Holiday Spirits

A miscellaneous Tuesday in late March doesn't sound like a holiday, but there it is. It should be clear to anyone, I think, that our spiritual traditions are linked to the cosmic clock, or at least the one that keeps time in our own tiny solar system. So, Day 15 of the Second Lunar Month: a full moon, which I have come to associate with monthly direct reports with my supervisor; I thought I was done with somewhat unpleasant monthly cycles. But as it is a state holiday, I have the day off and the DR is postponed. So since it is not only the day honoring a Hawaiian prince (in the only state in the union that has official days honoring royalty), but also the birthday of Laozi and a festival day for the San Qing, the Three Pure Ones, I am off to Chinatown.  I need some good Chinese soy sauce to complement my stash of local Japanese-inspired Aloha brand, and I may succeed in my ongoing quest to find statuary of the San Qing, not really for myself, but for a FB Tao friend in the midwest where such things are harder to come by.

I am going to escort another friend, a French woman who shares my interest in Chinese painting, on a little walking tour of the shops and sights in Chinatown.  (I'm thinking of this as a dry run for actually escorting a group of like-minded folks in China itself.) Thirty years ago, this neighborhood was strange to me, when Popo, my aged Chinese next-door landlady took my arm for a tour, said "Call me Popo", and introduced me to her best noodle shop, her best duck shop, and her best bun shop.  She told the proprietors,"This is my friend, take care of her."  Popo liked us as tenants: "God always sends me Episcopalians," she said, weirdly. She was an Episcopalian, and we visited the Chinese Episcopal parish a few times.  A Hakka woman, likely first generation in Hawaii, she shared a lot of old Honolulu and China with me.  It was a blessing both ways, I guess. I used to answer her calls for help sometimes when her husband, seriously afflicted with Alzheimer's, had fallen or she needed something from Longs.  It only occurs to me now how horrible it would be to denounce your landlord. She was a shengren, really. We lived in her ohana house only for about two years, but it was a crucial part of our Hawaii adaptation.

Laozi, the San Qing, and the Anglican/Catholic Holy Week to boot!   Passover too, but that is not really part of my heritage (I think, although, one never knows, do one?), except in the Catholic echoes. I have Good Friday off as well, working for a Catholic institution as I do.

Popo would be proud. I will think of her today, surely passed on by now, an ohana ancestor, as I meander the old neighborhood. I am sure I will tell my French companion of things that have changed since Popo's tour.

I missed this year's New Year festival in Chinatown, but here are some images from 2012.  I don't think too much has changed in a year, but over 30, probably quite a bit.

Popo probably saw this building when it was first constructed.

Actually, I think Popo's grandchildren live in one of those high-rises in the back.

Protecting tradition.  That low building is probably worth several million bucks.

New Year's Eve, Yin Style

I was in Chinatown yesterday, primarily because I wanted to buy some Chinese ink, but it was all festive so I wound up with door couplets, some snacks, a couple of movies that my Chinese video vendor had put aside for me (knowing I will buy anything she puts aside for me), and some Year of Snake T-shirts.

Local T-shirt design, says "Zing to the Dragon Zang." Not sure what that means, but the design is nice.

I've been trying to paint snakes, but haven't found the energy to really concentrate.  The snake character, 蛇,  lends itself, in running script, to some nice snake motifs.  But I am not yet prepared to show my meager efforts.  But in some fit of prescience, I did take this photo in Washington last August, at an exhibit of Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei's bronze zodiac animal heads.  They were awesome.

Ai Wei Wei's bronze zodiac animals at the Smithsonian; "Move over dragon, I''m snake and 2013 is my year."

