Reading the wisdom of Confucious

Thanksgiving, early morning:

Reading again  the book on Confucian wisdom, the book I got when I opened it to the page:  “Hold it(mind)fast, and you preserve it.  Let it go, and you lose it.”   

Confucius also says, “Seek and ye shall find it.  Ignore it, and you shall lose it. “

Something I thought of, on Maui; “There is only one moon.  Yet it shines on thousands of lakes and rivers at the same time.”  Zhu Xi, Theory of Li-Qi. 

IN the Great Learning, “From the Son of Heaven to the ordinary people, all must regard the cultivation of one’s personal life as the basis of all things.”   

Rectifying the mind and heart.    “He who wished to regulate his family first cultivated his personal life.  He who wished to cultivate his personal life first rectified his heart.  He who wished to rectify his heart first learned to be sincere in his will.  He who wished to be sincere in his will first needed to have knowledge; knowledge derives from all things in the universe.  ---Great Learning, Preface

“The man who puts great emphasis on exercising his mind is the man who fully understands his true nature.  In understanding his true nature, he understands the Way of Heaven.  To serve Heaven is to guard one’s mind and to nourish one’s true nature...Cultivate oneself and wait patiently.  This way one may develop full potential. “

Kungtu asked, “All are men, but some are great men and some are small men, how can this be?  Mencius replied,”Those who follow their greater part are great men; those who follow their lesser part are small men.”  Kungtu continued, “All are men, but some follow the greater part of themselves and Mencius replied, “Eyes and ears do not think.  They are impinged on by external things.  When things come in contact with each other, ears and eyes merely transmit the action.  It is for the mind to think and to receive what has been transmitted.  When the mind fails to think, it fails to receive too.  Eyes, ears and mind are endowed by Heaven.  When a man sets his priority on the greater parts of his body, the lesser will not be able to obstruct him.  It is this that makes him a great man.” – Mencius 6A: 15

“To be fond of learning brings one close to knowledge.  To make a real effort in one’s action brings one close to humanity.  To know shame brings one close to courage.  He who knows these three things knows the way of cultivating himself...”

The Butterfly Lovers, The Cultural Revolution and the Arts in China BAM

Note the fist raised....

Xiaomei Chen UC  Davis

  Liberating Western Ballet under Socialism:  Native Adaptation, National Mobilization, and Post -Socialist reinvention. 


Chen declaims and assumes a revolutionary posture, herself, exclaiming that the West should not view the dancers as victims of the Cultural revolution; it gave them a stage for their talents which they had never had in another time.  She emphasizes the creative role in war mobilization efforts which spread modern dance to broader audiences and a ballet performance entitled "Peace Dove" (Heping Ge) in 1950, following the founding of the PRC in 1949, which had a clear anti-US Imperialist theme to promote in a socialist nationalism in China in the  cold war era.  She sees the Golden Age being during the Cultural  revolution when two ballet performances became "model theater" for the masses to serve the common people, and for the artists to follow.... and then she concludes with the 1990s when a market economy challenged post socialist theater and restaging of model ballets created new waves of nostalgia for the "red classics". One example is the conversion of the white swan in Swan Lake, to a red swan who embraces the revolution.  She is proud of the fact which she stresses is that no other nation puts its revolution on the stage....I am not quite sure she is accurate there!  She continues the  Maoist line, in saying that the memory
of the Maoist period, now considered "more equal", whatever is meant by that-- than post Mao society, led to the form's renewed popularity and to commercial success.  "Model ballets' have survived political turmoil, economic reform, ideological transformation from socialism to capitalism, and have kept their crown status as a brilliant achievement of Chinese ballet "

