Shanghai Museum
1. The first thing we went to look at were the bronzes because Meng wanted to. There was lots of ancient stuff, but I noticed for like the first 1000 years of the bronze things, most of the things on display were wine vessels, and I wondered if it was the case that the people from ancient China were a bunch of alkies. Second, I wondered why there was not a bigger variety of items or if bronze was used mainly for ceremonial drinking glasses. And then as I was walking home tonight, I started to wonder about in other places where bronze was first developed what sorts of things were created. Was bronze mainly an art form, did it have practical purposes, was it used to create weapons or armor, or what?
2. I really only have attention to focus on one room of old stuff. We did not even make it back to the porcelain section, so I know we will be back. In detail, we looked at the minority stuff, the paintings, the furniture, and some exhibition of European painting from some gallery in Italy.
3. Fortunately, the museum was not as boring as Hudson expected.
Su Tong's Talk
4. I went with a wife of one of Meng's college roommates. She was surprised there were so many foreigners at the talk. Fortunately, Su Tong talked in Chinese and it was translated, so she could get more from it. I found that I could catch probably 85% of what was being said by him, and that made me really happy. I was able to laugh in the right places even. I felt the progress from my Chinese.
5. One of the areas he touched on was all of the change in China. All of the building and tearing down. He said that the sound the jackhammer makes is similar to "China" pronounced like Chai Na which means tear it down. And he has heard this sound for the past 30 years. Whether or not all the change is good or not, it is hard to say, but when tearing something down it seems nowadays people count how much money they can get to tear something down and do not take into consideration the historical and cultural value of the place before tearing it down. When they think of money first, it is a crime. Also there is the idea of destruction vs. tearing something down. He does not have a problem with tearing down for something new as that is necessary for progress, but it is not good to just destroy things. I thought that was a very important distinction.
6. In the new book he just wrote, he wanted to make the distinction between the meaning of river in Chinese and river in English. He pointed out how in Chinese there are many words for river that capture the meaning of a river, the water in the river, and the flow of the water in the river. His book is to capture the spirit of the flowing river in his book. I think it will be worth it to read it.
7. He cited that guy from Fenghuang and Lu Xun as some of his inspirations. He also likes Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
8. He also writes about the street from his childhood, which he discovered on a recent visit back to Suzhou that it is now a wide road.
Beijing Opera
9. Apparently, we went to see a famous person perform. Her name was Zhang something, and her voice is supposed to be especially good for portraying sad things.
10. The storyline was as follows: There are five people in the family, and they are poor. They need to pay tax, but as they do not have money the father and grandfather go to the mountains to find something to sell. The girl also sells something and earns enough money to send the tax collectors away. The father and grandfather stay away for a long time, and then it is found out that they were killed by a tiger. The officials come back to collect more tax, but they collect less since the men are gone. They are paid somehow. Then they come back. The grandmother has died at this time, so it is cheaper again, but they cannot afford to pay so they take away the woman's daughter and we do not see her again. Then they come to collect tax again, but the woman cannot pay. She leaves, but the tax collectors catch up to her at her old hometown. As she still cannot pay, she kills herself and the show is over. It took two hours to cover all the details of this plot.
11. The movement in the play was very slow, people walked slow, talked slow. It was a big contrast to the hectic city life in Shanghai.
12. I learned that when a guy carries some hair on a stick it is suppose to represent that he is riding a horse.
13. They wore clothes that had long white sleeves. Sometimes they would gather the sleeves, and other times drop it. I wondered what it meant.
14. I realized that I do not really know how to appreciate this kind of opera. In fact, the parts of it I saw before were incredibly annoying. I would not say what I saw this time was annoying, but my legs got tired of just sitting there. But I also feel I did not know what to think most of the time. I did really enjoy the Chinese music in the background.
Overall, I experienced enough culture to last me for a few weeks I think.
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