Less Skull, More Lion (Shanghai minority gallery)

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: doesn't raise one's faith in humanity, but definitely the best part of this week's Monday...In other words, if you don't have something nice to say, it's time to post some pictures.* 

*Hmm, that really sounds like an intro to internet blackmail//online shame and humiliation, doesn't it? Sorry to disappoint. I've got the goods on exactly: no one.

In lieu of that, let's take the escalator to the third floor of the Shanghai Museum. You almost missed the National Minority gallery, you barely looked at the map! And now you're tired, are too lazy to take notes on the (scanty) placards, and damn if your picture taking skills are falling short. But look! Welcomed with a dragon! How could you resist its lure?

If you are sensible, you can not. And look, birds alight on its brightly lacquered, noble snout.

The main gallery is lined with mannequins in native traditional/ceremonial dress. Tibetan, Mongolian, from far reaches; I tended to think that the flip side of such gorgeously intricate robes were rather difficult existences, or at the very least, lives lived amidst battering elements. For the garments which were not donned for specific rituals, how many days, weeks did one inhabit them? Some garments looked to easily add 20 pounds to the wearer. Still, hard not to romanticize the people from these museum artifacts: walking through halls to the tinkling of myriad silver cones dangling down your front; beaded strands dangling from the crown of your head to your waist; the common white four-holed button, appropriated for much snazzier fare.

More photos here.

*****

The room to the right of the gallery entrance is a wall of deity masks for cham dances in Tibet and elsewhere. Though not blue or many limbed, they call Kali to mind, with their ferocious gaze and crowns of skulls. I am easily drawn to the morbid anyway, so they suck me right in.

A guard approaches me. As with most museums, guards are everywhere. These however, I couldn't help noting, did not stop people from touching the sculptures in the sculpture gallery, which just about gave me a conniption. Most did not speak English, so I couldn't get the nice little asides from them that I am used to.

He eyed me and tapped the glass: "BYOOO-ti-ful." He nodded.

"Scary!" I said, "but yes, Beauutiful."

"BYOOO-ti-ful," he intoned and tapped again. He told me something doubtlessly edifying and completely unintelligible to me. I nodded. "Very. Old." He added. We nodded.  I found it interesting that he enthused about beauty before the grimmest, most ghastly pieces in the place, rather than strolling over to a ceremonial garment to intone the same thing. Was he testing the tourists? Challenging us to protest or grimace? Was he perversely setting up an "If I say the sun is the moon, it is the moon" beholder scenario? Or did he feel protective of the misunderstood beasties, with their gilding and their power?

Traditionally, deity masks like the ones above would be stored with their eyes covered, until a monk or lama chanted or prayed over it, prior to a ceremony. Makes sense to me. They seem just a bit to powerful to be just hanging around. Though clearly museum glass is created with all kinds of barriers in mind...

More photos from the gallery here.

And much more exciting -- process shots from Travel Lust, of monks preparing for a cham dance, in Ladakh, India. Plus even more great shots, from the same source!

I was initially googling cham dance videos, but wasn't so happy with the results I was finding. HowEVER, as you are sooooo aware, it's like a field of flowers, the farther from the path you go, the prettier the blossoms. To wit, don't pass up the Tibetan snow lion dance!  Based on this, I'm thinking Tibet figure in Barkely's heritage. The things you learn. Ayyyyand last stop on the random train, we have this. Who has Joi Ying Lion Dancers at their wedding? Darren & Tracey! Aside from a few cheers and claps, the banquet goers are disappointingly unastounded. Half a dozen metallic red and purple shaggy lions have entered your midst, people! Jaunty backsides, waggling tails, leaping and unfurling gold and red banners, as only the most literate of luck bringing/wealth bestowing lions will! Can't imagine how much money they would cost, but really, dancing lions would be *the thing to have*, to usher in an exciting life of connubial bliss. Am I right or am I Right??

Eight Yaks is Money, Yo.