THE BUTTERFLY LOVERS
"For more than three decaes, the Shanghai Ballet has dazzled international audiences with its unique repertoire of folk -infused Chinese ballet and classical Western masterworks.  The "Romeo and Juliet" of --a poignant love story dating to the Tang Dynasty -- follows a young couple's ill fated romance through elegant choreography, splendid costumes and evocative sets; in the first act, bamboo; in the second, willows, and in the third, maples and in the last act, snow.  Both the natural and supernatural worlds are represented in this bittersweet tragic story with expressive hand gestures, theatrical pantomime and classical technique.   I saw this ballet more than one time in China, and once in Shanghai with this ballet company.  It is a lovely lyrical work. The typical conflict occurs: her love cannot marry her, because he can not present the family with the required riches of cloths, pearls and so on, and when he visit her, she is already engaged to a man of prominent and acceptable family.  The servants of both families beat and torture the young lover, and kill him;  when the young heroine is on her way in the palanquin to her new husband's family, a terrible storm arises... and her palanquin is broken, and when she tumbles out, she sees her lover's grave.  She hits her head against the stone and falls into the grave, joining him in death, if not in life, in love.  

Emily Wilcox, Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor "Chinese in Content and Socialist in Form:  Chinese Ballet and the Cultural Revolution's Reversal of a National Cultural Movement.  

Her synopsis reads:  "In the early years of the Peoples Republic of China, one of the most ubiquitous official slogans guiding artistic creation was the so-called "national culture" policy, stipulating that art should be "socialist in content and national in form"   This policy was intended to protect distinctively Chinese artistic styles and techniques, while allowing for the insertion of new socialist characters and stories.  During the Cultural Revolution, this policy was significantly altered, leading to the abandonment of many indigenous aesthetic approaches.  Chinese ballet - or the use of ballet technique to convey Chinese stories - can be seen as a post -cultural revolution reversal of the "national culture" policy, one which drives continued debate in the contemporary Chinese art community today.  This presentation will provide context for and description of "the Butterfly Lovers", which is handled more fully by Xin Lili, Artistic Director of the Shanghai Ballet, in translation.  

 

Miao peoples in village in Guizhou Summer 2013

Launch of the Norton Critical Edition of Confucious at UCB

The Confucian Analects in the Modern World:  Five Generations (in celebration of the Norton Criticl Edition)   Panel discussion with Herb Finagrette, from UC Santa Barbara, who did an original translation of Confucius, simply focussing on the text, itself, many years ago.  A very dear traditional scholar, who was very happy on this occasion  as was Dr. Michael Nylan, who introduced  the grad students and other professors, Yuming He, Luke Habberstad and Tae Hyun Kim, whose essays interpret the Confucian classics.  A festive champagne celebration followed.

Li Qingzhao Lecture by Ron Egan, UCB

My comment: “In reading Li Qingzhao’s ci-poems, we are conscious of a kind of lingering charm rarely to be found in the works of her contemporaries.  This is because her verse with its rich imagery suggest and hints rather than directly expresses the feeling.  It was perhaps this irresistible charm that the Amerian poet Amy Lowell referred to as the perfume of a poem which she considered   more important than its metrical form.  Found in Jiaosheng Wang's "complete Ci Poems of Li Qingzhao"     Amy Lowell did not think "fragrance" more important than "meter", but in Chinese poems, because she could not read Chinese, she admitted that she would place primacy on  "the perfume".  My paper published in the Royal Asiatic Society Journal, Vol 50. No. 1. in Shanghai, 2010, and presented to Victor Mair's course, by invitation, at Peking University in Beijing in Spring, 2012, concerned this very topic so I am grateful to find this observation in this critical review and translation of Li Qingzhao's poems. I found her commemorative statue in Hangzhou, where she lived out, in obscurity, the last years of her life, having lost the husband she loved so early in life, to tuberculosis.  They used to write poems together, give each other puzzles about ancient bronzes, and seemed to have had a happy marriage. 

Professor Victor Mair in his classroom at Peking University.

Professor Ron Egan, newly arrived at Stanford University, from UC Santa Barbara, is bringing out a new study of Li Qingzhaou, in which he has attempted to expurgate any poems published as her poems in the century after her poems were conclusively published.  He humorously commented that she was very prolific in the Ming and Qing, after her death in the Song, considering the number of poems attributed to her.  He rules out stylistic considerations, but as a scholar, is only calling those poems, hers, which have clear evidence for being so, based on chronology.  He speculates that the Shu poems have a "masculine" quality, in his view, as they are about affairs of state and critical of other poets and of political leaders, and lack the quality of the Ci poems, which are more elegant and refined and display her poetic skills and knowledge. He maintains that she was not creating a persona but was writing out of her experience of loss of her husband, as well as her celebration of their times together. 

