English translation of the story by Jay Rubin in The New Yorker).

The senior Takitani, a jazz musician who lived through Shanghai in WWII, plays an unremarkable music -
"It was not art, but it was music made by the skillful hand of a professional, and it could put a crowd in a good mood."
Tony Takitani is like his father, taking his talent for producing technically exact drawings from art college into a commercially successful but artistically unremarkable career illustrating machines. Tony Takitani's wife is a so-so-looking girl whose life is given some meaning and "beauty" by the designer clothes she wears and is obsessed with buying. She literally fills up her clothes, as the clothes figuratively fills up the emptiness that is her life. And in the same way, Tony Takitani's own lonely, empty existence is filled up by her physical presence

It's a harsh story, and perhaps a pretty harsh critique of modern society. But the harshness is tempered by the deadpan writing, which doesn't leave much room for judgement, and a humour that suggests some empathy for the unremarkableness.

Of course, the big challenge for a director is how on earth do you make an interesting movie out of the unremarkableness of an empty, lonely life?

Jun Ichikawa chose to make everything beautiful. And perhaps he had a stronger sense of sympathy for Takitani and a wish for a happier resolution than Murakami. The sparse interior of the apartment is beautiful in its chic minimalism. Tony Takitani's wife is played by the beautiful Rie Miyazawa. Trust a Japanese director to make loneliness and emptiness so aesthetically beautiful. But I am not sure if in making such a stylised and beautiful movie, the director was consciously mimicking the beautiful but essentially empty music/art/clothes the Takitanis (father, son, wife) fill their lives with, or had he unknowingly exhibited their same symptoms!

If I had to summarise, I would say it's a story about an unremarkable life. It was not an uneventful life. Tony Takitani, in Murakami's deliberately efficient narrative, has his fair share of career and romantic scores and joys, and grief. But it was unremarkable nonetheless. The way I guess most of our lives are unremarkable.

Thursday, October 6, 2005

food so tasty you want to hug it

Are you stressed out by work? Crazy relationships? The news that tells you the world does not deserve mercy or desires more mercy? Nothing is more therapeutic than making something with your own 2 hands.

So when J's birthday came up, I decided to return his lovely lantern gift with something handmade too. Being a true daughter of this food-loving island, I decided to make him a food doll.

So friends, the weekend's coming up. If you have some time to kill but you are not sure where and how to start with your DIY project, ampulets is happy to give you here a step-by-step beginner's recipe for a simple food doll (click on the pics for a larger view in flickr).

Step 1: Decide on the seafood/vegetable/fruit/edible thing for the doll
Step1
If your stomach cannot decide, let your materials decide for you. You need some buttons, thread, stuffing and fabric. The type and colour of your fabric is most important. I recommend you rummage through your cupboard and dig out 1 or 2 really old T-shirts that can't even be given away. Recycle! Plus old t-shirts are soft and smell good.

I didn't have a food/fruit/whatever in mind. All I got was an old bluish-grey tank top, and scraps of brown cloth from a trouser-end. Not very food-like colours. So the only conceivable thing from that was a squid. OK, squids are not grey. Plus they are sea creatures first, not just J's fav seafood. But it suffices for the simple Singaporean to call them just food.

Step 2: Cut out the shapes
step2
Fold the cloth in half and draw the desired shape of your chosen food on one side. Aligning one point or edge of the shape on the folded edge of the cloth itself. This is so that when you cut out the shape, you'll get a siamese pair of them instead. I had a pair of Siamese-twinned Squid bodies, joined at the tip.

Step 3: Making a little pouch from the cut-outs
step3
Flip the cloth inside out, and sew the 2 shapes together along the edges, leaving an opening for the stuffing to go in. If you need to attach anything (e.g. limbs, leaves, button-eyes), sew it on from the inside too, so that all the ugly stitches are hidden.

*Tip 1: Think of it as a pillow case turned inside out.
*Tip 2: For any stitches that are exposed, choose a thread of a nice contrasting colour instead.