I spent this day, the eve of Spring Festival, watching Chinese movies and making...chop suey.  I've been reading Andrew Coe's very intriguing "Chop Suey--A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States" which traces the American taste (or lack of it, or even revulsion to it) for Chinese cuisine from 1784 (when the first American voyage to China set sail)  to P.F. Chang's.  Chop suey, something I've never really encountered in China, is a melange of stir-fried stuff with rice or noodles...mine was pretty tasty, since I have routine and ready access to fresh ginger and Chinese parsley, good local soy sauce and salted black beans.  I was clearing out vegetables in the fridge to mix up with some leftover char siu and roast pork.  It was an inelegant but toothsome mess, and I apologize to the kitchen god for even suggesting that it was Chinese.  But it still tasted better than the old La Choy canned chop suey I grew up with, thinking that was authentic Chinese cuisine.

Looks bad, tastes good.

The movies...with a nod to the new snake year, I re-watched Jet Li's recent retelling of the white snake legend, "The Sorcerer and White Snake."  I liked it better than the first time around, although I still prefer "Green Snake," with Vincent Zhao, even if Vincent's portrayal of the monk is a bit more evil and goofy.  (It's not the first time Vincent and Jet have played the same roles.)  And then a little Hong Kong indie oddity,  "A Side, B Side, Seaside" set in one of my favorite Hong Kong locales, Cheung Chau, where I would actually like to be to celebrate this Chinese New Year, not that Honolulu isn't perfectly lovely.  

Some mandarin oranges (Cuties, clementines) for dessert and yet another HK movie, something contemporary with the other Tony Leung (Ka Fei) who I wouldn't have recognized had my video vendor not pointed it out to me.  Andy Lau appears in it too, as he appears pretty much everywhere, but was not obviously credited in my DVD package.

Not as cute as Vincent Zhao, but tasty anyway.

Xin nian kuai le, ever'body!  Gong xi fa cai!

Don't Look Back

Arrived home after the second session of my current Chinese painting class, which also includes language, calligraphy study, cultural education, and the revelation that at least two of the class members are mutual acquaintances through work associations. It's just like Facebook, but blood and bone, something like brick and mortar.

First task, sort the mail: charity solicitations from World Wildlife Fund (please save the tigers), the Sierra Club (please conserve the land), and Doctors Without Borders (please heal the sick), an envelope with Important Tax Information Enclosed, subscription offers to decline for Archeology Today and the Columbia Journalism Review, my Amazon delivery of the I Ching as interpreted by Hua-Ching Ni, and most distressing, diaries to record one week of my TV viewing to participate in a Nielsen ratings survey. (Do they think I'm going to watch the Superbowl?)

Apparently, buying a big new TV put us on a list somewhere: we want to know what THEY watch! Well, won't THEY be surprised? They sent three diaries, because I apparently revealed that there were three TVs in the household when I agreed to do this. (I'm happy to skew the study, and besides, they included a crisp new one dollar bill which makes a nice bookmark in the I Ching. Two more, and I can cast hexagrams with bills, not coins, some kind of inflation.) The former primary TV has since been recycled through the Salvation Army. I'm not sure the second one actually works, it's hidden in a little cabinet in the living room. No one watches TV in the living room (although sometimes I watch DVDs there on an old iMac G4, my obsolete but still somewhat useful manapua Mac, you know the one, it looks like a Luxor lamp crossed with a big cha siu bao, something that might have been a character in The Brave Little Toaster.

The third TV (now number one), in my former-closet-now-entertainment-center, will be the focus of this diary keeping. I did check to see if I can record viewing in 15-minute increments, like billable agency hours, because that's about all the news I can stand in the morning, pretty much the only time the unit has been used so far to access cable or broadcast. I've been using the nice big display for movies and Asian drama on DVDs, and hope soon to get the connecting cable to be able to run similar stuff from my laptop: streaming Netflix and dramafever.com. I don't think Nielsen is interested in that, although I see there is a nice space in the diaries for comments about my television habits. That'll be fun.

It seems like a strange way to start the new year, Year of Rabbit, the noisy welcome of which I enjoyed Saturday in Chinatown with a fine dim sum lunch, an exuberant lion and dragon dance parade, shopping for videos (for the numbah one TV) at my favorite Chinatown vendor, bargaining for some scroll landscapes with a cool old gentleman from Shanghai, and demonstrations of wushu and more lion dancing on the stage at the Chinese Cultural Plaza.