 

UIBE Beijing, Summer Session

My comment: I taught writing for  one month by invitation of the Dean, to international business students in July, 2013. My co teacher had earned her Phd in the USA.  Our air fare, housing  and salary were provided by the university.  My best student earned a place with the UN Internship. 

Chair of Campus CCP and host at luncheon

Psychologist and neuropsychologist Professors from Budapest Hungary, good company  at our banquet table.

Prof and wife from North Carolina University

President of university just come from meeting with Beijing major greeting us

University VP and Dept chairperson 

Our banquet  table: tv spokesperson, chair of Journalism in US, Janet Roberts, Connie, a law professor from St. Louis University,
 and neurology professor from Budapest

 

 

Botanical Gardens, Beijing. "Dream of Red Mansions" Cao Xueqin's Memorial.

An old Japanese pagoda tree is beautiful to see here.



Cao Xueqins' bust in his house museum

The house museum of Cao Xueqin

the view to the Western Hills in the Botanical Garden, Beijing



A real balancing act of acrobatic turtles: a happy family?

 

Blake House Garden: Moon Gong Figurines Tang Dynasty China;

 Two garden statues grace the side gardens flanking the central pool, in front of the Blake House.  The Chinese woman statue proves especially interesting as it is  (no doubt a copy, or replica) a Tang Dynasty image. (Jan Chapman, Moon-Gong Figures, from Tang Dynasty China, p 135 Arts of Asia March - April 2012).

 The one which is cited in this article is a "Shiwan pottery figure of the Goddess of the Moon, Polychrome glazing. Qing dynasty (1644-1911).  Height 83 cm Ac. 7026  National Museum of History, Taipei."  This female figure is wearing the feather collar and a skirt consisting of many different colored ribbons hanging down from the waist and holds up a moon in one hand.  Moon maidens danced in rainbow skirts and feather capes and were seen by the Tang Dynasty Emperor Xuanzong(756) when he travelled to the Palace of the Moon seeking his great love, the lady Yang Guifei as recorded in a poem, "Everlasting Sorrow"  written by poet Bai Juyi (772-846). When the emperor returned to earth, he composed a dance , niching yuyi, in remembrance of Yang Guifei.

The figurine's hair style is also "moon shaped".  The article goes on to describe other figures  which possess some of these characteristics in a variety of museums, including the Musee Guimet, Paris, as well as the Tsui Museum, HK, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto,  and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,  but none of these are exactly like this one in the Blake Garden which is identical in appearance to the Taipei Museum example.(p 134-140, article cited)

Now I shall look even more affectionately on this Statue in  Blake House gardens.   Blake House is traditionally the home of the President of the University of California, Berkeley.

Mrs Blake collected this piece turn of the 20th c.

Skirt has ribbons and butterfly motif

Moon Goddess has companion, lover, Count of the Wind (detail provided by manager of garden)

He carries a "striker" for "moon" disk in his hand....

Visions of Urban Change in China: Daniel Brook, and Hu Fang

Journalist, Daniel Brook, discussed his latest book, "A History of Future Cities, and Hu Fan's imaginative "Garden of Mirrored Flowers" -- dialogue historical and fictional views of Chinese urbanization convergence.    Daniel Brook, a Yale graduate originally from NYC, but at home in New Orleans, received a grant to visit Shanghai, Dubai, St Petersburg, and other cities of importance in the future, where he stayed about two months in each place, and then provided his assessment of their transition, transformation and comments on their present status and future.   Hu Fang's exhibition of "Estranged Paradise, Works 1993-2013 is organized by Sr Curator Philippe Pirotte and presented by BAM/PFA and the Kunsthalle, Zurich.  The Sifang Art Gallery, Nanjing is one of the sponsors as is Shanghart Gallery, and in San Francisco, the Marian Goodman Gallery as well as Rena Branstein and other private donors.  Yang Fudong's films are being shown over the next couple of months at The Pacific Film Archive.