For my squid doll, I sewed the "Wings" (the 2 triangles sticking out) of the squid together using red thread from the outside. This bit is not meant to be stuffed, so it is sewn shut. Then I flipped the cloth inside-out and sewed along the edges (leaving the bottom open), creating a little squid-shaped pouch. On the open edge, I attached strips of brown cloth from the inside to form the tentacles, and a bit of the tank-top strap on the other edge to form the squid head. The button eyes are first attached to the squid head. For all this, I used grey thread.

Step Four: Stuff it!
step4
Having joined it all up from the inside, you turn your creation back out again! Voila! You should get a little pouch the shape of your favourite food. And it's ready to be stuffed.

Get some cotton wool (if you have those squares of facial cotton, just rip and fluff them up) and dried beans. Green beans are a nice size. No need to buy those styrofoam balls from the craft shop - styrofoam is badbadbad.

*Tip 3: If you want your food doll to sit up, stuff the top with cotton wool and leave the beans for the base. You can also just use only wool or only beans. Whichever material you are using, make sure you are generous with the stuffing because the stuffing will start to "sink" or "shrink" over time.

Step Five: Sew it up
step5
Just stitch up the opening. Since these stitches are likely to be exposed, you may want to consider making the stitches a decorative element anyway, and use thread of a contrasting colour.

Step Six: Serve it on a plate
HairySquidLie.jpg
Image by J
And any meal - er, even an inedible one - is best when it is shared with someone you love, a friend who has stood by you, a family member who needs some cheering up, or just a neighbour who has shown you more kindness than you deserve.

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

destination formosa

File0339
Seeing train commuters in this pose tells me that it's Monday again.

Monday morning in the office lift, a colleague pulled a face and swore: "...and I just paid for my tickets to Bali on Saturday!"

I didn't say anything, just a little surprised perhaps. What could I have said? Encouraged her to go ahead with her holiday there? Because her tourist rupiah matter to those who must still go on working and living on that island?

The ex-Malaysian PM in his recent speech at the Suhakam's Human Rights Conference got his hobbyhorse, actually, two hobbyhorses. The first being the hypocrisy of European and American international policing efforts; the second, globalisation. Both he links up in this one statement: "The globalisation of concern for the poor and the oppressed is sheer hypocrisy."

That got me thing. Except that globalisation in his speech takes on this one particular colour:
The map of the world today shows the effect of globalisation, as interpreted by the ethnic Europeans in history...Before the Europeans, there were Arab, Indian, Chinese and Turkic traders. There was no conquest or colonisation when these people sailed the seas to trade. Only when the Europeans carried out world trade were countries invaded, human rights abused, genocide committed, empires built and new ethnic European nations created on land belonging to others.

I am not sure if "the Arab, Indian, Chinese and Turkish traders" were the kind, benevolent folks suggested here! Surely, greed, theft, murder and cruelty are not traits unique to a particular ethnicity. Unfortunately, in protesting against the moral hypocrisy and hegemony of Europe and America and their abuses of power, the speech's sweeping condemnation and the fiery sentiments raised inadvertantly mirror what the subjects of his criticism use in justifying their abuses, incursions and violence.

Whether globalisation is a new idea or just a new-ish name, we are all, at least in Singapore, complicit as consumers of information, goods, culture and leisure. Once a year, we all pack our bags and pick a destination on the world map - first, second, third world, no need to be so discriminate as long as there is no war or viral outbreak. Global citizens? Global hypocrites? Nah, just call us tourists.

J and I are therefore planning to go visit this "renegade province" at the end of the month, and satisfy all our repressed rebelliousness by being in a country whose most-televised news image is of parliamentarians exchanging punches. Though, paradoxically, I'm hoping Mr President Bian will not be waving the independence flag too openly in the coming month. Otherwise the very kind and benevolent Chinese might go against their ethnic predisposition and get real nasty and violent on that green isle. Soon those nosey imperialist Americans may just step in and display some more hypocrisy. Then, me? I won't get no chance to be a tourist.

Saturday, October 1, 2005

happy children's day?

NeonUS.jpg
What? No presents?!? - image by J

Overheard outside a childcare centre yesterday, a weary 5 year-old:

"I hate children's day! So many things! So many presents!"

Well, for those of us who didn't get any presents, hope you have a happy Children's Day.