My personal attitude toward a new year, a new day even, is "don't look back." But maybe this guy just wasn't paying attention. Well, the dancing lion isn't on the World Wildlife Fund's endangered dangerous big cat list. (Although it is considered appropriate to pop some cash in his mouth.)

Look! Behind You!

The Nature of His Game

The three-part Hawaii Opera Theatre's season opened last night with Faust. As a non-opera-loving friend said earlier, "That's the one about the guy who sells his soul to the devil, right?" Indeed, the Faust legend is deep and complicated and, despite an opera plot that seems dated by contemporary standards of drama and real life (who cares if someone has a baby out of wedlock, conceived by a devil-driven rogue) still has a lot of appeal in an era where moral integrity and success seem to be so easily compromised, at least as witnessed in economic and political news of the day.

Throughout the well-received production, I was looking for Taoist themes, an exercise that seems a little like meditation, to the extent that between acts I was googling on the iPad, Faust+Tao, but found nothing really. (Not talking, the Wizard was playing solitaire on his iPhone, willing himself to suppress the flu-based cough he's had since MLK Day.)

The opening act was stunning. Decrepit and sooty (oh wait, this is Gounod, not Wagner), Faust is complaining to a corpse on a gurney about his frustrations with philosophy, science, and religion to explain life...and dammit, why must he get old? (Well, don't we all, d'un certain age, ask that one?) Suddenly the corpse animates. A lithe stylish, tastefully leather-clad rock star arises from under the shroud.

"Please allow me to introduce myself," he seems to say.

Then you notice the tiny horns sprouting from his forehead, and there is indeed something troubling about his game. Sympathy for the Devil was not part of the score, but this guy (Jamie Offenbach, Hawaii-born, but with roots even less developed than Obama's) could have done it really well, channeling Mick the way Johnny Depp does Keith in his pirate persona. HOT's devil-in-leathers also sported gorgeous long shiny silky black hair that rivaled any of my Wuxia heroes'. His little nubs of horn kept growing from act to act, and by the finale it was pretty obvious who he was; his smooth leather pirate boots grew a lot of goaty fringe and cloven-toed hooves and he looked more and more menacing. Though not the protagonist, he kinda stole the show. (Or maybe it was just me.)

Mephistopheles...Satan!... appears to be a manifestation of Faust's deluded craving for knowledge and lust for youthful life (especially in the form of a chaste young lady.) Kind of a Taoist theme, I guess, with really horrible consequences.

The final scene in which the naive Marguerite, shunned and imprisoned for giving birth illegitimately to Faust's child, languishes, even killing her infant, in her jail cell. Faust and the Devil appear on the scene of battle over her soul. We think Mephistopheles wins: "Judged!" But no, it's almost a reprise of Shen Yun, and the angels sing, "Redeemed!" Marguerite casts off her earthly shell and ascends to heaven. With the dead baby left lying on the prison floor, it's a creepy scene, and I longed for the Falun Gong angels to descend to take HIS poor soul to Heaven's Gate. There are some unresolved plot points here.

Now that I'm thinking of it, Shen Yun was the opener of the opera season, which this year at least includes no Wagner. Next up, Lucia di Lammermoor, which shares place setting, though not plot, with Brigadoon, a Lerner and Lowe Broadway musical in which I was a chorus member in a high school production. That was a period when kilts were faddish, something that occurs from time to time. Off-hand I can think of no other Scottish-themed extravaganzas, except Mel Gibson's Braveheart, which I don't think had any kind of musical enhancements. Just half-naked men being tortured, a favored theme of Mr. Gibson's.