Yang Fudong and Dnaiel Brook

Daniel Brook contemplating his presentation on Shanghai from his new book  Cities in the 21st century

 

James Cahill on Meiren Paintings: The Discovery of a Genre

UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus James Cahill, illustrious art historian who has won nearly every distinguished award possible in his field of Asian Art, including the College Art Association and Freer Gallery meritorious awards,   Intimate interiors reveal the women in private moments of contemplation and reflection.  In bound feet and silks, they also have attributes signaling their profession of courtesan.   Settings show women as musicians in a garden, women with kittens, women in their homes and baths  Corresponding to the ukiyo paintings of beautiful women in the Geisha and courtesan quarters, in Japanese painting, Professor Cahill essentially founded a new genre uncommonly viewed in China.  The exhibition is on view at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way  facebook.com/bampfa or bampfa.berkeley.edu   




We enjoyed seeing Dr. Cahill at the opening VIP reception, where he spoke warmly about the past studies and about the current catalogue of this exhibition.  He has given a gift of one painting to the UC Berkeley Museum "Putting out the Lamp" (detail) China, 18th c. ink and colors on silk.  In an earlier exhibition this fall on Chinese paintings, and their Japanese relationship, Cahill was honored with a viewing of the screen of a beautiful Chinese landscape  which he also gave to the BAM.
  

Janet Roberts and James Cahill Prof Emerita, UCB 



Screen Cahill gift to BAM



One of the warm welcomes to UC Berkeley was the return of the master teacher art historian, James Cahill, one of the "founders" of Chinese Art History study in the West.  I met him in 1987 in Shanghai, at Fudan University, when there was a total of 150 foreigners in the city.  He was giving a series of lectures and collecting, and shared some of his finds with me over tea, in his neighboring guest house apartment.  Anyway, then through the years I heard him lecture in Princeton, at the Institute for Advanced Studies, when I met his wife and tiny little boys.  One of those sons came to the opening of the "Meiren" exhibition at the BAM.  I met his daughter, Sarah, who is a music celebrity at UCB, and directs a concert series for the museum.  Thin, red haired and intelligent in appearance, in a long skirt and sweater, she accompanied her father, who was in fine form for the reception, but bed ridden for the inaugral lecture on Sunday. I have since watched her open the opera, Mary Magedeline on U tube.

  Undaunted,  a great scholar, as Cahill  is; he simply went on with the show, with a video slide presentation, and a photo of himself in his  home garden...and had the proceedings introduced and concluded by his curator, Julia White, the Asian Curator, of the BAM.  The 'Meiren" show is illuminating, as it presents portraits of women which have been suppressed, as they are erotic in nature, or as compared to their Japanese counterpart, the images of women who were highly literate and cultivated, and thereby courtesans, a step or many steps up from the dance hall pin up portraits, so popular, now with collectors.  My young neice in Vienna bought several to decorate her walls at Humboldt University in Vienna, when she visited me in Shanghai.  Dr Cahill answered the two questions I had, after carefully viewing the portraits....there must be Western influence, most likely the Dutch genre painters of women, and yes, of course, that is the case, as he showed in his illustrated lecture, Part I.  The other question was: are there portrait painters equivalent to a Utamaro for example, who chose these women as his subject, which was somewhat revolutionary, but also lucrative, at the time.   What Dr. Cahill revealed, I think, rather, enjoying the routing...was that a Harvard professor had proclaimed the first early portrait of this nature, to be a famous poetess, the one who represents herself as a man, to study with the foremost monk poet of the time, to whom she becomes a mistress.  It is a popular love story, so a real coup for this professor.  Dr. Cahill disproved it, and showed that the attribution written on the painting was a fake, and that this was one of the genre paintings that he had discovered, and proceeded to discover others, while he was at the Freer, which has awarded him their highest medal in art history, in the past years.   The Freer subsequently bought the painting.  The painting that Dr Cahill bought he gave to the BAM.  He reviewed the paintings in the show, and the ones, as well, which they were not able to obtain, as they could not travel to this venue.  I studied the portraits and noted the "attributes", the Buddah's hand, the fan, the book, and so on...many borrowed from the West, but some characteristic of the East.  I am reminded as Dr. Cahill tells how a foreigner, he, himself, broke the taboo, of discussing the erotic elements in these paintings .   He had published an earlier work, on women in Chinese paintings.   Women in paintings and women as subject of paintings is another matter.  Essentially, Dr. Cahill discovered and made valid a whole new genre, which contemporary China may be willing to accept and celebrate.   In any event, we are very much enjoying the celebration of these paintings and most of all, of Dr. James Cahill's achievement.