This was my late Sunday afternoon a couple weeks ago:

The peaceful cafe goers of the Crazy Wisdom Tearoom are perturbed. There is one larger conference table with available plugs and seats; and one young woman seated at it, talking loudly on her cell phone. The South American flute music does nothing to mask the details of the data plan she is discussing. I have unpacked my laptop, but now hover. Would the sofa with collapsing cushions be any better? But her voice is audible everywhere in the small room. I scanned the neighboring tables. A woman pointedly cleared her throat and snapped her newspaper as she gazed at it. Another guy widened his eyes at me and thrust his hand up to one side of his face, as in, "Do you believe this shit??" People muttered to their table mates and cut their eyes in her direction. She talked about smart phones and the limits of downloads. The young counter person with fading pink hair offered to set up my rose tea* in the conference room. And so here I now sit: no people watching options here, but really quite spoiling otherwise. A sofa AND a huge table next to it. "We close at 8 PM, tonight, so you have about three hours." Psssh. If I had pajamas with me, I wouldn't leave. 

*Ok, and yes, chocolate cake. No matter how many times I opened the fridge this morning, no chocolate ever materialized.

***
This Sunday doesn't feel that much different, except more cold and grey. Mulligatawny stew is simmering on the stove, a cup of Korean corn silk tea is mellowing beside me and Beth Orton's newest is on repeat on Spotify.

The newly editioned "After the Snake, Before the Bite" is now up on Etsy, as of this afternoon. I'm hand-coloring the two remaining designs and should have those up soon.

Otherwise? Two of my favorite people are flying from out of town this week and I get to see them for the first time in five years! (maybe five? close)

In their honor, let's take a few moments to contemplate one of my absolute favorite bronze pieces for the Shanghai Museum. What does it have to do with them? Nothing, outside of the fact that I can not fathom them not being delighted by it...

So...I glimpsed this the first time I went to the museum, minutes before closing. It was the final straw determining that YES, despite the myriad places I hadn't had the chance to experience even once while in the city, I HAD to take another day to return.

We're almost there! Do you see it? ...No, because there are always people around it.

And why wouldn't there be, I ask you. 

Behold, Cowrie Container, with Eight Yaks.

Western Han 206 B.C. - A.D. 8

Attributed to the Dian people, from the Yunnan Province. 

The Dians' bronzes are renowned for their naturalistic approach; being an agriculturally based people, it's not surprising that animals figured in much of their sculpture, whether the items were ritualistic or more utilitarian. Since cowries shells were used as currency, this would certainly have advertised the ruler's prosperity. Of course to me, it's the idea that metalworkers, or those who commissioned the work, were like, "Okaaay, another cowrie container...Yaks! Yes, I see it now: there must be yaks. Six --no-- EIGHT of them. And the handles must be tigers."  

And it's not just that they're done *well* but that each yak has a personality. Unlike the more cartoony tiger handles, these are completely believable as animals. Some seem garrulous, others resolute, and at least one, timid. It's a different story from every angle. To see them in the round, in all their wonderful specificity, they amount to more than the sum of eight parts. It feels more like a proper herd.

He couldn't stop laughing.

Of course, to assume that their depiction on such vessels automatically indicates their beloved status in society would be a bit naive. And indeed, an interesting article from Anthropoetics (The Journal of Generative Anthropology) tells us that from their excavations in the Yunnan, they determined that: "oxen were not used to plough the fields nor to pull carts, but as sacrificial domestic animals, sources of food, and symbols of property, wealth, and power, whence their appearance on the lids of bronze vessels made to contain seashells. There are also war scenes, slaves weaving ... [on similar vessels]."

For a fascinating break-down of another vessel, which depicts "human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, and communal feasting" on its lid and somehow crams 125+ human figures and numerous domestic animals, click here. 

Pillow with 5 Yaks suffered from proximity. Only five? Really?

I don't know, I'd probably go with down anyway...

Shanghai: Prelude to a Museum

You know how dogs will saunter in, scout out an area for a little bit and then circle once, twice, three times before plunking themselves onto a rest spot? I feel like that. Except it seems I'm stuck in the circling part. It would appear I have a nice homey corner and it promises to be comfy; and yet, some part of me can't commit. I'm cranky. In between projects. Restless, with the "What next?" sense feeling more like a weight than a latent opportunity. Eh, give it a few.