And today...Lunar New Year festivities in Chinatown. I look forward to seeing the 150-foot-dragon dance/parade and poking around in the shops for an amulet to "protect" the Rooster-Wizard during the Year of Rabbit (Tu) which begins next week (Feb. 3). I must paint some more rabbits; lao shi said Monday, at the first class of the painting season, my little shui mo bunny was good (she's no Tiger Mom teacher) and I should practice more. Her own rabbit painting is richly colorful; for some reason my qi is stuck in a black and white mode, like black and white photography. The seven shades of Tri-X.

Color is eluding me. Shall I summon help from the underworld?

Once Upon a Time In Chinatown

After reading from 365 Tao, my morning habit, and then rereading Carl Jung's Foreword and Richard Wilhelm's Introduction to the I Ching, the classic yellow cloth-bound volume I have consulted from time to time since 1967, (don't we all have one of those?--actually I have two, one defiled with notes and dates, and another, quite pristine) I made my way, somewhat philosophically set,  to Chinatown for an event suggested by my Chinese painting teacher.

I wasn't quite sure what was happening, except that it would involve painting demonstrations.  Having recently been to two other exhibitions bookending the moon festival and national day (both the PRC's, Oct. 1, and Taiwan's, Oct. 10), I was game for anything.  I arrived on time at the Cultural Plaza, not to be confused with the co-located Cultural Center, but no one was there except some people randomly setting up some tables, or possibly removing them.  I looked for Lao Shi, then ducked into my favorite video/bookstore, where I chatted with my new friend. "We haven't known each other so long, but we communicate well," she said, after we talked about obscure Hong Kong TV actors and the kinds of movies I like (and she likes to sell).

She thinks I should move away from the kung fu/wu xia I've been buying from her, and watch some conventional drama.   I told her I got into Chinese films a long time ago with early drama directors like Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar Wai and Chen Kaige.  I used to bring home pre-US-release VCDs from Hong Kong. The kung fu is a recent preoccupation set off when looking for a particular Chinese film, I was directed by the clerk at Blockbuster from "Foreign Films" to "Martial Arts."  A whole new world, so to speak,  opened up for me!

She sold me another Raymond Lam TVB set, the curiously named "Twin of Brothers" (42 45-minute episodes) and a contemporary Taiwanese drama on DVD that cleverly comes with two audio CDs of the soundtrack music as well.  What a great concept!

I returned to the Plaza, and Lao Shi found me.  She introduced me to some friends who explained that the event was a carnival (a hard word for Taiwanese to say) for the various Chinese schools in Honolulu, to encourage the young kids to learn traditional Chinese culture.  We had a nice chat about Chinese politics and the idea that the people of Taiwan (identified as "China's largest island" in a PRC-produced middle-school textbook I've been reading) would be happy to reunite...if they weren't FORCED to and could maintain democracy.  Uh huh. And I suppose the new entity could be called Greater Taiwan. (With perhaps a new national day, Oct. 5, a middle ground compromise?)  We agreed that time is all that is needed. With 5,000 years of dynastic drama, what's 50 or another 100?

Then Lao Shi, having connected with the group of painters who were doing demonstrations (although not choosing to do demos herself) said to me, "You want to [do] painting?"  (I'm not making fun here; her English is 10,000 times better than my Mandarin). Which led to ME demonstrating bamboo and simple landscapes to young Chinese.  "If I can do this, you can do this," I said to a puzzled young boy.  The fellow painters seemed to think my work was acceptable, and Lao Shi had been more than gracious in introducing me.  I suppose it was no more strange than a Norwegian teaching Cantonese in Hong Kong.

Then the older painter to my left, who seemed to like my landscape, and was surprised I'd only been studying since January, put my name on my painting in his beautiful calligraphy.

My Name (not really)

Lao Shi said I had courage to do this; I said I hoped I hadn't embarrassed her.  In all honesty, I felt my work that afternoon was not that good: the ink was too thin, the paper was poor quality, the day was too hot, I was using someone else's brush, under some pressure to perform.  Still...

Then we watched some young dancers and a nice little king fu demo by a young boy; the mirror opposite of the event two weeks ago featuring Mr. Iron Crotch.

The New Power Jet?