Heck, it makes me happy! A photo of our family, along with Ellen and Paul and their family, from the day trip to Tai O in Hong Kong that I mentioned in my last post. We totally didn't plan it, but everyone ended up dressing in a different primary color - we ended up looking like a pack of Crayolas walking down the street. Happy Mother's Day!
Continuing on with the "big world, strange and fantastic art" theme for a little bit longer, here are a few photos that I took of the outside of a - hotel? gift shop? well, a building, anyway, in Tai O, a small fishing village / tourist town on the far western side of one of Hong Kong's outlying islands that we visited on a great day trip with our two families. I'd describe it more, except that I have no idea what any of it means. Anyone really good with traditional Chinese characters?
The first thing that you see is a small garden inside a cage, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, each labeled in Cantonese.
The side of the caged garden.
Moving around to the side of the building, we see this family scene...
and these critters...
The fabulous is everywhere. Look around you, everyone!
Something about Buddhist temples* just makes the visual thinker in me happy. The idea that you can walk into a building and there is this Whole Huge Crazy Universe! Right In Front of your Eyes! I mean, I appreciate the Protestant tradition and all, but, well, here is a picture of the church sanctuary I spent most every Sunday in from grade 7 till my Junior year in high school:
(*Or Hindu Temples or even the right kind of Catholic Church)
See what I mean? Now I don't mean to disparage Beulah Presbyterian Church at all - in fact, it was one of my few safe harbors in my stormy sea of small-town adolescence - but c'mon! What's there to look at? At least let's get a few good ol' seventies felt tapestries in there, for crying out loud...
Actually, I take that back. What's missing from the photo on the left is people. Farm people, blue collar people, middle management from John Deere people. Choir people up front in burgundy polyester robes. Teenage people gossiping in the back. Bald people (of the younger and older varieties) and people with hair. A smallish group of people, to be sure, but an incredibly varied and beautiful group of people, from whom I learned a great deal.
This is probably not the time to revisit Martin Luther, or to discuss the iconoclastic controversy, or to even go on much further about comparative religion, but I do have a soft spot for works of art that try, however much in vain, to accomplish the impossible task of communicating the incredible vastness and variety of the human experience.
As another example, take a look (if you haven't already) at these two videos by the band OK Go that were making the rounds on the internet a month or two ago. I showed them to my media class students as proof that, yes, everything in the mass media is constructed: that is, that behind every single message that we consume there are usually hundreds, if not thousands, of people that have been involved in its making and distribution.
You may have to follow a link to YouTube to watch this next one, but I promise that it's well worth it. Especially if, like me, you've had any experience playing the baritone in marching band...
So because I have five (yes five) sections of this media class, I ended up watching these videos quite a few times. I found myself thinking that there is something fundamentally, well, American about them. Something about their initial silliness that, compounded by some wild creativity and a lot of hard work, becomes almost scarily profound by the end. We may be tiny and strange creatures, and we may not understand very much of anything, but let's get together, create something, and have a blast anyway, dangit! Which may be what the Buddhists (and the Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, and all the other builders of Sanctuaries) were on to in the first place...
Today's Photo-Of-The-Day, a rare example of us being at a temple somewhere and not having one or more kids pulling at our pants legs wanting attention of some form or another. This is in Tai Po, a (relatively) small town in the New Territories of Hong Kong where we stayed visiting my college friend Ellen and her family last weekend.
In keeping with my tradition on this blog of starting traditions that are usually not followed up on, I'm going to try posting one photo each day, with or without comments, depending on how I feel at the time. These may be photos that I haven't featured that I like, curious random bits of things, or just simple proof that yep, we still exist.
First up: At one temple that we went to in Kanding, we stumbled on a prayer ceremony in the temple courtyard, complete with drums, cymbals, gongs, chanting, and a couple of very long and loud trumpet-type things that were blown on occasion. There was also a fire that the priests were throwing offerings on from time to time, and many onlookers. I didn't feel like it was appropriate to photograph the ceremony, but I did get a picture of a couple of monks as they lugged the ceremonial furniture back to their monastery.
Oh yeah, I don't think I mentioned that somewhere in there, Xander learned how to ride his bike without training wheels! He learned on a friend's bike when he was out playing, so we didn't even get to see the first attempts, but here's the next day documentary evidence.
Zoom, zoom - there went that month! April was the month that we busted out of our shells and went all over the place. (Or to be more accurate, I guess I should say that since I tend to be the more, um inertially disposed person in the relationship, this is the month that Jane busted us out of our shells and we went all over the place.) Oh, and that post back there in the middle of the month promising many more photos and blog posts and stuff because we were going to have plenty of time from here on out? I lied...
So for all of you chronologically minded folks that are keeping score out there, here's a quick April roundup. (Better bookmark this post, because it's all you're going to get...) The first weekend in April, we took an express train to nearby Nanchong, where we met with other MPC teachers for an Easter gathering and retreat. Highlights: A hike up a small mountain to a cool Buddhist temple, an outdoor tea house laid out on red astroturf by a riverbank, fresh baked breakfast goodies and reflection with our colleagues, and hundreds of people staring at the kids in a very old amusement park.
The next weekend included a very brief meetup with Ellen, a college friend of mine that I hadn't seen in over twenty years. She's in Hong Kong for the year with her family, and we managed to squeeze in an hour or two visit (right after the pandas) during their rock star tour of China. (Don't worry, we'll hear more from them momentarily...)
The next morning was a trip to a moon bear sanctuary to see bears that have been rescued from Chinese bear farms. An amazing organization worthy of a much longer post - more information here.
The middle of next week? Sports days at our college. Which meant classes canceled, which meant we hopped onto a twisty windy bus for six hours for a trip to Kanding, a small town on the border of the Tibetan area of Sichuan. Highlights: Hikes through trails covered in prayer flags, yak butter tea, some amazing people, a family horse ride above a high mountain lake, open air billiards, and only one episode of altitude / motion sickness. (this from Ysa, occurring on my lap two hours into the bus ride on the way back. She still asks me, "Daddy, 'member the time I got car sick on you?" with a giggle. Oh yeah, laugh it up, kid, laugh it up...)
The weekend after that was fairly uneventful, with good wind for kite flying if I remember correctly. Oh, and it was the fiftieth anniversary of Xihua University, which meant that the students were encouraged to participate in all manner of ceremonies, exhibitions, and commemeretive activities, which in turn meant that the traditional three day weekend over May Day was extended to a four day weekend, which meant - hey, wow, we could go visit Ellen in Hong Kong before she goes back to the States! A couple of quick emails and a few checks online for plane fares and before you could say, "There goes the kids' college tuition!", it was decided.
So that brings us to the present, at least kinda sortof. We just got back tonight from a quite wonderful four days in Hong Kong. I'm spending a small bit of time updating the blog instead of planning a lesson for class at ten tomorrow morning, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for more details and photos and so on.