Maybe this evening calls for a little time spent outside of the Shanghai Museum. You slept in a bit and then skyped with a few late bird/insomniac relatives. Bought some dubious prepack "cookies" from the corner convenience store -- they have cream centers, black sesame seeds on their surface and "GRAINS" stamped on each side. As suspected, the "cookies" are a confused, unsatisfying hybrid, though clearly a less frightening option than the miscellaneous meat morsels bobbing in an orangey bath underneath heat lamps. The not-cookies create a middling breakfast layer, along with a super-sweet Nescafe "coffee drink." Ready to go? Ready. Take line 4 to Century Ave where you switch lines, along with a veritable stadium of people, all following huge color coordinated floor arrows (Line 9 is Powder Blue, Line 6 is Red, Line 4 is Purple). But you want to go to People's Square, so you follow leaf green arrows to Line 2. The People's Square stop funnels you into the midst of a tacky tacky indoor mall which feels like it extends for miles. Leather and pleather and rhinestone trinkets; shop names like "Thousand Colors," side avenues of salons and scores of shop clerks, leaning on counters, slumping in chairs, as utterly bored as they'd be anywhere else in the world.

Finally, you decide on one of the thirteen or so exits. As you climb up the stairs, the humidity blankets you. But, that's okay! you are on an adventure!

On right, the Park Hotel, built in 1934 by Laszlo Hudec, based on the American Radiator Building

It was around here that a young couple asked me to take their picture. They seemed super excited and talkative, from a small town close to Mongolia, on their own big adventure. They wanted to practice their English. You American? Where are you from? Do you know Double Yew Double Yew Double Yew E?...The Rock! I *love* the Rock! It's fun and funny and we pass a few minutes. I begin to kind of inch along. Do you like tea? the young woman asks. Or do you like the Starbucks? Ohh, I say, I like Starbucks, but also tea. They are going to a tea ceremony, very special, very traditional only once a year. I should come with them. Ohh, thanks, I say. I think I'm just going to go on, but thanks.

"Oh, you should come with us!" urges the woman. "More is happier, more is better. And I can practice my English." Only a few blocks away. Oh, um, no. Am I missing a cool, one-of-a-kind experience out of mistrust and timidity? Or have I nearly been sucked in by WWWE tea hooligans? I shake my head a few more times, Bye, bye. I have a museum to go to. It becomes a bit more suspect after another group of young people (three this time) ask me to take their picture in the park. We also fall into an easy conversation, one also works in Pudong...and they also urge me to go to the tea ceremony a few blocks away, "The museum will be too busy now, you should come to this first!" Nooooo, thank you, no...Sweet, internalized Mom voice, "Ohhhh, they were so nice! For heaven's sake, they just wanted you to drink tea and learn food customs!" Sweet Mom segues into Suspicious Mom "...or maybe they wanted to rob you. I don't know. That IS AWFULLY friendly..."

Watching the ride, listening to screams, before the second picture posers approached.

Bamboo step exit from park. Back to commerce and heavy traffic

The appropriately futuristic Urban Planning Exhibition Center

No chance to go in, but I have heard great things.

Not the chocolate! yes, the chocolate.

Adidas Advertising, Dragon Style

The second park had speaker stones, from which marching band type music emanated, full of pomp and circumstance.

 I sat on a bench for a few, watched people walk by with their goldfish. An Asian man with a hefty build called out "Hahhhh-lllllloooooo!!!"

I laughed and called back "Helllllooooo! How are you?"

 At which point he burst out laughing and continued on.

First view of the Shanghai Museum, in the shape of a Ding, ancient food vessel. Bonus tucked-up shirt!

what's better than sitting by a museum fountain, listening to patriotic music?

Watching an elderly man fly his kite in the midst of it.

There was a 45 min. line to get through museum security.

Luckily I had some cool architecture to gaze at, while shuffling along. I dawdled so much before going inside the first visit, that I only had time for the ceramics gallery before closing time. Vowed to return the following weekend...More to come.