Jay Xu on Sichuan Basin Art at IEAS

Jay Xu Director of the Asian Art Museum, and former director of the Seattle Art Museum, spoke to us, about "rusty" scholarship, which he is taking up, again, on material culture in the Sichuan Basin. He studied under the great scholar, Robert Bagley, at Princeton University, where he spent 15 years earning his Phd under Wang Feng.  His dissertation focused on Sanxingdui.  His feeling is that not much scholarship has been done since 1986.  It appears he needs to update himself on publications in China.  I saw a great exhibition of relics from Sanxingdui in a wonderful new museum outside  Hangzhou.  This summer I visited both Sangingdui and Jinsha, and they were, as they are, for many Chinese, as memorable as the tombs of the burial pits of the warriors  in Xian.  I have posted my photos from these museums on MSN Sky Drive..  

Dr. Xu gave a very interesting lecture, following the motif of birds on the bronzes and showed how articles of this period which show these birds are of a type.  The stylized birds sometimes replace dragons in the register on the Sanxingdui bronzes.  He did not have a response when I raised the question about the birds found in the bronze "holy" trees, but only commented they were difficult to study, because they had been difficult to assemble due to being burnt and broken.  However, the tree is among those "sculptures" which he points out in this lecture, as representing a new stage, other than having bronzes of a functional or ritual nature, such as the drinking vessels.  

It was interesting to see his naturalistic slides of the World Heritage setting, including the Irrigation Ditch which I also viewed this summer.  Achieving this status, because it was one of the earliest examples in China of man changing the course of rivers through controls, to counter floods on this plain.  It was ironic that the week after my visit, there was a flood in this region. 

The statue which formed one of his main points but raised questions of "association" or "meaning in that cultural setting" is this free standing more than six ft high sculpture, a departure from the functional bronzes traditionally represented in rituals.  He proposes that possibly the man was holding an elephant tusk.  He does not seem to concur with the previous evidence representing this man as a "presiding" priest for the altar ceremonies, which is what is represented at the Sanxingdui museum site. 

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Jinsha excavation site (near Chengdu) Shu kingdom

the holy bird and the holy tree are symbols here

Discovered in 2001, ruins of the 3000 year old Shu kingdom were excavated at Jinsha. One museum is of the excavation site, itself, and the other contains examples from the the excavated 6000 relics dating from 1200 to 600 BC.  Jade artefacts, stone carvings and ornate gold masks are among the finds.

Example of jade bi representative of the focus on jade in this culture

gold in masks are found in Jinsha the site of the excavation

vast excavation site comparable to Xian warrior site

sites are labeled as to finds 

Sanxingdui Archaeological museum. Shu Kingdom (two hours from Chengdu)

Janet and the famous ritual mask Sanxingdui

Chinese friends from Nanjing my co travelers

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The Man...a priest whom we have come to visit - an awesome place and museum

 The bird figure which prefigures in many bronzes



4000 year old bronze masks are the centerpiece of this museum, which has two buildings of Shu kingdom artefacts. Known for its sacrificial pits, this find remains a mystery to the Chinese.  Jade and the masks are found beneath elephant tusks. 
Rituals and burials determine what we know about these people, who valued most the jade material culture 

My notes:    See MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT CHINA Edited by Dame Jessica Dawson.  Intro by Jessica.  See p 15-18 p 22-23 . "The Sacrificial Pits at Sanxingdui"  22 Standing Figure p 60-63    Essay by Zhao Dianzeng "The Sacrificial Pits at Sanxingdui", p 232-239. Discussed Sanxingdui as a  center of royal and religious power, a ritual centre and a site of pilgrimage.  Contents: "The bronze trees, birds and animals" , the "ritual items", the "bronze human like masks and diamond shaped fittings", the life size bronze figure, bronze heads and figurines', in the Form and Content of the sacrificial pits

I also read "Nomadic Influences in Qin Gold", Orientations, March 2010 which cites, again, Jessica Rawson, and dear Emma Bunker, who discuss the influence on the Qin, by the groups before the area becomes Qin Chinese. 



 

Great Wall Mutianyu the watchtower section

 Reaching  the top of one section of the 3 km Great Wall in one of 26 Ming era guard towers built on Qin foundations   

American Korean college student and couple (professor, North Carolina) co-climbers



Village landscape at foot of Mutianyu













 

Contemporary Art celebrations with Red Gate and Atkins/AI galleries in Beijing July 2013.

Red Gate gallery director and dinner following opening at Lijiang style restaurant, Beijing

Janet as guest of Christopher and Emily, at Temple restaurant, best new restaurant, 2013, Beijing

Emily and Christopher at their  AI/ATKINS gallery

Janet and Emily both Oxford Alumns and friends . 

Sidney Rittenberg film and skype interview at UCB/BAM/PFA.

Da Shan is one of the most celebrated foreigners in China, as he is known by millions of viewers for years for his role on tv,  Canada apointed him director of their Expo pavilion in 2010.  I met him at the FCC; he was very personable.but his persona is benign  It is amazing that Rittenberg was never considered a traitor, having become a member of the Communist party, when a GI about ready to return to America.  He insisted:  I wanted to play a role in history; I wanted to be somebody who did that, and that is what I did.  He knew Sidney Epstein, the journalist and his wife in Beijing.  He wanted to be a part of history and to be a revolutionary, he reiterates, --for which he spent 15 years in prison, in solitary confinement. Joseph Stalin told Mao that Rittenberg had to be an operative for the CIA and that he should be imprisoned the first time, when he remained there for six years.  The second time Mao imprisoned him, again, for a decade.  It's difficult to write about this.   Bruce Pickering introduced the film maker and the film, which is forbidden to be shown in China, but had viewings in the FCC in Shanghai(to which I was invited) and in Beijing and HK. 
The filmmaker feels, like I, the more things appear to change in China, the more they stay the same, that it is systemic. 

A Chinese wife married to a foreign man sat next to me, and she had the first question; with the current autocratic situation in China, what does he think of the people's situation? One asked him about his children: one is an engineer, another a doctor, another has a consulting company, in which he and his wife both work, consulting with US businesses in China.

It reminded me strangely of "the Manchurian Candidate".

Da Wei, qin musician from Shanghai Conservatory

Everyone would have preferred this musician,  Dai Wei who is an associate professor at the Shanghai Conservatory   to play her music than for usto suffer her  English.  Evidently she has a residency at UCLA that does not require lecturing, though she says  one is required...the playing  reminded me of my 12 lessons on the guqin which is the updated instrument and my instructor and I exchanging q and A in my very minimal Chinese, as she had no English. . The qin was originally not meant to be played in front of a wider audience, but rather in a setting of a tearoom, for instance, or with a few friends, or in solitude of a scholar's studio.   We learned that most musicians prefer playing a music that evokes landscape, though there are also subjects following the Tao.  As for description, Dai Wei  says she can imagine water flowing, but not an (object) like a mountain. The most difficult music to play, is one of "understanding", as one cannot "learn" to play it. Such  music follows thought.  However, Lyical, lovepoems and  and those with subjects of patriotism follow "feeling".  Her playing has charm:  She plays a piece about geese landing on sand, one about a drunkard(two variants), and the final one about an Empress feeling resentment(as she has been moved to a palace to live by herself). An amusing accompaniment was the sound of a crow cawing through the last piece, the one about the Empress's resentment.   I took notation of it, as it was so rhymically aligned.  The insistent crow creates a counterpoint:

Crow's counterpoint 
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copyright Janet Roberts2013